Since I am done with school I want to get back into doing some hobby electronics a project I posted about before was wanting to build a home automation system.
This was to consist of multiple wireless sensors and IO points around my apartment controlled by one central server.
To start this project up again I have designed a small battery powered temperature sensor. The idea would be that I could have one of these in each room of my apartment and they would measure and send the temperature back to the central server wirelessly.
This first board is going to be a prototype
I have designed it around the Microchip PIC24F16KA101 it’s a fairly low cost, low power 16-bit mircocontroller from Microchip. I have designed i two wireless trancievers, the XBee module I used on the Quad-copter and a module using the Nordic Semiconductor NRF24L01. The Nordic Semi one is much lower cost and lower power if it works out I will design another board with the chip right on it instead of using the module. But since I have experience with it and there is some risk the Nordic Semi part wont work out I designed in the XBee module as a backup.
This while thing is going to be powered by a singe CR2032 coin cell battery, so battery life will be a concern but with with some good software I think I can get it to last a good long time on that battery.
I will send off the Gerbers this weekend and will post more about it once I have something up and running.
Andrew