Tweet-A-Watt issues

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Deadboy
 
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Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by Deadboy »

So, having a couple of issues with setting up the TAW. Thanks.

First, the xbee transmitter is not receiving enough power from the KAW's chip. The chip produces 6+V, but once it reaches the capacitor, it drops to around 2.3V. Then, when I read the voltage from the xbee it's around 1.8V. I tried powering it from the 5V line from an arduino and now I'm getting the correct voltage to the xbee (4.7V from the 5V pinhole and 3.31V from the 3.3V pinhole). Any ideas why the capacitor is dropping so much? I've tried setting up a second capacitor (with diode, of course), but had the same problem.

Second, even when the xbee is transmitting and we receive readable data, it appears to be very inaccurate. Here's a screenshot of the 'wattcher.py -d' script and the kind of data we are receiving. The data doesn't change when we have something plugged into the KAW.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nj0m8o397xdmo ... n.jpg?dl=0

Thirdly, the xbee transmitter doesn't communicate with the receiver when sleep mode is enabled. It only communicates when sleep mode is disabled.

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adafruit2
 
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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by adafruit2 »

try setting the sleep on the working XBee to be longer - can you post a photo of your working tweet-a-watt setup?

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Deadboy
 
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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by Deadboy »

Solved the sleep problem. For whatever reason, the Sleep Options option was set to 2. This prevents ADC data to be transmitted. We changed it to 1 and then it started to communicate and send data. Unfortunately, the data we receive is still bogus. See pic in previous post to see what the data looks like.

(As an aside, does anyone know why I can't change Sleep Option to 0? It's the default option, but whenever I change the option it changes right back to what it previous was.)

Here's a pic of the current setup. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2vfue ... sp=sharing

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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by adafruit2 »

hiya, please solder all connections. are you trying to have an arduino somehow connected to the transmitting xbee/tweetawatt? it looks like it is sharing a ground?

youre not running it open like that right? with the exposed killawatt? :(

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Deadboy
 
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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by Deadboy »

I'm using the arduino to power the transmitter since I can't seem to get enough power from the KAW. It's running from the 5v line.

Oh no! Just like that to show you :)

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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by adafruit2 »

you cannot connect an arduino to the KaW and get correct readings, ground is not ground. do not do this, you will get wrong data!

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Deadboy
 
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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by Deadboy »

So, the current and voltage lines need the ground to give accurate data? Then there's no way for me to connect an xbee to a KAW, but have the xbee powered from somewhere else?

(I know this is far from what I should be doing. I'm just trying to get enough power to the xbee)

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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by adafruit2 »

yah you cannot in any way have the xbee externally powered at all, nope nope nope. must be completely powered from the KaW that should solve your data issue

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Re: Tweet-A-Watt issues

Post by Deadboy »

Ok. Thanks. I'll go through everything again to see where 3+v are being dropped. And, just for the record, everything was soldered together when testing. The clips are just there because I was too lazy to solder everything together to take the pic.

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