Emontx intermittently transmitting zeros

[pb66 (Paul)]

@richy1995

When I disconnect the pulse counter it seems more stable, so perhaps the batteries can’t supply enough power to handle the pulse counter.

How much “more stable” is it with the pulse counter disconnected?

@richy1995

They happen about once every 90s, as seen below, until I disconnected the pulse counter, at 15:15, when the resets stopped.

Does it stop resetting entirely?

Can you confirm how frequent the data packets are when it is running? Perhaps attach a emonhub.log that spans 2 resets. The packets should be every 10s but maybe much faster in this instance.

@Robert.Wall

A lot of people have used the optical pulse sensor with that sketch, so I think we can discount a programming error.

Maybe not, most pulse counting users have an AC adapter rather than running on batteries. See the Reliability of Emon Pi and purchaser expectations thread for a related issue.

long story short …

@TrystanLea

our apologies for this issue with the emontx not supporting pulse counting properly without an ACAC adapter plugged in as Paul described.

I have developed a modification to the firmware this morning that fixes this issue. I have uploaded this new version to the firmware github repository here: https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emontx3/tree/battery_pulsecount - it’s in a different branch at the moment called battery_pulsecount.

AFAIK that fix is still in a separate “battery_pulsecount” branch, here are the proposed changes for the then provisional “v3.0” Comparing master...battery_pulsecount · openenergymonitor/emontx3 · GitHub

But the mainstream “master” firmware has since moved on with (another) v3.0 (Zero unused CT’s), v3.1 (serial config prompt) and v3.2 (watchdog) so maybe the installed “battery friendly” DS firmware is currently still not “pulse counter friendly” when running on batteries perhaps, and the symptoms have morphed due to the later addition of the watchdog.