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Easily deployable Temp and Humidity sensor

Smallish Temperature and humidity sensor.

This is my first go at using the MySensors.ORG code for distributed networking sensors and while still trying to get my head around the whole thing this is the first sensor I've put together that I can drop anywhere around the house and receive updates in my Home Automation server.

Nothing really ground braking here but, just packaged slightly different to the normal stuff  I've seen around the place.

This is only a first go at this and I'm interested in seeing how long this will run for on a pair of AA batteries without any modifications to the Arduino to reduce it's power consumption, so far i'ts only been running for 5 days.

The parts for the project are as follows.

1 x DHT22 Temp and Humidity sensor
1 x Arduino Pro Mini 3.3v/8MHz
1 x NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz Transceiver
1 x 4AA Battery holder with integrated on/off switch

Here is a photo of the packaged, I think it looks relatively neat, colour isn't the best to drop anywhere where it would be visible but that's easily fixed with a coat of plastics paint if you need it to blend in to your surroundings.



Here is a pic of the inside of the device, I just removed the battery clips from one side of the battery box, moved the positive clip with the red wire to the top of the second battery nothing major so far.

Then bent the plastic divider rib between the 3rd and 4th battery down and it just snaps off relatively cleanly. drilled 3 small holes on the front side so the DHT22 wires would go through, and that's pretty much the enclosure done.



The Arduino and NRF24 module are held in place, currently, with double sided tape, I also removed the 8pin header socket from the NRF24 module to keep the profile low. Then hardwired  all the connections in the case between the Arduino and the radio and the sensor.

I haven't put a capacitor on the radio module yet as I haven't seen anything to suggest it needed it, yet, but this is so far a one off so will add something in for the next ones there is room there for it.

There is still plenty of improvements to be made yet, I'm not to happy with all the positive voltage wires being soldered in a bundle like that so will need to find a solution for that.

So now just have to wait and see how long it last on 2 standard AA's and what sort of range it has.

More adventures soon.

Comments

  1. Nice one. I might have to build me one of those :)

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  2. Your blog is very interesting to read and anyone can easily understand the functioning of this humidity sensor as you have explained everything very clearly. Thank you so much for providing this information. I shall try to build it as well.

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