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The first thing to check is your soldering! Is the RFM69CW the right way round on the board - the "empty" corner of the module should be furthest from the RJ45 temperature sensor socket. Have you got it aligned exactly on the pads? (I hope these are silly questions and you're not offended, but I tend to check the obvious first!).

Voltages - On the screw terminals, you have the battery voltage on "5V" and 3.3 V on "3.3V". There aren't really any other voltages to check, unless you have a faulty PCB with a bad via or a broken track somewhere. To check the voltages throughout, you'd need the circuit diagram and board layout (link on the Wiki I believe) and a copy of Eagle CAD.

Are you using the default sketch that came pre-loaded? Just about the first thing the sketch does is turn the LED on, so no LED points to a hardware problem or no sketch.

Hello,

the sketch is preloaded as-it-came and soldering looks good to me, see below:

Do you have a programming lead? The v3.4 has one of 2 possible firmware's installed (basically a rfm12 and rfm69 versions) and then either of these can operate at 868 or 433 MHz (default frequency is 433) so at best you have a 1 in 4 chance it's compatible, but the odds are stacked against you a little as you are using 868.

Unless you know (requested or confirmed a firmware with the shop) you would be best to load the known correct firmware to know you are on sound footings.

Paul

Can you measure the current supplied by the batteries? It should be a little over 5 mA with the processor working, and a little less than 40 mA when transmitting (RFM69CW).

Can you measure the voltage on the pin of the reset pushbutton nearest the FTDI connector. It should be close to 3.3 V.

The first thing the sketch does, after powering the temperature sensor, is turn on the LED. That's before it does anything with the radio. Maybe a failed LED is confusing us?

The current is 6.1 to 6.2 mA, no spikes to higher values.

Voltage on the reset button is 3.28 V, zero when pressed.

That could be OK - for a running system it's more than the data sheet and less than I measure here. But during the power-on test, when the LED is on continuously for 10 s, I read only 2 mA.

One final check - is the LED telling the truth? If it's got zero volts across it, then it is, and I'm stumped. Time to email support@openenergymonitor.zendesk.com and see what Glyn has to say. (Mention this thread so that he knows what's been done.)

Sorry to hear your having trouble. You will need to load RFM69CW firmware. Have you been able to do this? 

https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonTxFirmware/tree/master/emonTxV3...

Means my emonTx came preloaded with different firmware? My order was for emonTx without RF module, because I forgot to order RF module.

I do not have USB to serial cable, but my computer has standard serial COM port. Can I connect emonTx 1:1 to PC or do I need to add few Rs and Qs between?

but my computer has standard serial COM port. Can I connect emonTx 1:1 to PC

Probably not.  The voltages out of your COM port are ilkely to be too high... ~ +/-12V or so.

Since your board as shipped without an RF module, it would not be possible for us to predict what use case and and what RF module is going to be attached to the board. Therefore they are shipped with no particular Arduino firmware. However the Arduino bootloader is on the board, so serial upload via USB to UART cable will be possible.

See here for getting started with Arduino: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/buildingblocks/setting-up-the-arduino-environment

Here is the USB to UART cable, any 5V cable with the correct pinout will work. It is possible to use a Arduinio

http://shop.openenergymonitor.com/programmer-usb-to-serial-uart/ 

"Therefore they are shipped with no particular Arduino firmware." Ah, I didn't realise that. I thought, and the Shop page infers, that all were shipped with the default sketch loaded. I'll close that loophole on the Wiki, perhaps, Glyn, you could do the same on the Shop page?

Now I am one or more steps closer to working system - thank you for that.

I installed Arduino IDE, installed all the required libraries, dig out old Siemens C35 data cable (with pl2303 chip) and opened emonTxV3_RFM69CW_DiscreteSampling.ino sketch. Changed #define RF_freq RF12_433MHZ to #define RF_freq RF12_868MHZ, compiled and uploaded to emonTx unit.

When connected directly to COM it sends this:

0 444
0 425
0 433
0 438
0 434

When I disconnect it from COM, connect to CTs and press reset, the LED goes on for 10 seconds, then again for about 2 seconds. Then no LED flashes, no comms. Tried 57600 baud, 9600 baud.

I am using Raspberry Pi with RFM69Pi 868Mhz, default image.

Can you help me again please?

More info:

On serial cable it says:

emonTx V3 Discrete Sampling V1.4.1 RFM69CW
OpenEnergyMonitor.org
POST.....wait 10s
CT 1 Calibration: 90.90
CT 2 Calibration: 90.90
CT 3 Calibration: 90.90
CT 4 Calibration: 16.67
RMS Voltage on AC-AC Adapter input is: ~2V
AC-AC adapter NOT detected - Apparent Power measurements enabled
Assuming VRMS to be 230V
Assuming powering from batteries / 5V USB - power saving mode enabled
CT 1 detected
CT 2 detected
CT 3 detected
Unable to detect DS18B20 temperature sensor
RFM69CW Initiated:  
Node: 10 Freq: 868Mhz Network: 210
350 191 246  
455
341 192 252  
455
337 190 249  
455
338 185 244  
455

On RF is silence.

Can you confirm you have the correct sketch?

Your first post says emonTx v3.4 but the sketch you have loaded says emonTx v3.

Can you link to the sketch you are using? 

if that Pic is of your hardware it is definitely a v3.4 with rfm69

Paul

The sketch name is V3, but header says it is for V3.4 (ver 1.4.1) so IMHO it is OK.

Got it from https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonTxFirmware/tree/master/emonTxV3...

That indeed looks like the correct sketch for a V3.4 I think there has been a renumbering exercise, because until quite recently sketches for the V3.2 (PCB version) were called V3, and the sketches for the V3.4 PCB version were called V3_4.
The main difference is, the V3.2 PCB with the RFu 328 processor on a separate module with the radio module on top of that requires the RFu_jeelib library, whereas the V3.4 PCB with the processor surface mounted directly on the main PCB and with the RJ45 socket requires the plain Jeelib library.

Great! Yes, you have loaded the correct sketch. Looking at the serial o/p it looks like the emonTx is working fine. RF is initialized and sampling is working if You are powering the unit via DC the LED does not flash to save battery power. 

It now looks like the problem could be on the Raspberry Pi side. 

Can you see o/p from the RFM69Pi in minicom? Baudrate will be 38400 or possibly 57600 if you had an early dev unit. You should see the unit print it's help text and current setup to serial when you issue any serial character. 

No output on Raspberry Pi side.

When powered up, the RFM69Pi flashes once with green LED, then nothing. Serial console is disabled. emonhub.conf is properly configured. Tried with com_baud = 57600 and without. In emonhub log there is accordingly speed set to 57600 or 9600, but on these speeds there is no output from minicom. Will try to set up 38400 when I get home.

38400 did the trick.

Thank you very much gentlemen.

P.S. This my device is first of many because I and my associate intend to spread the word here. So now I am performing some testing, then I will translate emoncms to czech language and then...