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Hello,
I finally managed to get all my sensors connected to the JeeNode and sending data to the JeeLink. However, the communication only works as long as the sender and receiver are very near - about 1 meter. If I put the sender at the end of the corridor, with line of sight, about 3 to 4 meters, I no longer receive any data on the JeeLink.
Do you kave any ideas on what might be causing this?
Thanks!
Alex
Strange. I assume you have antenna wires of roughly 83 mm on both? Bad connection? Short? Antenna orientation? Grounding?
Just on the odd chance that it might makes a difference, see the JeeLink v1 build page, there are some hardware issues with it:
http://news.jeelabs.org/docs/jl1%20build.html
Hello,
I checked the antennas, and found some bizarre behavior. The cause was probably that I had the whole setup running at 433MHz. Once I changed it to 868MHz the reception improved a lot, and now it goes, as expected, via walls and windows!
I also trimmed the antennas to be closer to 83mm. They were not very far off, at 85/86mm.
Maybe one day I'll try double sized antennas at 433MHz, to see if it works fine...
Although the modules are all based on the same chip, the LC network that interfaces the antenna impedance to the chip's RF driver is frequency dependent. Running the module at a frequency that differs much from the one it was designed for means that the antenna is at mismatch, which can reduce the range significantly, even if the antenna has the right length for the frequency that is used.