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Hi,  I think I have tracked this down to the Nanode - the Simple RFM12B sketch works well as does the Pachube sketch.... but in all cases the Nanode falls down after a minute or two.  The hunt goes on :-)

Another update and a couple of questions if thats OK:

- I have updated the Nanode RF bootloader to Optiboot: https://github.com/thiseldo/NanodeBootLoader worked well and although the Nanode falls over every few minutes it does now pick itself up again thanks to your watchdog code :-)

- I was hoping to slow the RFM12B baud down to about 1200 to increase range - inserting the following line after the initialise usually does the trick but for some reason this causes no data to get exchanged - any idea why? rf12_control(0xC68F);

- I saw your optiboot 4.4 update on github - just 2 files - can I use these to update the TX bootloader via the Arduino IDE as I did for the Nanode?.... any pointers would be great :-)

Getting there :-)

Cheers,

Yes, the optiboot bootloader on git hub can be used to updated bootloader to Optiboot. Just use a spare arduino connectred as follows and upload the isketch:

Thanks to JeeLabs.org for connections diagrams: http://jeelabs.org/2011/05/29/summary-of-isp-options/

Not sure about the RF problem, I've never tried to reduce the speed before. Try the jeelabs forum, also lots of info on RFM12 on JCW's weblog: jeelabs.org. He is the author of the RFM12 library. 

Hi Glyn,

I am hoping to use a TinyUSBisp to flash via the Arduino IDE - is your bootloader different to the Uno one and if so is there a way to flash via the IDE burn bootloader option?  If not flashing the Uno bootloader would be straight forward.  Thanks again.

The emonTx bootloader is slightly different. It has a different fuse setting that reduces the brown out voltage to be lower than 2.7V, more info here: http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/342. But inital tests have suggested that running the emonTx at voltages lower than 2.7V results in lots of RF errors. Therefore the modification may not have much of an effect. The emonTx bootloader also uploads emonTx single CT firmware sketch. 

The normal Uno bootloader will work fine. 

Hi Glyn, Thanks for your help on this, much appreciated.  I think I got it loaded fine via an Arduino - good to try something new.  Do you happen to know if there is a sketch which will provide the current bootloader on a board?

Robur

Did you track down the cause of the unstable RF at all? I have a similar issue, but get the rf_fail:1 almost constantly.

The Emonbase ethernet is Ok, as it gets a IP, and posts fine to emoncms. EmonTX seems fine also as the current sensing is working OK (via serial), and with the test_tx and test_rx sketches the 2 devices chatter cheerfully.

I'm new here so I only just read this post but I had the same issue with poor transmission reliability (I suspect this is happening to most people but you wouldn't know unless you checked). I cured it by dropping the baud rate down to about 4kbs by adding this line after RF12 initialisation...

rf12_control(0xc657); // approx 3.918 Kbps, i.e. 10000/29/(1+0x57) kbps

With this value there are no errors, even at a distance where the original code won't work at all.

I'm not sure why this didn't work for you robur, presumably you did change the rate at both the transmitter and the receiver?

Are your aerials the correct length on both transmitter and receiver?  I had the same problem mentioned above (would drop packets from one side of a desk to the other!)

Trimming a couple of mm off one of the aerials fixed it.