Messages posted by: Rick

Hi Jim,

If you are using the Arduino IDE, you would choose Duemilanove with ATmega328P 16Mhz.

We have sold thousands of these, and they are all pre-tested prior to shipment. If the above board selection does not work, then we will gladly replace the unit for you.
The miniWireless are preloaded with a test program. If you connect the FTDI interface at 115K baud, you should see the test program printout on powerup and after reset.

Let me know if we can be of further service to you.

Regards,
Rick

Here are the links for the TH02:

TH02 Portal Page:
http://www.hoperf.com/temperature_sensor/TH02.html

DATASHEET:
http://www.hoperf.com/upload/sensor/TH02_V1.1.pdf

Samples available here:
http://www.anarduino.com/details.jsp?pid=148

Hi Cbanta,

Temp is fine, supported temperature is -40'F to +185'F

Within a couple degrees is very easy to achieve, and lots of available sensor choices.

It's easy to achieve a year operation at 5min temp read/message interval.

Since your distance and protocol requirements are simple, I'd suggest using a low cost radio, such as the RFM69CW.
There is plenty of test example code available as well, which you can leverage for your application.

I'd like to hear more about your frequency measurement.

BR/-Rick

Hi Cbanta,

Thanks for your message, but I need to ask about requirements.
I've used several different temperature sensors in various projects. Both analog and digital, and there are many types available.
It really depends on what you need.
- what temperature range do you need to support?
- temperature accuracy?
- sample rate?
- data collection and retrieval: wired or wireless, real time? buffered, or just stored data?
- battery life requirements?
- if wireless, what range? what transmission protocol? wifi, fsk, ask, etc..?

I assume since you mentioned monitor, that you'd like real time results.
It's possible to set something up that will run for years off a battery(or certainly through a class duration), but need to consider the factors to properly configure.

Cheers,
-Rick

Hi,

I suspect it will work fine with the 50ohm coax with proper antenna on the end.
wire or whip antenna of proper wavelength on the end should suffice.

BTW, The LoRa devices will work using distances significantly beyond 300m(by a factor of 10X), so even if your antenna configuration is somewhat less than ideal, you'll probably still be okay.
Curious, have you considered the 69HW/HCW product line? They will give you 300m at much lower cost than the LoRa.

Let me know how things work out, I'd be interested to hear more of your project.

All the best..
-Rick

Yes, stevech is absolutely correct.
These boards are optimized for labeled frequency, having specific discrete components tuned for that center frequency.

Greetings,
My apologies for the long overdue response, I've been doing lots of international travel.

We actually have hundreds of these devices available, and I've sold many privately.
These are of excellent quality, and have amazing hibernation capability. The gating factor for release has been trying to make time to build support pages with documentation and examples.
Due to the nature of this design capability, it is important to be diligent in the usage of hibernation techniques, and it is not as simple as the basic arduino type devices.
My primary concern being: if I release without stellar support docs, I would end up simply overwhelmed fielding support questions, and helping beginners to understand and use.
I've also utilized lots of these in a few of my own projects, so I can personally vouch for them.

Okay, that being said... are there any of you brilliant engineers out there, who would be interested to assist me in putting together some demos and support docs.
I can provide these for same cost as regular MW-HW, and we can work out some sort of compensation arrangement.
I'll provide functional docs and specs, and some working code showing hibernation technique if anyone is serious in getting involved.

My original intent for these series, was to produce an entire product line (which I've done several already), build stock into the thousands on each type, build proper documentation and examples, then have a big slash launch. Well, business has been very busy, so I worry about being overwhelmed upon release.

If any of you would like to contact me, please do so privately, and we can move forward from there, but please...sincere and serious inquiries only.

Best regards,
Rick

Greetings,
My apologies for the delayed response, I've been doing lots of international travel.
We actually have hundreds of these available, and I've sold many privately.
These are of excellent quality, and have amazing hibernation capability. The gating factor for release has been trying to make time to build support pages with documentation and examples.
Due to the nature of this design capability, it is important to be diligent in the usage of hibernation techniques, and it is not as simple as the basic arduino type devices.
My primary concern being: if I release without stellar support docs, I would end up simply overwhelmed fielding support questions, and helping beginners to understand and use.
I've also utilized lots of these in a few of my own projects, so I can personally vouch for them.

Okay, that being said... are there any of you brilliant engineers out there, who would be interested to assist me in putting together some demos and support docs.
I can provide these for same cost as regular MW-HW, and we can work out some sort of compensation arrangement.
I'll provide functional docs and specs, and some working code showing hibernation technique if anyone is serious in getting involved.

My original intent for these series, was to produce an entire product line (which I've done several already), build stock into the thousands on each type, build proper documentation and examples, then have a big slash launch. Well, business has been very busy, so I worry about being overwhelmed upon release.

If any of you would like to contact me, please do so privately, and we can move forward from there, but please...sincere and serious inquiries only.

Best regards,
Rick

Greetings,
Thank you jeremyvnc for your useful and helpful feedback, much appreciated.
Anarduino performs 100% testing of the MW prior to shipment, so there should be high confidence in receiving functional product.
There remains work to do to improve online documentation, examples, and such, which is on our radar and wish list.
Frankly, I've been wanting to do this for a while, but in all practicality, I may have to hire an additional resource to assist.
Have a great day, and best regards to all...
-Rick

Greetings,

Just a simple 1/4 wave length monopole would work fine--soldered to the ANT pin.

I generally wouldn't use a coax with attached antenna, but it would work if you attach to the ANT pin with shielding attached to adjacent GND, impedance would be 50ohm (not 75), and the attached antenna needs to be tuned to 915Mhz. A 915Mhz whip type or other would suffice as well.

We also have thousands of 2dBi antennas available in stock, but I just need to add them to the website.
Here's a link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/915Mhz-Antenna-2dBi-/171877270861
These are simple to use, just solder onto ANT.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Best Regards,
Rick

Hi Emmanuel,
Thanks for your post.
Yes, you can use 9V to power it.
Best Regards,
Rick

Greetings,

It sounds to me like a baudrate mismatch (assuming you are using a standard type ftdi pc<>uart interface).
What FTDI are you using?

These boards are all pretested, and hundreds are shipped every week.
They are preloaded with a test program configured with baud rate of 115200.
If you set your baud rate accordingly, you should indeed see meaningful text.
What board and processor clock settings are you using to connect? 16Mhz ATmega328?

We stand behind all our products, so let me know how we can be of further assistance.
Please let us know if this resolves your issue. Thank you.

Best Regards,
Rick

Greetings,
These devices are ready now, both the Miniwireless and Mega1284 lower versions.
They are available for rfm69HW and W type radios.

Features:
- very low quiescent module hibernation capable: <55nA
- support for RFM69HW and RFM69W radio types
- RTC with crystal
- 128Mb flash memory
- SMA connector (included, but not attached)
- onboard support for battery backup supercap (supports two types, both SMD mounted on board, and easily soldered)
- NOTE: battery backup supercap is optional. we have them in stock and happy to sell them at cost. no included by default, because we need to support customers who do no desire RTC option.

Let me know if you have questions.
Pricing for low power MW, very close to original MW.
Pricing for mega a bit higher.
I'm working on the specifics now, and plan to post soon.

If you want to buy them now, just let me know what you need and I can send an invoice.
We have hundreds build, tested, and ready to ship.

Best Regards,
Rick

Hello everyone,

I've been rebuilding the Miniwireless portal page (in an among other responsibilities), and here's a sneak preview. Gee, I thought I'd have it up and running by now, but it's going to be a few more days.

Basically, we have plenty of stock, but there are also many options--3 series shown in the image below, plus another we engineering now. (then they'll be a fifth if you include the future ARM offerings). So I want to provide an easy platform for customers to pick and choose various configurations.

All this is relational backend data-driven and dynamic, so once it is setup, it should be relatively easy to maintain.

Thanks esa, good points as well.

P1) You're absolutely correct in regards to the MW, but that's only one type of product. I have several others that don't have a built-in LDO (and I'm sure there may be others out there with similar circumstances). I had built this board for my own project consumption, but then several people asked to buy it, and thus it emerged. Also, keep in mind that this was a few years ago I popped this board out. I occasionally think of improving it, but then there are soooo many other ideas to chase after.

P2) I'm in the process of rebuilding the MW portal page, which will have all the schematics to the various versions available. The schematic posted on that page is the original version of the MW-12B/CW, which had VCC on the FTDI header. I noticed this was less than optimal, so ALL other versions of MW have this as a VIN pin. NOTE that ALL newest versions of MW-12B/CW also have this pin as VIN.

P3) here you go...

No worries...

All the best..
-Rick

Greetings, and thanks for your inquiry.

The Anarduino FTDI features a switch to select between 3.3 and 5.0V.

Most ftdi-based 3.3v units out there use the 3.3v output of the ftdi chip, which has maximum rating of only 50mA. This could be an issue--depending on what you have connected to it.
Our FTDI board derives the 3.3V directly from the 5.0V USB source, via an MCP1703 LDO 3.3V regulator, which gives you 3.3V at 250mA.
One possible issue that someone brought up, is the RX/TX would still operate at 5V (since the ftdi chip mode is still selected as 5V). While this is NOT an issue for any of the arduino compatible ATmega328 chips, and several other MCU's due to their gpio 5V tolerance, it could pose an issue if your are using an FTDI in 3.3V mode connecting to some ARM uart, whose pins may not be 5V tolerant. The current physical format of the FTDI is quite small, but needs some updates to be better conducive for use with either of our pick-n-place machines. We've intended to do a revision of this board for quite some time now, but it admittedly is still several items down on the priority list. We didn't think much of this initially, as it was intended for use in the arduino environment, but clearly this type of device could be useful for other things as well---thus the desire to improve on it.
Hope that helps, and thanks everyone for your participation.
All the best..
-Rick

Update on the Mega...

We beta tested and deployed a small lot of Megas last month, but I have since made a few enhancements to the design. Thus, we ordered a volume of new RoHS Mega boards, and production will begin on these next week. I expect these to be on the website for purchase by end of February.
Thank you for your patience.
Best Regards,
Rick

Wow, thank you everyone for your enthusiasm and interest.
I owe you an apology for this, because we've had these available for quite some time, but I have not had the time to build the website infrastructure for sales and support of it--until now. I'm in the process of updating the website, and expect to have automated online ordering of the New MiniWireless this coming week. I trust it will be well worth the wait.
All the best...
-Rick

Thanks,
They are available now, please email me if you want to purchase.
I just need to update the website and infrastructure for sales and support
(which I am working on now, and expect it to be online this coming week).

SadE wrote:Rick,

Could you tell the truth please about the status of Anarduino web site and products.
You announced the new miniwireless for 5 january...
From the start of 2015, the ordering from the web site is deactivated .
But we can order using Ebay.
It's seems really strange to me, and I guess I'm not the only one
Could you give us please some facts/explanations ?

Thank you for your comments...

Truth is...
- Ordering of products from the site is and has been active all along.

NEW MiniWireless
- The NEW MiniWireless (MW) was manufactured, built, and tested a few months ago and ready for sale, but I've not had the time to build the website infrastructure for sales and support of it.

Standard MiniWireless
- In January, some existing MW models were taken briefly offline, due to HopeRF factory supply issues on a few radio models. This has long since been resolved because we have ordered thousands of these popular radio types.
- Also in January, I took the MW ordering portion of the webpage offline, because I was updating to add additional products and an extra section for the New MW (of course this did not affect eBay listings). Unfortunately, I had an emergency situation come up, which required my immediate travel and attention. So I apologize to all, as this left the MW ordering page down for several days during that time. This did NOT affect the business in other regards, because I have full time employees handing manufacturing, shipping, and distribution.

Please watch the Hot Products section of the homepage for forthcoming New MiniWireless link.

Hi all,
Things have been delightfully busy these days, but I'm happy to report the Mega1284 is ready. We just need to get the site updated so I can start officially offering them.
The first version of Mega1284 supports the RFM69HW (and W) modules. Let me know if any of you would like to see the Mega support other radio types.
I'm planning to build one also for the RFM23BP, and the LoRa radio types. Any feedback is much appreciated.
All the best..
-Rick

Hi Greg,

There is a tactile reset push button switch, and the reset is also available on the header.
The reset signal name is RST, and it is shown on the MiniWireless portal page in schematic and pinout views, http://www.anarduino.com/miniwireless

Let me know if you have further questions, and have a great day.

All the best..
-Rick

Greetings,

If you ordered these together, both the anti-static packaging and the boards should have been marked. If this is not the case and you are not able to determine, we will replace your product free.

In the past, we ran into this as well. A quick range test will very quickly differentiate between 433 and 915, however, 915 vs 868 will be more difficult.
To address this, we've added a silkscreen indication block on the MW-LoRa series, and this will be implemented in other series as well going forward.

BR/-Rick

Thanks for your posts and such.

The 10K pullup on D2 is indeed unnecessary, and will henceforth be omitted.

BR/-Rick

Hello everyone,

The Mega line will be ready for shipping when we reopen after January 5th.
The new MiniWireless boards are ready (we have over 1K of them built and tested), but we just need to update the website.

All the best..
-Rick