Expandable Zigbee Repeater Solution (With Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and Light sensors)

I am going to order these, when I have a bigger order. Amazon

I have been testing Xiaomi motion sensor a child of this DIY module. It has been working stable in a last few days. It seems that TI Zigbee stack can help with problematic Xiaomi devices. I am looking for Xiaomi devices that had drop out problem to test. If you guys have experience with one, please let me know.

I noticed that you have a PCB cutout under the ZigBee module’s onboard antenna. I wanted to ask why you didn’t leave the PCB extend under the modules’ onboard antenna and simply cut out the GND plane (like the image below)?

image

The zigbee radio vendor told me that I should not cover their antenna. I am guessing that their PCB already have ground plane.

That blue-sih module is a Zigbee module which I purchased as whole.

I hope it help.

Does covering the antenna without a GND plane have the same effect as making a cutout in the PCB? It could essentially be seen as a plastic covering perhaps.

Yes it could. It will probably strengthen the structure. However, I just do not want to take a risk at this point. I just think it is just being safe to follow the suggestion at this point.

Ok. Thanks.

BTW, that board that you see is a bit different from the latest version. I do not have the version that you mention anymore.

Do you mind providing a close image of your new PCB with the onboard antenna module?

Also can you share what bypass capacitors values you use on the module, including the big ones?

  • Did you calculate these values or did you also get them from the manufacturer?

I am using the same PCB back board for all radio type. I do not have images handy. One of them should be here as well.

All the by pass capacitor you see there are for power supply and sensor chip.

The zigbee radio itself should have its own bypass capacitor internally. It is under the shield. I cannot open it to see them. The vendor I purchase the radio has gone through FCC certification. They better had that bypass capacitor in the module. The batch that I have has not have printed label yet. They will be sending module with FCC label in the future batch.

If you are doing yours from barebone CC2530 and interested on FCC certification, you should make sure that you take care of it. I would get some testing lab to help you with this. What I bought and what you have may not be the same.

For the capacitors, I was referring to the below. What values are they?

image .image

Those are for Power supplies (input, output), debugger. They are not bypass for the CC2530. The bypass for the cc2530 will be inside the metal case.

The small 805 capacitor are 10uf for LDO.

The big one was used for different type of LDO which need low pass filter using huge electrolytic capacitor the value is 47uf if I am not mistaken.

I would not use those for your own board especially if you have the cc2530 in the same board.

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Mine has worked great till this weekend, for some reason it lost connection to the hub. I also have not updated to the latest DTH yet either. (Life has kept me VERY busy lately)

I didn’t notice it for several days as it is the repeater for nothing critical.
Had to reboot it and it came back online right away.

I haven’t worked on this yet, but pondering a way to get a push notification if it goes offline. Some day I’m going to have to get more for in the house to get environment readings in different rooms.

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I have been testing mine for a while now and find it to be flawless. It hasn’t disconnected once that I have seen. My only problem is that it sometimes doesn’t refresh until I use the refresh button.

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Hi Don,

I am interested to learn about the connection lost when you have some free time. It is typically hard to troubleshoot this type of issue especially I have not personally seen the issue in my personal devices. We can probably try to compare the diagnostic data between yours and mine as a start.

I am ordering a small batch of extended range radio with PCB antenna. This is a new variant that I have never tried before. If you are interested on one of them, I will be happy to put you on my list. I do not have them yet. They are still on the shipping.

I really appreciate your help.

Thanks
Iman

FYI, to save some memory and reduce zigbee traffic, I decided not to support attribute reporting on the Diagnostic attribute. Attribute other than the sensor attribute (temp,humidity, pressure and light) are not auto update.

I hope this help. I am sorry if I have not mentioned this before.

I am starting to install the sensor outdoor. My goal is to move away from sunset and sunrise conditional to turn on/off light. I start to replace them with the illuminance reading.

Here is my setup outdoor.

Using the smart light app.

To protect my sensor from outdoor moisture, etc etc, here is my secret weapon (nail coat).

I coat everything (both side of the board) except the sensor.

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Now I know, thanks.

I really don’t know what I can provide “information wise” on the disconnect. I wasn’t paying attention to smarthings stuff at home.

If there is something I can send or answer let me know.

Yes I would be interested in another sensor to play with. Just let me know.