Faulty RF receiver?

Hardware emonPi
1

I have an issue where the EmonPI stops receiving data from both EmonTX units at the same time.

The EmonPI was purchased in early 2019 and two EmonTX units that were flashed with the 3 phase sketch to monitor the grid and three Tesla Powerwalls.

Restarting the EmonTX3 or the the EmonPI doesn’t help. The temporary fix is to shutdown the EmonPI, remove the USB power cable and reinsert, when it boots up the feeds work for about 5-7 days then stop working again. The PI and EmonTX units are located right next to each other.

Are there any known bugs that could cause this or does this look like a hardware fault?

2

Yes, this does sound a bit like an RF issue. Are the TX still flashing green every 10s?

@Robert.Wall any suggestions?

If the RF receiver on the emonPi is faulty, then the solution may be to connect them up via a USB cable.

3

Are both emonTx’s V3 ? And which variant - V3.2 or V3.4? In both cases, you will need a programmer to connect each emonTx’s FTDI programming header to USB: Programmer - USB to serial UART FTDI - Shop | OpenEnergyMonitor as you probably won’t have two. The USB connector on both variants of the emonTx V3 is for power only.

1 Like
4

Both emonTX unit are V3, I can’t see on the box if it’s V3.2 or V3.4 though.

The RF is working at the moment as it was rebooted a few days ago, where do I find the TX led as I couldn’t see anything obvious on the secondary board inside the emonPi.

I assume there will be configuration or firmware changes required to make the EmonTX use the serial port instead of RF?

5

It is between the A.C. adapter socket and the USB socket (on the emonTx of course).

If you get ‘nowt out’ or it is not decoded correctly by emonHub, the 3-phase documentation is here: emontx3/firmware/emonTx34/emonTx_3Phase_PLL/emonTx_3Phase_PLL_User_Doc.pdf at master · openenergymonitor/emontx3 · GitHub You probably will need to define SERIALOUT and turn off (comment out the #define) the radio; then recompile and upload with the new settings.

6

Thank you, I’ll have a play around and see if I can get direct serial working.

I assume the old board containing the RF receiver is no longer available for sale?

7

Hi @Darren1,

The original emonPI v1 is no longer on sale, but I happen to have one here. PM me if you are interested.

1 Like
8

It might also be worth checking on the forum here whether a JeeLink would do what you need (i.e. RF to USB - in effect the same as the serial connection, but it would handle both emonTx’s). I have no experience of that so I cannot say. Those are out of stock but available elsewhere (JeeLabs).