Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Tue, 02/07/2013 - 18:28

I purchased the following from the shop:

emonTx 868Mhz kit
RFM12Pi v2 868Mhz + SD Card Bundle
100A max clip-on current sensor CT
Programmer - USB to serial UART
AC voltage sensor (UK plug)

I am reasonably experienced at soldering, although not much for 25 years, and constructed the emonTx reasonably easily.

I installed the Arduino development software and was able to upload the emonTx_CT123 sketch.

The RFM12Pi and SD card were plugged into my Raspberry Pi. When booted emoncms is accessible over the network.

This is where it all goes wrong. There is no sign of an input from the emonTx. When the serial monitor is running emonTx produces the following output:

emonTX CT123 example
OpenEnergyMonitor.org
Node: 10 Freq: 868Mhz Network: 210
8833 3303
320 3303
263 3303
226 3303
197 3303
171 3303
154 3312
132 3303
118 3303
102 3303
92 3303
81 3303
72 3303
63 3303
58 3303
emonTX CT123 example
OpenEnergyMonitor.org
Node: 10 Freq: 868Mhz Network: 210
12561 3303
54 3303
22 3303
31 3303
32 3293
27 3303
18 3303
40 3303
22 3303
18 3303
39 3303
37 3303
24 3303
16 3303
emonTX CT123 example

Note: the clip on sensor is not clipped onto anything while testing.

How, do I find out it the wireless is working?

I have probably done something silly but at the moment can't think what.

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by calypso_rae on Tue, 02/07/2013 - 19:12.

http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/2084

This thread can point you towards a couple of pairs of sketches to check whether your RF transmission is working or not (there's one set on Github from Glyn, and a similar set from me posted as .zip files)

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Tue, 02/07/2013 - 19:28.

Sadly I get Page not found.

This works: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/2084

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Andrew on Thu, 04/07/2013 - 12:43.

I found setting my raspi emonbase to use network id 0 (zero) to be helpful in a similar situation. That makes it collect all network ids. Basically, I found out my emonTx was not using the network id I thought it was, by doing that. Might be worth a quick try.

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Thu, 04/07/2013 - 13:08.

Thanks. I will try that later.

Nick

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Sun, 07/07/2013 - 15:02.

Sadly that didn't seem to change anything.

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Robert Wall on Sun, 07/07/2013 - 17:36.

Is there anyone in your locality with a known working 868 MHz emonTx or RPi that would enable you to determine which end is not working?

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Sun, 07/07/2013 - 17:59.

That's an interesting thought. I am near Colchester, UK in the CO7 postcode area. Any offers?

Nick

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by MartinR on Sun, 07/07/2013 - 19:35.

If it's displaying "emonTX CT123 example" etc regularly as you've shown all by itself then the board is resetting itself. What's happening is it's waiting the FILTERSETTLETIME timeout period and then trying to transmit, at which point it resets. It will do this if there is no RFM12B on the board so my guess is there's something wrong with the RFM12B on the emonTx.

When it's working properly it will only display the "emonTx C123" example message once at power up.

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Robert Wall on Mon, 08/07/2013 - 21:15.

Obvious question: Does your board look like the pictures? Are all the soldered joints around the RFM12B module good, and is it aligned with the pads?

Re: Solved: Help needed: No sign of wireless transmission

Submitted by Mr Nick on Wed, 10/07/2013 - 11:34.

Looking with a x4 eyeglass under very bright light showed that some of the solder joints around the module weren't that great. After re making those it behaved differently but still not right. Further inspection showed that there was a solder bridge between two of the unused "pins". Once this was removed with a solder sucker everything sprung into life.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Nick

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