I've been trying for hours, every day for the last 2 weeks to get my emonTxShield to work with my Arduino Mega 2560, and have admitted defeat and given up! All of the different options and variations are just far too much for a beginner.
I cannot get the emonTxShield to do anything useful. Even if I load the simplest of sketches (even without trying to send rf) using the serial monitor, it sends approx. 7 lines of results and then stops. I've tried many different sketches- it stops every time after a few sets of data. The solder pads are set to use Dig2 and Dig10. Picking up bits of info here and there, I've even modified emonlib.cpp, etc. for the Mega, but nothing works.
Of course, I haven't given up on openenergymonitor- I've ordered an emonTx- which is what I perhaps should have done in the first place- but I thought I could learn about Arduino by using my Mega and emonTxShield, so that's a bit disappointing.
I think I have my RasPi set up ready to receive data, but even that keeps failing with "The RFM12 to PI interface script is not running, you may need to configure cron", even though I've followed the sequence to kill the cron process and the php process several times. Until I'm sending data to the RFM12Pi, I don't think I can set up emoncms properly? (I'm a noob at RasPi as well, but have mucked around with Linux many years ago).
On the upside, I can now use my Mega on my chicken coop project, and I'm having fun!
Thanks for letting me rant!
Andy
Re: I've given up!
you are not the only one.... i tried to make my own shield as the default emontx did not what i needed.. in short i needed:
3 CT and 3 AC input
pulse count for water
2-way IR coms to my heat meter.
for the 2 first i could use 3 emon tx.. but as you have a mega so do i... and would be more expensive to use all the extra boards compared to a mega that is just collecting dust.
i did build the shield in eagle and in fact its ready for PCB fab.... but i ran my head to a wall when it comes to:
extra check that i coonected to the right pins compared to what the libs assumes....
how to mod the libs so full 3 phase are done in same sketch and not on 3 different boards.
a check on my sketch
in the end i just gave up.... otherwise openenergy was a good system. 2 of my meters are selfreporting but the electricity are 1 day behind and i cant see live data. heat meter is up to 3 months behind and the company does not gurantee the data until 1-2 years after a year is over. water meter i have to report myself once a year. so again openenergy could allow me live data and updates every 5-10 secs
Re: I've given up!
Andy, are you using the emon 'ready to go' SD card image file, or did you set up the RasPi from scratch?
Paul
Re: I've given up!
Paul,
have tried both- tried the 'ready-to-go' image, then built from scratch, and then multiple tries with the 'ready-to-go' image! Understood more at each go, but I think I will wait for emonTx and when I'm confident that it is transmitting, will try again with emoncms.
Andy.