Posts made by benbidouille

@Yveaux
Thanks so much for confirmation,
Seems a large community of people faced the issue here back in 2014 link text , and the recomendation comes from this past experience.

My undertanding is nobody re-challenged the recomendation and possibly are we the only one interested in getting IRQ with NRFDoctor.

So is a good news you confirm it works.
Can I assume you use same W5100 HW shield as mine and that you have for HW connections:

• W5100 (CS/MOSI/MISO/CLK) wired respectively on HW SPI (10,11,12,13)
• NRF24 also on HW SPI for (MOSI/MISO/CLK) only and differentiated CS/CE/IRQ on for instance respectively 6/5/2

Regards and thanks for these precious informations that will help me saving time.
Regards

@Yveaux
Thanks a lot for your feedback.

I used very basic W5100 HW as on below link link text.

Why MySensor forum do mention "The W5100 ethernet module has problems sharing SPI with radio" recommending to use soft SPI with such unit without SD card ?

I must admit, I implemented sketch and wiring as recommended by MySensor forum with no brainer.

Lots of post like here link text seems also to confirm issues in the way W5100 handles SPI bus, a reel night mare, I haven't found any succesfull experience in forum yet.

Should you have further information or maybe working sketch to share, I would very much appreciate.

I have no logic analyzer so would prefer to avoid entering in long debug session but if you confirm W5100 and NRF on same SPI bus should work, i'll make a trial and rewire mine.
Regards

Hello,

This is me again
I intended to modify my existing W5100 GW to incorporate Doctor features, W5100 based on an Arduino NANO but I'm facing an architecture issue.

Mysensor recommends W5100 GW to use a Soft SPI for the NRF24 Radio as seems W5100 and NRF24 both on same SPI bus fails to operate.

GW Doctor requires IRQ which Soft SPI doesn't support, so sketch fails to compile with below error.

#error RF24 IRQ usage cannot be used with Soft SPI

Has somebody worked-around that situation and succeded to have a W5100 Doctor GW ?

Thanks in advance

@Technovation
Many thanks, I took opportunity of the only oversized 20x2 LCD device I had, to add the Nbr_of_fail / Total_Counter statistics display, very useful for cumulative % on long run in addition to original last 100 msg.

I also wanted to share with you importance of having a proper shielding (underneath green tape is aluminium film) where only Radio OEM module is exposed.

Under PA+LNA in the worst case conditions (max power), shielding significantly increases TX RX reliability (ideally OEM module body should also be shielded)
Cheers

@Technovation
Many Thanks for your feedback, Yes we are fully in line, including the forward diode junction on the 5V.

About the NACK and FAIL this is very clear to me for the absolute value but I was wondering for Percentage value.

I'm actually doing transmission benchmarks ( combining different radios, radio shields etc .... under exact same conditions ) over periods of 5 minutes with payloads of 2 and 100 Msg/s, and I thought the percentage shown corresponds to Nbr_of_fail / Total_Counter, but it is not and i assume percentage is rather calculated over last X.

This is a very very good tools, I really appreciate, OEM NRF24 module are not all the same some are much better than others.
Best Regards

Many thanks for your highlights.

Yes fully agreed that unfortunatly cheap NANO or PRO MINI does not have state of the art PCB design rules with ground planes.

Supply of NRF24 is requiring also a lot of attention in power rails that shall be as much as possible decoupled from the digital supply of the Arduino, better to have an external low drop out voltage regulator as you mentionned earlier.

For the 3.3V regulation and voltage drop, I do not follow you, to me we have 3.3V output regulation + 1,2V regulation margin which remains well under the 5V input of the regulator ( doesn't includes the 0,44v drop )

The Voltage drop accross the 2,2 ohm shunt is on the ground path of the 3,3V regulator so the NRF24 is seing only 3,3V - 0,44V on worse case TX condition and considering rdson is neglectable against the shunt.

From the NRF24, Radio can even operate with down to 1,9V supply, surprisingly very tolerant.

In my circuit I placed a jumper for shorting the shunt and fullfill a 3.3V supply.

After some trials today up to 154mA , I can confirm the voltage drop has absolutly no effect to radio TX/RX quality, so my jumper is useless, but I always prefer to put it in place for all expect power and sleep measurement.

Again great job you all did.

Just a question related to Statistics, What is the FAIL and NACK % corresponding to ?
It never exceeds few % even so the transmission is continiously failing.

@Yveaux
Thanks a lot for your feedback, and again very good collaborative job.

The built-in starting and ending channel number capability even justifies to change nothing , it magnifies well the graph channel representation.

Yes I fully agree, by experience ADC measure and ground reference are critical on NANO.
Regards

@Yveaux
Can you confirm your design is operating well with NRF24 radio modules with High Icc current consumption up to 150 mA like with PA modules ?

I mean is clear Rds ON of MOSfet is chosen as low as possible, but the voltage drop across the 2.2ohm shunt might becomes critical especially along transcients when radio operates.

I added Caps at Radio Supply rails ends and also Jumper for shorting shunt circuitry in case of.

Again very nice and well engineered design.

I used 20x2 display instead of 16x2, How painfull would you think it is to extend the graph display resolution ?

@Yveaux

@Yveaux

This code is just great, Very good and impressive job.

While looking after recommendations for improving reliability of NRF24 links on easydomoticz french forum, @rpx put me through your NRFDoctor and I must admit is exceeds my expectations.

I just built it in few days and just starting to use it.

Tx/Rx statistic, Icc current measurements in sleep and operating modes, capabilities to reconfigure radio parameters between node and gateway, without forgeting the beautifull frequency range bar graph.

A perfect tool for Wifi and NRF links.
Many Thanks and regards

Designed for Rpi2 & 3, Best UPS I have found is definitively UPS PIco HV3.0B HAT Stack with Battery 450 available under below link.

http://www.pimodulescart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=30

It accepts most technologies of batteries and capacities, but with supplied version is good enough to manage supply of RPI3 and HDD running domoticz at least for 1h and if not sufficient will proceed with clean shutdown and automatic restart on main supply is back.

Nice industrial design, including user configurable Leds and button, relay and temperature monitoring with FAN control.

I bought one 2 month ago, and I'm very happy with it.

I have not any incentive nor interest in this product, just to highlight was quickly delivered to me, technical manual is well documented ( not chinese like) and firmware is professionally maintained with a dedicated forum also available.

Many Thanks @mfalkvidd
Works just great as expected.
Regards

Hello,
Maybe a naive question but I'm looking after a way to exit from mysensor initailisation in case it fails hooking to gateway and I havent found the way to specify a timeout.

About the context:
I have a Arduino based Mysensor Node that is used to control 2 relays for Opening and Closing curtains.
The Node control is done either through radio as a Mysensor Node either locally through local to curtains Button control.

The Button status are in fact read by Arduino, programs arbitrates between local buttons and radio.

All works well as long as the Mysensor network is ON and the curtain Node hooks to mysensor gateway, but I want to make sure I can keep control of the curtains with local buttons in absence of the mysensor network and I haven't yet found the way to manage it.

On Arduino sketch of the curtain node, at Reset the program keeps expecting a successfull link with gateway and keeps cycling before excecution of presentation() or even loop() of the arduino sketch.

Would somebody have a trick to specify a timeout or a maximum attempts to hook gateway and keeps executing arduino sketch ?

Also I would be interested to now How to reinitiate a mysensor initialisation from the Arduino sketch without having to reset the arduino.

Thanks in advance