If you can’t move it to blip it on, then that may be the problem. Just holding it down doesn’t allow it to restart into what is effectively permanently on mode so long as the clip holds the button down. But you must be able to move your hold-down to do the restart. Otherwise, it’s basically my instructions above [to the best of my current knowledge.]
This needs field-testing, if for no other reason to see if power consumption is within the capacity of current batteries and panels. In the winter, the slight heating effect might even be desirable. People should report back their findings when the weather allows.
Sorry to drag this on but I’m still a bit confused. If I’m following correctly to get a GTM into “always on mode” you must:
Jam the button down
let the GTM battery run down
plug the GTM into power
momentarily release then re-jam the button (blip the button)
At this point if the unit dies again will it automatically restart when power is applied? Like in a solar application with no external battery and the sun returns after several overcast days.
My interest in this possible feature lies in the use of a GTM as a relay on solar power. If the GTM will turn itself on when solar power is restored it will drastically simplify my mountain top relays. I can live with occasional down time at night or during gloomy periods if I don’t have to make the several hour trip to reset it manually. Thanks!
That seems to be the consensus. I always like to see such things for my self. However, the design is said to relay so long as the GTM is on, no matter what the white flashing lights are doing. And holding the Power button down leaves it always active when power is restored.
I’m just not in test mode right now other than one that I am experimenting with on the patio. Problem is there are 3 others relays nearby, but perhaps in weeks ahead I can say more about the radio working on it’s own by recording some good data. Right now it’s survival mode, but will also get some relays built. I need to decide before they go up whether they are Powerclipped or not, because several will be relatively less accessible after they’re up. Not having to go back for a long time would be delicious.
Nursing the sick kitty gave me some time to follow-up on this and I am starting to agree with you. What are we missing?
The one thing that does not seem to happen without some human intervention is pushing that button at least once.
Essentially, what is blipping the button? Just another way to manually reboot the GTM. The tests I’ve done ALWAYS require at least that minimal human intervention with the power button clipped down. The unit will not power back up by itself even after accepting a full charge and the red light going off without that manual reset.
I’ll throw it back to those who claimed this is an “always on” solution. The results do not seem to be able to be replicated. It you actually achieved this state, then please review and clarify the instructions on how you did so. It might work with a paired phone to start with, or when a battery remains hooked up but runs way down? I used a wall wart and disconnected from any power in my experiments.
I just tried the step where you “blip” the button and the GTM does not come back on when power is applied.
Dang, this would be the “holy grail” of solar relays if it would work. I still hope I missed something and there might be a chance. Please advise if anyone figures it out.
I’m definitely interested in GoTenna as soon as they have the hardware update to support the “always on relay” functionality. I’d love to set up a relay in the attic/roof, but I don’t really want to have to climb up there to check/restart it
It also seems like it would be a lot easier to do the “GoTenna Ambassador” work if the boxes automatically came back on in relay mode when power was available (as well as the proposed changes to allow “status pings” by the relay owner)… currently my understanding of the system means that the person responsible for a relay has no way to know if it’s even online currently except to go physically look at the flashing lights on the device. If an ambassador is pitching GoTenna to local buildings/companies, it feels like a real blow to the sales pitch if you have to tell them that you’ll need to be able to access the unit once a week, or have them come up and check it once a week. Being able to say, “the unit will recover automatically in the event of power failure”, or even, “the unit is self contained and solar powered, so it will run completely independent” would be much easier selling points.
I’m super excited by the amount of traction GoTenna has seen, I was sort of waiting for “mesh network standards” to come out before I commited to a specific vendor, but at this point GoTenna is so large, I expect that any standards that come out will likely be backwards compatible with their system. To do otherwise would be setting your “standard” up for failure, since nobody wants to throw their GoTenna away for some new unproven system.
Please be assured you won’t be going up there for weekly resets, even in the absence of changes to the hardware. Once you have a good grasp of the power needs at your location, things usually work fine for extended periods. I have nodes that have never been down. I also have a few that do come up with power/reset issue from time to time.
This is somewhat experimental, but that’s what makes it fun. You find problems, you figure them out.
You’d want reliable power even once we get an auto reset feature, so it sure doesn’t hurt to find out now what works and what doesn’t at your location. I’d say to go ahead and try some small scale experiments to figure out your baseline power configuration.
I don’t get it. Why are there like a dozen hardware kludges on here? I mean, it’s great that people have figured out how to fit a square box into a round hole, but why doesn’t goTenna save the state of whether we are in relay mode or regular mode in the built-in flash, then read the state when the power is initially applied? (If the battery was dead.)
Expect a firmware mod soon. From me, someone else, or goTenna themselves hopefully. (That’s a more maintainable option.)
@MikeL
It was hoped that this could be implemented via a firmware update, but that seems not to have been possible. The latest is that there must be a hardware change made in future update to the current build.
Meanwhile, you need to add a battery to your box. Voltaic makes some that have a Always On feature, as do many more recent battery packs that are designed to recharge those tiny ear buds many people use now to listen. So long as there’s always power, the GTM will stay on.
I guess not from goTenna then? Get smarter with your tools guys. The K24 has 1MB of flash storage. You’re saying you can’t just use a single bit of that to store the state of being in relay-node mode? (Or if you can’t get smarter with your tools, open source it. I won’t sign an NDA to work on this stuff, I’d back off of it like it’s nuclear poo-poo if you do that. But, I won’t need to either in order to fix it. Greater than zero people can read and write ARMv7 opcodes.)
This uses a relay controlling the output from the center post of the original goTenna button to make contact with a post on either side of center to mimic the button press. As seen in the video it is set to do a two second press to turn on the GTM then triple tap twice and then tap once to confirm relay mode. In a solar setting I think I will have it wait at least 1 minute to make sure the GTM has received enough of a charge to ensure it will turn on. This process shouldn’t affect anything if the GTM is already on. I’ll put my code below in Circuit Python if anyone needs it.
Does anyone know how to make this work with a mosfett? I am far from being educated in electronics and especially working with code. I’m concerned with the relay in this setting not having the lifespan of a mosfett. Please advise!
Code: #Relay mode:
import board
import digitalio
import time
import adafruit_dotstar
solenoid = digitalio.DigitalInOut(board.D0)
solenoid.direction = digitalio.Direction.OUTPUT
led = adafruit_dotstar.DotStar(board.APA102_SCK, board.APA102_MOSI, 1)
My third attempt is to use and optoisolator as RandyR did. A recent 3 day period of overcast weather shut down all three of my GTM relays that were modified to restart when the sun returns. When the sun came out 2 out of 3 of them returned to normal operation. I’m not sure what caused one to fail. I’m hoping that it was because I didn’t have the Voltaic V15 in always on mode but I’m concerned that it may have shut down completely after being without power for too long. I have the culprit on my desk now testing that theory.
My auto restart relay setup is pretty much the same as in the Youtube video I posted in this thread a while back except it uses an optoisolator in place of the blue relay on 2 setups. I am also using the stock GTM battery. I’m powering it with either a 6W/6V or 10W/18V panel connected to a Voltaic V15 in always on mode. I also have the microcontroller set to return the GTM to pairing mode so that I can ping or message to confirm it’s operational. Having the device auto reset and being able to confirm it is working could save me hours of time and miles of driving. I’m pretty sure when I get it figured out goTenna will release a purpose built relay that works perfectly!
The GTM does use about twice the power in pairing mode (white light flashing but paired device not in bluetooth range). I’m toying with the idea of using a bigger GTM battery and just splitting the solar panel power to the microcontroller/GTM. This would omit the Voltaic battery and one less possible failure point. I’m also pretty certain the V15 wastes a bit of power in always on mode. I think this may result in several un-needed power on “presses” as the sun comes and goes but other than that I can’t think of a downside. I’d appreciate any thoughts on that idea or anything else.
Here is a picture of basically what I have as mountain top relays. These use a split cable from a V15 to power the Trinket microcontroller and the GTM. The battery in the picture will run the GTM for at least a week in pairing mode but I can’t confirm it adds any benefit in my setting due to a problem with the V15 discussed below. My other relays use the stock GTM.
I believe I found at least 2 of the Voltaic V15’s I have may not stay in “always on mode” in several days absent of power. I have had one fail at least twice and now it appears a second relay is down and won’t restart. Here is the response I received from Voltaic help desk: “The always on on the V15 is built to last ~30 days with zero charge after being completely depleted.We have recognized this issue in the V15 from our observations and customer feedback leading to the revise our battery design with current generation of V50. In the current version of battery we have developed a true “always on” mode that will last indefinitely.”
I do have one relay setup that is working well despite being on a mountain with several inches of snow. The difference in this one is it is using a larger 10W 18V panel. The ones that failed were using 6w 6V voltaic panels.
I’m going to test two different battery options in hope of gaining some efficiency. One will be to use a large lead acid battery with a combination charge controller/low voltage cutoff and a 20w 18V panel. This setup is rather large and not very discrete but may work in certain solar settings.
The other is to use a lipo battery as both the GTM battery and microcontroller power source. I’m going to try a solar charger from Adafruit that is supposed to optimize solar charging. I’m hoping this will be less energy thirsty and more reliable than the V15.
Here is some more information from the Voltaic helpdesk on the V15 always on mode:
“The V15 has a “volatile” memory where “always on” mode is housed. This portion of memory is kept by way of a very low power buffer built into battery. If the device drawing power from battery is using more than the panel is providing to battery (battery is being depleted many times in a row), this buffer can be eroded resulting in the “always on” memory being cleared earlier than expected.”
The new V50 sounds promising. I hope to test a couple of those soon.
Hello all and I just joined so please excuse my novice-ness. Also the following might have been already somewhere without my knowledge.
A general note for all solar powered gizmos: just overkill the battery and panel! In order to prevent the shut-off of the device.
I don’t know why many people haven¨t realized this. It really doesn’t matter if the wattages and amps of the battery exceed remarkably the power consumption of the item. This of course provided the required additional panel area and battery space is available (usually is!). You will need to install the panel externally somewhere anyway, like the external battery too.
You do get cloudy days and when meshing heavily the power consumption may exceed the average and surely stand-by draw. Oversizing the power generation and storage you do get some redundancy and buffer. The charge controller of course will take over whenever needed.
Having the unit constantly on on a sunny (hot!) day weeks or months after another provides me a worry of overheating. Added to the fact that the unit will probably need to be enclosed weather-proof for outside use. Writing this from north it may not be a problem at winter time, the possible heat probably would melt the possible snow off from enclosure (if contoured wisely!). The decreased power output from the panel at winter time would be also counteracted using oversize panel.
This has been my approach all along. But there are still issues with charge control and reliability of circuit connectors, etc. I’ve had a full plate of other issue with COVID, but anticipate revisiting the problem in hope of a permanent solution. However, I want to note that while the problem may seem simple, getting a hardware solution that is reliable and affordable is a tougher task than it appears at first.
I did a school project on sending wireless electricity. Really, simple. Using enamel copper wire producing two loop antennas, bigger and smaller and broadcasted AC to the receiving loop. Despite huge losses and other imperfections we really managed to receive a few watts. The dimensions and other specs were calculated from theory. The broadcasted AC took place on some frequency dedicated to scientific experiments, ISM or something. Any use for charging? Only after that wireless charging to mobile phones started to appear. We had a few feet of range, whereas the mobile phone lies on top of the thing so very close, forming just a kind of a transformer.
This was a request from a bat researcher to study whether the bat’s heartrate and body temperature or other measurements could be carried out using tiny piggy-bag radio transmitter and the bat would rest within the charging area to provide power for the transmitter. It wasn’t really tested on the field and I worried whether the bat would get some side effects or problems with navigation from the field. Still, any use in this topic?
su 15. marrask. 2020 klo 21.18 MikeL via goTenna Mesh community (gotenna@discoursemail.com) kirjoitti:
I’ve got six of them running thru the last two summers in up to 90 degree weather and full sun days with no issues of overheating. I paint the black waterproof cases a little lighter color like olive drab or tan. I don’t know if that helps or not. I’ve seen the cases encased in ice and snow in the winter time so I’d guess the heat generated by the GTM and battery are minimal. Although mine usually are shut down shortly after getting iced over because the solar panel is also covered.
I’m not sure if removing the battery or moving it is a good idea. It might act as part of the ground plane for the antenna.
Very sad the “brute force” mod didn’t work out.
Perhaps Gotenna could make the firmware work with the “brute force” mod. Have the button depressed on boot or button always pressed activate relay mode.
That would be enough to get me putting up a permanent node instead of temporary nodes.
In case this helps, I’ve got a GTM relay with the battery removed and a larger battery wired to it nowhere near the factory location. It’s been that way for at least 1 year and seems to operate as it should.
It’s not about operating or not. It’s about range. I honestly don’t know if it will or won’t reduce range. The ground plane may be accounted for without the battery. I believe the antenna is a fractal antenna which I know very little about. If it were a dipole, yagi, or just about any other kind I could speak with more authority.
I’ve seen no difference in range in my gtm with the battery removed. I routinely message the unit from 20 miles away for example. As long as line of sight is good it would probably go much further. Messages sent at 20 miles are usually confirmed shortly after sending. This is in a mostly rural/mountainous setting with little interference.
