No data and cannot connect to Emoncms on emonPi with emonESP

Great, I was just googling for that answer as it’s clear that the setting hadn’t been saved. I’ll try that again!

Thanks for all the help but I’m officially giving up.

The flimsy nature of the emonesp connectors and the need for me to keep removing it to try insert the programmer and faff about with sending serial commands led to the inevitable and the connectors on the emonesp snapped.

Guess I’ll be sticking to the radio connection instead.

I don’t have an ESP8266, so I don’t know what the connector on that end is like. If it’s what I think, then maybe I’m very gentle with those sorts of things, because I’ve never snapped the pins on the emonTx, emonTH, emonGLCD, or even inside the emonPi, and I’m plugging a programmer into something many times every day. (e.g. I had to transfer my programmer to a different emonTx to grab that text I posted above.)

However, the emonTx was never designed to have a WiFi module added, so it always looked exactly like it was - something that came along later.

There’s a problem there. At present, if the (genuine) receive pin on the emonTx is connected, rogue data from the ESP8266, sent as I understand it as part of it’s start-up / Welcome message, destroys parts of the configuration settings of the emonTx.

If you are going to do that, it wants if at all possible to be the same as the emonPi front-end configuration that I’m working on - which if the ESP8266 is bi-directional - could be done inside emonhub.conf - like the emonPi will be (if it can be made to work).

The alternative to the ESP, is an RPi EmonTX to Rpi - Direct Serial Connection - #38 by borpin

Except that the serial connection isn’t available on the emonPi - it’s already in use for the analogue front end data.

And if @fatherofgrafton has broken the connector on the emonTx, then depending on which pin(s) are broken, any serial connection/reprogramming is out of the question until a new header is fitted.

He hasn’t by his description.

He wants to communicate from the emonTX by WiFi.

No it’s the pins on the ESP that are broken.

The TX is placed right on the edge of reception back to the Pi so yes I was aiming to connect the TX to my wifi which I have available where the TX is placed in my garage.

I’m not prepared to buy a replacement ESP I’ll just have to try and improve radio connectivity between the TX and the Pi

Thanks for the help

The alternative is a second Pi (anything, A, Zero upwards) and connect the serial to that.

There are several options for that. If your emonTx uses a RFM69CW transmitter module, which it will if it’s reasonably new, then you can increase the r.f. power.

The second is to put a sheet of metal acting as a ground plane underneath both transmitter and receiver. There was a lot about this some time ago - Improving RF signal strength emonTH emonTX

The third is to move either or both ends just a little - that can make a surprising difference if one happens to be at a place where the reflected signal partially cancels the direct one.

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Hard to beat a Pi Zero, especially given the price and the “bang for your buck.”

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Yeah tried the foil under both Pi and TX units to increase signal strength and now all feeds / inputs no longer working, the PiLCD is showing a fault (showing ‘Booting… Please wait’ plus showing a red dot next to the service) and reboots not helping.

So now my whole system is essentially dead. I am officially done… :angry:

You’ve obviously done something else as well as providing a ground plane, because that could not possibly cause the emonPi not to boot.

Nope, I can assure you I literally slipped a piece of tin foil under the emonpi casing where it was sitting and feeds no longer showing data / invalid and on reboot lcd issue.

Total farce from start to finish. From faulty software loaded prior to shipping through to EmonTx incompatibility with Wi-Fi unit and need for programmer having to to be purchased to be able to change settings and now this.

£300 down the drain.

Hello @fatherofgrafton

Sorry that the system has given you so much trouble. Given that these are all new units we would be happy if you wish to return them for a refund. Alternatively we could replace the Wi-Fi unit and configure the EmonTx unit for you if you send those back to us.

If you could email us at [email protected] with what you would like to do we can take it from there.