Emon Tx V4 and 433MHz Radio Formats

Hardware
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[Image added to Emon Tx V4 and 433MHz Radio Formats - #36 by Robert.Wall]

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@Robert.Wall
Thank you for the emonTH photograph :smiley:

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The emonTH is running with rfm69TxLib using the ā€˜nativeā€™ message format.

If anyone requires it, it should be easy enough to make the RFM12B transmit using the LPL message format, with a moderately simple change to rfmTxLib, but transmit power will be fixed and it wonā€™t participate in the automatic power reduction nor will it re-transmit a failed message (because it doesnā€™t receive at all and so will ignore the request).

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Iā€™ve added a firmware and configuration page to the emonPi documentation, mirroring the same layout/format as seen in the emonTx3 documentation:

Once Im happy that the documentation and releases are all in place I will do a proper forum announcement.

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Credit to @Robert.Wall for most of the work behind this. Robert built the JeeLib Native firmwares and produced the associated configuration documentation. Iā€™ve just made a set of relatively small modifications to enable the use of the LowPowerLabs format and adjusted the configuration documentation a little to reflect this.

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There are a couple of things that I need to look at again for serial configuration consistency.
I disabled the ability to change a temperature sensorā€™s address or position in both the emonTx4 and emonTx3 firmwares (itā€™s still available in the emonPi_CM firmware). I also changed the api for turning temperature sensing on or off. This resulted from changing the way the serial configuration in parsed, I added more strict checking of command and parameter lengths - but I would like to look at this again as Im sure thereā€™s a way to achieve both and keep a consistent api throughout.

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Iā€™ve combined the LowPowerLabs emonTh2 firmware with the jeelib native and classic variants so that there is only a single firmware to maintain. The latest version is 4.1.0 and is available in the main emonth2 repository here: https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonth2/tree/master/firmware. Again mostly Roberts work on the rfm69n version, Iā€™ve just added #defines to switch between the radio formats, and a #define for ATTINY support.

Latest release: Release 4.1.0 Ā· openenergymonitor/emonth2 Ā· GitHub
Documentation firmware page: Firmware ā€” OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation
Documentation configuration page: Configuration ā€” OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation

Again I will do a proper announcement again, after completing the remaining firmwares.

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In the interfacer?

[edit]
Lets not forget those poor folk on a emonTH1 :upside_down_face: (it still works :slight_smile: )

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How about a top level section for Connecting it Together - canā€™t think of a better title - there must be one :slight_smile:

In this include

  • RFM (the current Networking)
  • Direct Serial (UART)
  • Direct Serial (USB)
  • Wi-Fi Modules

There is probably quite a bit of duplication, so this could bring that all together.

Just a thought

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not forgotten! :slight_smile:

no in the sketch itself.

Yes great, will have a think about this.

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How about Interoperability?

Iā€™ve been looking at firmware for my emonTH and have just installed Platformio.

Iā€™ve been looking at the Using Platformio page, a couple of observations:

  1. The page says it is built on the Atom editor but Platformioā€™s own pages clearly aim at VS Code first.
  2. The link to silabs drivers gives a 404 error, I think it needs this one but can someone check please?

Thanks!

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Hello @christian I only use platformio as a command line tool on linux, which it works very well at. There is an old platformio guide with windows instructions here - it probably needs updating? Using PlatformIO ā€” OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation

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Thanks; my points relate to 2 inaccuracies on that page, it needs updating but I donā€™t believe I have permission.

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This link takes you straight to the driver download:

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I strongly advise using the Arduino IDE (search here for my posts about Platformio if you need details of my reasons for not using platformio). In ā€˜Learnā€™, you will find all the details of the libraries and driver installation that you need (for Windoze, Linux & Mac).

https://docs.openenergymonitor.org/electricity-monitoring/arduino-ide/index.html

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Ah good find. Someone needed these recently for connecting a TX4 by USB and I couldnā€™t find the right page with the link (which is Obs broken.

@TrystanLea something for the TX4 page as well.

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@Gwil or @TrystanLea
Some unclickable links on Installing the Arduino IDE ā€“ Windows 10 ā€” OpenEnergyMonitor 0.0.1 documentation

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Iā€™ve updated the emonTh1 firmware with the option to switch between jeelib classic and lowpowerlabs. Hereā€™s the release with hex files: Release 2.8.0 Ā· openenergymonitor/emonTH Ā· GitHub. These are also available via the emoncms update mechanism.

@Robert.Wall thanks will take a look at those

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A post was split to a new topic: Change EmonLibCM to make it easier to switch between emonTx and emonPi

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Hi everyone, thanks you for your great job on new device firmware and the material that you build. I have created a PR to fix an error in the emonTH2 firmware (when another frequency is used). I have also opened an issue (with a link to a commit) about the implementation of a new feature that it allows the possibility to use another encryption key (without modifying the source code). Donā€™t hesitate to comment it :grinning: