Yes, indeed. The flip side is, of course, where the PCB is so nearly right but needs "tweaking" before it works. That's if you're lucky and haven't put a footprint on backwards so it will never work no matter how much tweaking you do. But as I have never done that, it doesn't apply to me. 🤥🤥🤥
Hi Ralph, spent many years designing PCB’s using the black, red and blue tape only to find out something doesn’t work, rip it out and start again. I agree the Autoroute in any CAD package is brilliant saves a lot of time, only thing to get correct is the placement of the components. (Unless you have auto placement which Easyeda doesn’t have)
True! I wish it _did_ have auto-placement of components; then again, as Arduinites (we're not designing Challenger Space Rocket boards here, as much as we might like to think so) I guess we just don't have that many components to manually place.
I love watching your videos even though I don't fully understand everything you say, because I'm a beginner with programming. could you do an Arduino programming tutorial series from basics to more advance. I think you make an excellent teacher.
I try and make things as straightforward as I can, David, so I'm sorry you don't get some stuff. Remember you can always ask for clarification about something in the video comments. The best way to progress from beginner is to watch my videos, no really, that's why I make them. ► List of all my videos (Special thanks to Michael Kurt Vogel for compiling this) bit.ly/RUclipsVideoList-RalphBacon
Good Job Ralph! Another nice presentation and project just brimming with ideas and solutions. Thanks! Nice to see how success and end product functionality can be achieved all along the steps. You seem to have glossed over the inevitable issues at every step, like remembering the file name when it's time to order, things being hooked up wrong, dead battery, burnt out LED, re-soldering something 15 times and the insert coming out, hair pulling over 'it' just not working every time you test it and need to spend hours tracking down a problem like a bad solder/broken wire.... 😊😜
Yes Ralph, I would not have done it your way but I respect your choices and there is a lot of good info in the video. Keep up the great work. You do have to watch out for those user contributed footprints. I had to scrap some boards where the nRF24L01 footprint I grabbed had a mirrored pinout! I guess they were putting the headers on the back of the board
You're not wrong. User-contributed footprints can be the devil's spawn. You think you've hit Gold but discover when the PCB is made that it was just wrong - or, at the very least, made for a specific purpose or on the underside of the board, as you say. It's easier, in the long run, to make your own footprints; that way you have no excuses and are more likely to put in some effort in getting it right!
I do like this collection of generic(ish) modules approach that you are evolving here. It usefully breaks down the description of a circuit into bitesize chunks to aid cognition AND it introduces flexible use of a circuit, so this PCB could be used for many purposes. The clue to this revolutionary (at least in the RUclips context): you dare to leave some sections of the PCB unpopulated and even suggest other components are optional! Some of your viewers will actually take what they learn here and develop totally unrelated gadgets inspired by their own needs. As the Houghton Weavers' vocalist was often heard to say: "Pure paracetamol". Well done, yet again, Ralph.
Thanks, Michael, for your kind and encouraging words. Indeed, space permitting, I'm finding I'm allowing the addition of all sorts of optional components on my PCBs, as I've found out the hard way it's no trouble at all to omit components but it's the very devil to try and bodge an additional capacitor in there where there was no provision for it! Anyway, I'll try and "Keep Folk Smiling" with my videos.
Wonderful content and lovely presentation. A few tips. #1 Wrap some Sellotape around the LiPo and leave a 'tag' which you can use to pull it out. #2 Use Alkaline AAA's or AA's very low self discharge rate and 4.5V .Keep up the good work
I can publish both the EasyEDA project (so you can tweak the design as you want) and also make the Gerber files available - but then you will be "stuck" with my exact design, warts and all. Tell me which of these is best for you? You can email if you want, my address is in the About tab of my channel (only visible from a PC not a phone, for some bizarre reason).
Good job Ralph, but I was playing along and was wrong. I thought you'd use a laser or an LDR to detect the bin lid open, since I avoid anything I have to remove. My wife would distract me, and I'd forget to put it back!
I hope (and at this stage, that's all it is, Lawrence) that I will only have to remove each board twice a year to charge the battery. Of course, with three bins that six removals per year. But rather that than (power or signal) wires everywhere!
Ralph, why not add a diode to the battery so it won't matter is you put the battery in backwards? ---- It looks like you can use a Nano, Rather than the UNO R3.
Too big a voltage drop, easily half a volt. I could/should have used a reverse connected MOSFET for battery protection but I figured I'll not be taking the battery out.
Hope you had a good holliday. You take the board out to charge the battery? With your luck it would be on a rainy day. Who is going to close the bin? 😉 Nice layout on the schematic.
My excellent _workshop_ (do *not* say the "shed" word either, I get enough of that from my wife) does not have a lightning rod because it is very low (max 2.4m above ground) and it's not metal either so I can't see it (jinx alert) being struck by lightning any time soon. Plenty of higher buildings and trees around me! Of course, now you've planted the seed of doubt, so thanks for that.
@@RalphBacon (another thought) ... There was a time, certainly in my father's day and I think up through the 70's, when Ham radio operators were pleased and proud to head out to their radio shack to pursue their hobby. The phrase was so common, so accepted, and so prestigious, that a major corporate electronics retailer in North America chose to brand themselves "Radio Shack". Maybe you should reach back to the origins of electronic tinkerers and claim pride in having a Maker (or Arduinite) Shack? (I wish I had so much as a shack - I have to make do with a desk in one room, and a table in the basement).
Great learnings from this video, unfortunately I am unlucky getting these NRF24L01 boards to work. can you do a project where the hc-sr04 are powered on/off by these MOSFETs for low power....seems there is no consistent solution to this problem ?
You seem to have two questions, Balaji: getting them to work (at all) and controlling them via a MOSFET to switch them off completely to save power. To get the modules working reliably whilst developing you need the adapter plates. They basically consist of a 3v3 LDO so you can supply the full 5v without worrying about not enough current for the nRF24L01s. They are very cheap and solve 99% of all power-related issues. In a project you can design in your own 3v3 supply with sufficient current carrying capabilities, as I did with this project. To switch off the modules you can use the CSN pin that brings them into a low power mode (which is what I do here). Datasheet will tell you the power consumption in such a state. Or, use a MOSFET to power them off completely using a GPIO pin (which I did not do) - it takes a little while for them to wake up and get ready for transmission if you do it this way.
I believe (but only that, Alan) I mentioned the HC12 in my video on two-way BT comms in video #196 using HC-05/HC-06 devices. But I remember wondering whether the HC12 would work with the existing libraries from Martyn Currey. Thanks for the nudge, I will try and get to the bottom of this.
Indeed, Brett, the ATTiny84 is a bigger version of the ATTiny85 - but at that point it's not really that much (physically) smaller than an AtMega328P (14 pins vs 28 for DIP and 20 vs 32 for QFP) but does have some hardware limitations (no hardware serial, no I2C, for example). The QFP package might be easier to SMD solder but even so... I'll stick to the ATMega328P for now and see how much of its features I end up using!
It’s still a fraction of the size of the 328 and can run at smaller loads. I’ve done I2C very easily on it and to great effect. The biggest limitation is 8K. I don’t think it gets enough credit, because most of the videos I see are singing praises of the 85. That said, you’ve inspired me to play around with a raw 328.
Indeed, play with the bare 328, I've done some videos on it and there is a board entry for it (so you can select clock speed etc) in the Arduino IDE if you install the MiniCore framework from Hans (MCUdude): github.com/MCUdude/MiniCore
Thank you for this project. Its nice to see the puzzle pieces from your other videos come together in a way i think is useful for many people they want to build some battery powered/remote projects. But as always it raised some questions. All of that works flawles until i connect the high power NRF module to get a longer range. After that connection is unstable. I tried capacitors to provide power reservoir but nothing seems to be working. I know there are these adapter board for NRF modules but when i meassured consumption it doesnt make sense to use them in battery powered project because of voltage regulator used. Is there any solution for that?
You say "it doesn't make sense" to use adapter boards in a battery powered board, Jakub. I'm seeing here an aversion to using up power by dropping one voltage to another and dissipating the unwanted voltage as heat, as an old-fashioned 7805 voltage regulator might do. However, for the fairly modest requirements of the nRF24 (high power or not, it's going to be under 120mA) there are some very efficient LDOs, such as the Microchip MCP1700 family, which I'm using in one of my projects. There are doubtless many others that require just a couple of hundred millivolts above the required voltage (so 3.5v would be enough to provide the 3v3 required) and sip power. It's also very easy to turn the nRF24 (or any other peripheral device) on and off under software control of the μController using a (dual) MOSFET device, which ensures zero current consumption whilst the μController is in Deep Sleep, for example. As the expression goes, "There's no such thing as a free lunch", and if we are to power devices from a battery then they _will_ take battery power - but we can do much to reduce that to an absolute minimum with good hardware design and Best Practice in software engineering. Agree?
@@RalphBacon Thank you for those tips. Iam now using 7333-A voltage regulator that has similar characteristics to those from Microchip but it doesnt hurt to try some well known brand to rule out possibility that my 7333-A doesnt act according to datasheet. But i like the most the idea with MOSFET to power off completely the modul until next event occurs it doesnt crossed my mind. Thanks for a quick reply.
I hope someone could help me , when it comes to coding for the nrf for bidirectional use at various stages , any tips for synchronizing data at multiple transmitting and receiving modes within an arduino program , really struggling to use , multiple stages to transmit and receive and synchronize both microcontrollers
I'm not clear on what you mean by "synchronising" transmissions. Your program logic should be aware of when (and what) you expect at any point in the code and transmit/wait as required?
I haven't but will look into it. I found this interesting article that others may wish to look at too: randomnerdtutorials.com/esp-now-esp32-arduino-ide/ As a web developer I don't have problems with HTML and all that goes with it, but anything that speeds that up must be a good thing.
@@RalphBacon man this 'esp-now' stuff is so so much better i hate html lol.. this is so so quick intant no messing with silly html delay :) lol.. the range is much better to me and my mate was playing around with it got to the end of the street :) yer have a nosey at it you mite like it (less battery power too :)
Only if you're a rebel who broke away from the fatherland, known as Great Britain. Here, we write it correctly as "ALUMINIUM" and even pronounce it correctly too. You colonialist whippersnappers know zilcho about the English language 😉
![Baby Kia - GLOVES & DRACS (BLACK AF1s) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ajm8LeB0qQk/mqdefault.jpg)
It is very satisfying getting a project designed and made on a PCB and it all works!
Yes, indeed. The flip side is, of course, where the PCB is so nearly right but needs "tweaking" before it works. That's if you're lucky and haven't put a footprint on backwards so it will never work no matter how much tweaking you do. But as I have never done that, it doesn't apply to me. 🤥🤥🤥
Thank you for creating this tutorial.
You're very welcome!
Hi Ralph, spent many years designing PCB’s using the black, red and blue tape only to find out something doesn’t work, rip it out and start again.
I agree the Autoroute in any CAD package is brilliant saves a lot of time, only thing to get correct is the placement of the components. (Unless you have auto placement which Easyeda doesn’t have)
True! I wish it _did_ have auto-placement of components; then again, as Arduinites (we're not designing Challenger Space Rocket boards here, as much as we might like to think so) I guess we just don't have that many components to manually place.
I love watching your videos even though I don't fully understand everything you say, because I'm a beginner with programming. could you do an Arduino programming tutorial series from basics to more advance. I think you make an excellent teacher.
I try and make things as straightforward as I can, David, so I'm sorry you don't get some stuff. Remember you can always ask for clarification about something in the video comments. The best way to progress from beginner is to watch my videos, no really, that's why I make them.
► List of all my videos
(Special thanks to Michael Kurt Vogel for compiling this)
bit.ly/RUclipsVideoList-RalphBacon
Good Job Ralph! Another nice presentation and project just brimming with ideas and solutions. Thanks!
Nice to see how success and end product functionality can be achieved all along the steps.
You seem to have glossed over the inevitable issues at every step, like remembering the file name when it's time to order, things being hooked up wrong, dead battery, burnt out LED, re-soldering something 15 times and the insert coming out, hair pulling over 'it' just not working every time you test it and need to spend hours tracking down a problem like a bad solder/broken wire.... 😊😜
Hang on, Scott, have you got access to my workshop webcam? Someone's been watching me, I'm sure.
Yes Ralph, I would not have done it your way but I respect your choices and there is a lot of good info in the video. Keep up the great work.
You do have to watch out for those user contributed footprints. I had to scrap some boards where the nRF24L01 footprint I grabbed had a mirrored pinout! I guess they were putting the headers on the back of the board
You're not wrong.
User-contributed footprints can be the devil's spawn. You think you've hit Gold but discover when the PCB is made that it was just wrong - or, at the very least, made for a specific purpose or on the underside of the board, as you say.
It's easier, in the long run, to make your own footprints; that way you have no excuses and are more likely to put in some effort in getting it right!
I do like this collection of generic(ish) modules approach that you are evolving here. It usefully breaks down the description of a circuit into bitesize chunks to aid cognition AND it introduces flexible use of a circuit, so this PCB could be used for many purposes. The clue to this revolutionary (at least in the RUclips context): you dare to leave some sections of the PCB unpopulated and even suggest other components are optional! Some of your viewers will actually take what they learn here and develop totally unrelated gadgets inspired by their own needs. As the Houghton Weavers' vocalist was often heard to say: "Pure paracetamol". Well done, yet again, Ralph.
Thanks, Michael, for your kind and encouraging words.
Indeed, space permitting, I'm finding I'm allowing the addition of all sorts of optional components on my PCBs, as I've found out the hard way it's no trouble at all to omit components but it's the very devil to try and bodge an additional capacitor in there where there was no provision for it!
Anyway, I'll try and "Keep Folk Smiling" with my videos.
Wonderful content and lovely presentation. A few tips. #1 Wrap some Sellotape around the LiPo and leave a 'tag' which you can use to pull it out. #2 Use Alkaline AAA's or AA's very low self discharge rate and 4.5V .Keep up the good work
Thanks for the tips! And thanks for sharing 👍
Your videos are great so well done and explained. Thanks again
Glad you like them!
Really informative 👍
Glad you liked it, Adam!
"Howza bout da receiver unit", made me laugh, another excellent video from someone who contributes to mankind.
Glad you enjoyed it! And you've reminded me I really should get on with that receiver unit design.
By far the best project and video from u. Thank you for all your work.
Glad you enjoyed it! Project still on-going, of course.
yer cool i found this intresting :) im playing around with battery chaging and control power at the moment my self so found this handy :)
Glad you found it interesting. Don't forget @Adreas Spiess' video if you're using solar power.
Is the gerber file available to order board from JLC? Nice detailed video, well done.
I can publish both the EasyEDA project (so you can tweak the design as you want) and also make the Gerber files available - but then you will be "stuck" with my exact design, warts and all.
Tell me which of these is best for you? You can email if you want, my address is in the About tab of my channel (only visible from a PC not a phone, for some bizarre reason).
One for the fridge door! 😀
Great idea!!
Good job Ralph, but I was playing along and was wrong. I thought you'd use a laser or an LDR to detect the bin lid open, since I avoid anything I have to remove. My wife would distract me, and I'd forget to put it back!
I hope (and at this stage, that's all it is, Lawrence) that I will only have to remove each board twice a year to charge the battery. Of course, with three bins that six removals per year. But rather that than (power or signal) wires everywhere!
Very informative video Sir
So nice of you, Muhammad, always good to hear from you.
Ralph, why not add a diode to the battery so it won't matter is you put the battery in backwards?
----
It looks like you can use a Nano, Rather than the UNO R3.
Too big a voltage drop, easily half a volt. I could/should have used a reverse connected MOSFET for battery protection but I figured I'll not be taking the battery out.
@@RalphBacon - True, it would be 0.7 volts
Well, I'd see if I could use a Schottky, less voltage drop but still too much here.
Hope you had a good holliday.
You take the board out to charge the battery?
With your luck it would be on a rainy day. Who is going to close the bin? 😉
Nice layout on the schematic.
yeah, hope the shack has a lightning rod ...
Shack? SHACK? 😡
@@RalphBacon well does your humble abode has a lightning rod ?
My excellent _workshop_ (do *not* say the "shed" word either, I get enough of that from my wife) does not have a lightning rod because it is very low (max 2.4m above ground) and it's not metal either so I can't see it (jinx alert) being struck by lightning any time soon. Plenty of higher buildings and trees around me!
Of course, now you've planted the seed of doubt, so thanks for that.
@@RalphBacon (another thought) ...
There was a time, certainly in my father's day and I think up through the 70's, when Ham radio operators were pleased and proud to head out to their radio shack to pursue their hobby. The phrase was so common, so accepted, and so prestigious, that a major corporate electronics retailer in North America chose to brand themselves "Radio Shack". Maybe you should reach back to the origins of electronic tinkerers and claim pride in having a Maker (or Arduinite) Shack? (I wish I had so much as a shack - I have to make do with a desk in one room, and a table in the basement).
Great learnings from this video, unfortunately I am unlucky getting these NRF24L01 boards to work. can you do a project where the hc-sr04 are powered on/off by these MOSFETs for low power....seems there is no consistent solution to this problem ?
You seem to have two questions, Balaji: getting them to work (at all) and controlling them via a MOSFET to switch them off completely to save power.
To get the modules working reliably whilst developing you need the adapter plates. They basically consist of a 3v3 LDO so you can supply the full 5v without worrying about not enough current for the nRF24L01s. They are very cheap and solve 99% of all power-related issues. In a project you can design in your own 3v3 supply with sufficient current carrying capabilities, as I did with this project.
To switch off the modules you can use the CSN pin that brings them into a low power mode (which is what I do here). Datasheet will tell you the power consumption in such a state.
Or, use a MOSFET to power them off completely using a GPIO pin (which I did not do) - it takes a little while for them to wake up and get ready for transmission if you do it this way.
Great Video, Please look at the HC12 1000meter range with no lib's just tx rx pins same as Bluetooth
I believe (but only that, Alan) I mentioned the HC12 in my video on two-way BT comms in video #196 using HC-05/HC-06 devices. But I remember wondering whether the HC12 would work with the existing libraries from Martyn Currey. Thanks for the nudge, I will try and get to the bottom of this.
@@RalphBacon I was out of the loop for a while. I will check out 196 Thank you, Alan
such a transmitter could be very very handy if it is small as it could
Indeed, although in this case the 18650 battery sort of limits how small we can make it.
I’ve been working with the ATtiny84A, which has more pins than the 85, but otherwise roughly the same.
Indeed, Brett, the ATTiny84 is a bigger version of the ATTiny85 - but at that point it's not really that much (physically) smaller than an AtMega328P (14 pins vs 28 for DIP and 20 vs 32 for QFP) but does have some hardware limitations (no hardware serial, no I2C, for example). The QFP package might be easier to SMD solder but even so... I'll stick to the ATMega328P for now and see how much of its features I end up using!
It’s still a fraction of the size of the 328 and can run at smaller loads. I’ve done I2C very easily on it and to great effect. The biggest limitation is 8K. I don’t think it gets enough credit, because most of the videos I see are singing praises of the 85. That said, you’ve inspired me to play around with a raw 328.
Indeed, play with the bare 328, I've done some videos on it and there is a board entry for it (so you can select clock speed etc) in the Arduino IDE if you install the MiniCore framework from Hans (MCUdude): github.com/MCUdude/MiniCore
Thank you for this project. Its nice to see the puzzle pieces from your other videos come together in a way i think is useful for many people they want to build some battery powered/remote projects. But as always it raised some questions. All of that works flawles until i connect the high power NRF module to get a longer range. After that connection is unstable. I tried capacitors to provide power reservoir but nothing seems to be working. I know there are these adapter board for NRF modules but when i meassured consumption it doesnt make sense to use them in battery powered project because of voltage regulator used. Is there any solution for that?
You say "it doesn't make sense" to use adapter boards in a battery powered board, Jakub. I'm seeing here an aversion to using up power by dropping one voltage to another and dissipating the unwanted voltage as heat, as an old-fashioned 7805 voltage regulator might do.
However, for the fairly modest requirements of the nRF24 (high power or not, it's going to be under 120mA) there are some very efficient LDOs, such as the Microchip MCP1700 family, which I'm using in one of my projects. There are doubtless many others that require just a couple of hundred millivolts above the required voltage (so 3.5v would be enough to provide the 3v3 required) and sip power.
It's also very easy to turn the nRF24 (or any other peripheral device) on and off under software control of the μController using a (dual) MOSFET device, which ensures zero current consumption whilst the μController is in Deep Sleep, for example.
As the expression goes, "There's no such thing as a free lunch", and if we are to power devices from a battery then they _will_ take battery power - but we can do much to reduce that to an absolute minimum with good hardware design and Best Practice in software engineering. Agree?
@@RalphBacon Thank you for those tips. Iam now using 7333-A voltage regulator that has similar characteristics to those from Microchip but it doesnt hurt to try some well known brand to rule out possibility that my 7333-A doesnt act according to datasheet. But i like the most the idea with MOSFET to power off completely the modul until next event occurs it doesnt crossed my mind. Thanks for a quick reply.
Nice video, thanks :)
Glad you liked it!
I hope someone could help me , when it comes to coding for the nrf for bidirectional use at various stages , any tips for synchronizing data at multiple transmitting and receiving modes within an arduino program , really struggling to use , multiple stages to transmit and receive and synchronize both microcontrollers
I'm not clear on what you mean by "synchronising" transmissions. Your program logic should be aware of when (and what) you expect at any point in the code and transmit/wait as required?
21:01 - ATtiny84 then.
;)
Ha, ha! Too small! Not enough pins! Actually, I wish I had used an ESP32 and the ESP-Now protocol. Ho hum.
Hello, can you publish both the EasyEDA project and Gerber files for this project. Thanks
Indeed, you can find all the info here:
github.com/RalphBacon/221-nRF24L01-State-Monitor-Transmitter
@@RalphBacon Thank You
have you ever played with the esp32's 'NOW' protocol wow very good and no need to learn html :)
I haven't but will look into it. I found this interesting article that others may wish to look at too: randomnerdtutorials.com/esp-now-esp32-arduino-ide/
As a web developer I don't have problems with HTML and all that goes with it, but anything that speeds that up must be a good thing.
@@RalphBacon man this 'esp-now' stuff is so so much better i hate html lol.. this is so so quick intant no messing with silly html delay :) lol.. the range is much better to me and my mate was playing around with it got to the end of the street :) yer have a nosey at it you mite like it (less battery power too :)
toilet lid as that seems to annoy women when left up :-)
So true, Fred. 🚽 🚻
LOL ! Squeak !
@@andymouse Cheese ;-)
That big yellow box on the toilet lid might annoy them more...hard to say though
@@tim_bbq1008 you could make it puff out scent when the lid is lifted or closed:-)
Please let me know about your social media accounts for further details
For further details of what, Mujahid?
@@RalphBacon I am an honest amazon agent that's why I am asking
@@RalphBacon reply me please
There is only 1 "i" in the word "aluminum".
Only if you're a rebel who broke away from the fatherland, known as Great Britain. Here, we write it correctly as "ALUMINIUM" and even pronounce it correctly too. You colonialist whippersnappers know zilcho about the English language 😉
How many "s", "o" and "d" there is in Na? 0, because its Natrium. How many "p", "o" and "t" in K? 0, because it Kalium.