With all the pieces finally in place, and now that I’m getting a little bit more time to hack around again, this seemed like a good time to reconsider the OOKrelay.

So I combined a JeeNode USB, the new OOK 433 Plug, a Carrier Board with box, and half a Carrier Card:

In the top left I also added a DCF77 receiver from Conrad, attached to the Carrier Card prototyping board. It’s a bit hard to see, because the little receiver board is actually mounted upright. Here’s a better view:

A JeeNode USB was selected, because this thing will be powered permanently, and I chose to hide the connector inside the box to make it more robust. So all this needs is a little USB charger. The LiPo charge option might be useful if I decide to make this thing more autonomous one day (i.e. to record accurate power outage times).

Note that this is a modded JeeNode, as described here, to be able to receive 868 MHz OOK signals.

So what this thing can do – as far as the hardware goes – is listen for both 433 MHz and 868 MHz OOK signals at the same time, as well as pick up the DCF77 atomic clock signals from Frankfurt. Sending out 433/868 MHz OOK is possible too, but since the unit isn’t constantly listening for OOK packets, it’ll have to poll for such commands, which will introduce a small delay.

That’s the hardware, i.e. the easy part…

The software will be a lot more work. I’m going to adapt / re-implement the functionality from the OOKrelay sketch, i.e. this unit will decode and re-transmit all incoming data as RF12 packets, so that they can be picked up by a JeeLink hooked up to my PC/Mac. The clock signal will be useful to accurately time-stamp all receptions, and is really of more general use.

So far, the following I/O pins have been used:

• one port for the OOK 433 Plug, i.e. one DIO and one AIO pin
• one input pin for the modded JeeNode, to receive 868 MHz OOK signals
• one input pin for the DCF77 signal

There is still lots of room left for expansion. A Pressure Plug perhaps, to track barometric pressure. Or a Memory Plug to save up the last data while the central receiver is unavailable. Or both, since these can combined on a single I2C port.

Absent from all this, is a display. First of all, squeezing a 2×16 LCD in there would have been very tight, but more importantly, now that there is a JeePU, there really is no need. I’m already sending the info out by wireless, so a remote graphical display is definitely an option – without PC – or I could use a central server to get this info to the right place(s). This box is intended to be hidden out of sight, somewhere centrally in the house.

Only thing I might consider is a small LED near the USB cable, to indicate that all is well. Maybe… I’m not too fond of blinking LEDs everywhere in the house :)