I thought it would be a nice experiment to put the Funky in a solar-powered garden lamp. I got one recently with the intention to use it for that particular experiment, it is quite cheap, costs a little over one…
64 800 transmissions
The CR2032 battery powered TinySensor that I had set up to monitor my house’s power consumption has stopped sending packets yesterday afternoon, totaling 7.5 days of transmissions every 10 seconds. That would mean 6 * 60 * 24 * 7.5 =…
Getting Funky
Catchy title, right? I ordered some Funky Sensor PCBs after few days ago and got them today. Just to recap – this is an extremely small Attiny84 based sensor with RFM12B module on top. I can’t stress how small it…
CR2032 powered “current only” remote monitoring
I am experimenting these days with one of the old versions of the TinySensors trying to see how long it can go with some heavy duty tasks, powered only by a single CR2032 battery. I wrote a small sketch to…
TinySensor Wiki
I have created a TinySensor Wiki, it is available from the top menu and this link. I will be extending it as time permits.
TinySensor 1.4 PCB is ready
I now have the TinySensor v1.4 in my hands, there are some small improvements over the version I last published, most notably that I added a 3.3V FTDI connector. You can’t use it to program the Attiny (..yet, I am…
Setting up Arduino IDE for working with Attinys
There are a number of posts on the subject already, but I’d like to share my experience as well. Here are the steps I undertook to set up my environment for working with Attiny84 and Attiny85: As a first step,…
DIY soil moisture sensor project
I have been working on a small DIY soil moisture sensor project the last couple days, mostly inspired by the gardenbot project. The idea is to add it to my greenhouse monitoring project. I chose to make my own sensor…
TinySensor v1.4 plans
I have been working to upgrade the TinySensor v1.3 to a new version these days, that addresses the issues I had identified so far. I am keeping it in through-hole components for easy soldering and also so that one can easily…
Using a LDR (light dependent resistor) and DHT11 temp/humidity sensors
I got my hands on a LDR yesterday and figured that it will make a nice addition to a greenhouse monitoring project that will pick up light intensity, air temperature and humidity plus soil moisture and send that information to…
RFM12b to serial PCB for my Pi
[edit] This board is now available for sale in my store Here is a little project that I worked on last weekend: A small home-made PCB to permanently fit the RFM12b-to-Serial on my Raspberry Pi. Although I am aware of at…
Stamp sized ATtiny84 remote sensor
I have been amazed by the work done by @Tobias with his “Funky” sensor, so I asked him for a permission to make my own version. The Funky is a JeeNode micro clone, less the two Jeeports and probably in…
Using ATtiny 84’s internal temperature sensor
I have always wanted to test the internal temperature sensor that the ATtiny84 has. I think it is quite nice for a really low power node since no external hardware is required. I googled for some time and found a…
Power saving techniques for the Attiny84 powered TinySensor
I have been working hard to cut power consumption on the TinySensors so that they can run on the CR2032 battery that is on the back of the PCB. I have one of the sensors is sending room temperature for…
Capture, decode and log to emoncms RFM12B packets on Raspberry Pi
With the RF12Demo sketch running on a TinySensor permanently hooked to my Raspberry Pi, my next step was to be able to capture the RFM12B packets that are being sent by various remote sensors in my home. Using the minicom…
RF12 Demo sketch for ATtiny84
I ported the RF12Demo sketch by Jeelabs to use with the TinySensor. My plan is to have it run while the TinySensor is connected to RaspBerry Pi’s UART so that I can both receive and send data packets. A PHP script…
Sending JeeLib compatible packets with ATtiny85 + RFM12B
As I stalled on porting Jeelib to work with pin-change interrupts on the ATtiny85, I took a different approach and ported an old AVR RFM12 library to work in Arduino IDE as a sketch. I will ideally convert it to…
Experimenting with ATtiny85 + RFM12B
I have been experimenting these days with an ATTiny85 and trying to get it work with RFM12B. The inspiration mostly came from this post, the guy built a remote sensor unit with an ATTiny45, a SHT11 sensor, and a RFM12B 868…
Finding good use for excess solar hot water
With the summer in its full glory, I am starting to see excess hot water generated by my solar water heater. In a sunny day I get up to 85 degrees C ( may even boil if not used up)…
Running the Attiny84 @ 4Mhz with the internal oscillator
I am experimenting with running the TinySensor at 4Mhz with power saving in mind. There is a really nice article on power saving techniques here that also was an inspiration. The 4Mhz is the lowest possible limit for the RFM12b…
Two-way serial communication between Raspberry Pi and a TinySensor
My first version of this was one-way only i.e. the TinySensor sending data to the Raspberry Pi. This is due to the limitation in the Serial implementation in the tiny core, only TX is implemented for debug purposes. I have…
Fix for TinySensor v1.3’s ISP connector
As I mentioned in my TinySensor 1.3 PCB announcement, I have an error that prevents the ISP connector from being used. Of course, you can always take the Attiny84 out (if you use a socket) and program it with another…
Manic Miner on my Pi
I have followed the instructions posted here and am now running Fuse Spectrum emulator on my Debian Pi , except for sound, all is perfect.. It reminds me of my good old ZX Spectrum back 27 years ago… For added…
Interfacing RFM12B to Raspberry Pi for cheap
I managed to interface one of my TinySensors to my Raspberry Pi via Pi’s UART. The idea is to use it to receive RFM12b transmissions and re-transmit on Pi’s UART where a serial gateway will pick the data and post to…
TinySensor PCB is ready
I have received 15 TinySensor v1.3 PCBs yesterday and am running tests. So far the ISP connector cannot be used because of a mistake I made on the PCB, but I assume this is fixable. I had to program the…
Got my Pi today
I was one of those geeks that had their alarm clocks set on February 29th this year to become quickly disappointed understanding that the initial batch or Raspberry Pis was sold out in seconds. Later on when things settled a…
Measuring the solar yield
As I already mentioned before, I have an non pressurized evacuated tube solar water heater on my roof. In that same post I outline the possibility to calculate the solar energy that will fall on a flat surface (panel) with…
Thoughts on the Solar Energy Calculator
In my previous post, I outlined how to calculate the solar energy that reaches a solar panel in any orientation at any time. In the mean time, I created an emoncms input processor that calculates the momentary yield based on…
Calculating the available solar energy and logging it to emoncms
I have been experimenting these days with the possibilities to calculate Sun’s position and the light intensity in kW/h that will be available for my 2.088m2 evacuated tube solar heater. I wanted to log this in emoncms and visualize as a baseline to compare…
TinySensor’s SD card power consumption worries (and solution)
One of the things that has been bugging me recently is the power consumption of the SD card that I now have in the Tiny Sensor v1.2 design. I intend to power the sensor either via an external source (2xAA…
Toying with ATTiny84 and SD card in Arduino IDE
As I mentioned in my previous post, I tossed in a SD card port for the TinySensor v1.1. I wanted to give it a live test and see if/how it works prior to submitting the PCB to the fab house. So I…
The Tiny Sensor gets a SD card port
I had some space left on the TinySensor v1.0 PCB, plus I left myself few days to think before ordering the first batch, so I decided to throw in a SD card port. I didn’t want it to be anything…