With the new “homePower” setup now in place and working, it is time to say goodbye to a good companion – this ATmega168-based mousetrap which started it all, 4 years ago:

Note the dead spider :) – this thing has been soaked a few times, with water dripping from the kitchen on the next floor, yet all it took was a clean wipe, some time to dry, and it just resumed its duties over and over again:

Very few problems other than that corrosion (probably also inside the mini 3-pin jacks):

Less than a dozen resets / power cycles over all these years.

This is the predecessor of what eventually became the JeeNode, based on an RBBB by Modern Device. It works on 5V and uses resistor-based level converters for the RFM12B.

The gas measurements have been erratic for some time now, no doubt due to those bad contacts, so I’m going to look for another way to read those values.

And with it ends also the life of the node on the other side, a modified Arduino Mini plugged into the Mac Mini server using an FTDI cable:

Also based on perf board with Kynar wire-wrapping wire to connect it all together:

The code used between these two nodes was based on an early version of the RF12 driver protocol, and since it all worked perfectly, I never saw a need to change it. But I’m still going to miss these periodic packets in the logfiles:

  L 09:05:02.167 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 43 17 151 73 20 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0
  L 09:05:07.363 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 44 18 151 80 20 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0
  L 09:05:12.290 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 45 19 151 47 19 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0
  L 09:05:17.361 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 46 20 151 200 19 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0
  L 09:05:22.720 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 47 21 151 240 20 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0
  L 09:05:27.646 usb-FTE50C3P HM3 45 48 22 151 49 19 6 0 242 200 0 0 0 0

Goodbye, dear nodes, and thank you for those nearly 4 years of perfect service!

PS – Don’t forget Elektro:camp next Friday and Saturday!