I'm running the latest RaspberryPI/RFM12PI V2/HDD as my base station but earlier today it locked up. After power cycling the HDD and Pi a couple of times it eventually rebooted OK but stopped receiving from most of my RFM12B equipped nodes. Further testing showed the range was down to a few feet where previously it was working over the whole house. A second Pi using the older SD card image sat next to it works as before if I plug the RFM12Pi into that one.
Is it possible that some settings have been corrupted/changed which reduced the reception range ?
Re: Reduced RFM12Pi Receive range following a crash
This may be due to a bug in packetgen that makes the rfm12pi transmit continuously and so blocking your other nodes. Try the update steps in my reply to Richard here http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/3667. That will update emoncms and packetgen and the raspberrypi_run.php script to the latest version which removes that bug. It may not be due to this but would be good to rule out.
Re: Reduced RFM12Pi Receive range following a crash
OK done that, had a few GIT errors which ultimately resulted in me losing some changes I had made (additional input process) but the RF receiving problem still persists. I'm wondering if there's a communications issue between the Pi and the RFM12PI as one of the differences between the 2 Pi's is that the new one is running at Turbo speed. I've reduced it to 900Mhz and communication appears to have resumed, will leave running overnight and see if the problem is resolved.
Re: Reduced RFM12Pi Receive range following a crash
All OK overnight, which is good as I'm babysitting all weekend and won't have chance to play. Hopefully that's the root of the problem, it's just strange it ran for over a week without issue before this arose.
Re: Reduced RFM12Pi Receive range following a crash
If you have a Github account, maybe it would be worth opening a detailed ticket against the RFM2Pi board, if you think it may be the guilty one as this issue needs either a correction, or a warning in the readme.
Re: Reduced RFM12Pi Receive range following a crash
I did have another crash which seemed to coincide with backing up a large'ish file to the HDD (I'm also using the Pi as a backup server on my LAN via Samba) so I've reduced the overclock a little more and it seems to be stable so far (3 days and counting). No impact on the RFM12Pi range this time.
It may be an issue with my setup, I'm using a 3.5" 500gb HDD via a USB to SATA converter with it's own PSU and after a crash I find I have to power cycle the HDD as well as the Pi to get a successful restart. I may look at automating this process together with a watchdog on the Pi if the problem persists.