Heltec CubeCell - part 1

Hi, there, sorry for the late response, you guys may know that because of the coronavirus problem, we just back to office this week, but our factory and some cooperation factories still not back to work normally… many works have to delay :rofl:

Yes, @wasn is right, as far as our test, maybe because of the net work in China main land, we also can’t get downlink messages from TTN.

Can it because of the limit of downlink messages?

Join problem mostly because of the listening frequency not matching the sending frequency.

If you can paste your gateway’s global_conf.json file, we can help you analysis the reason.

Is this document make sense to you?
https://heltec-automation-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/general/sub_band_usage.html

I’m sure the sub-band working fine in our test.

Yep tried that with no effect, Bruce’s solution works, I’ll just use that for now

@Paul_Stewart
Maybe this operation make sense to you:

I have a CubeCell dev board (HTCC-AB01) running a simple test.
It transmits a fixed 3-byte uplink message (without any further processing) and the RGB LED is enabled so the LED lights with each uplink message.

So far it has sent more than 72000 uplink messages on a single battery charge already.

A 1200mAh LiPo battery is used as power source (true capacity is probably more like 1000mAh).
The CubeCell board has sent 72000+ uplink messages already on a single battery charge (and running). Battery voltage is still 3.69V so maybe 100k messages on a single charge will be possible.
(For this test battery voltage is measured manually, and not measured automatically by the node).


Update:
I lost track of the exact uplink message count and later noticed the battery was empty.
Based on my last counter check (80+k) and some extrapolation:
A total of between 90k and 100k uplink messages have been sent on a single battery charge. :+1:

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Below information is from GitHub - HelTecAutomation/CubeCell-Arduino: Heltec CubeCell Series (based on ASR6501, ASR6502 chip) Arduino support.

The currently supported ASR650x chip product models are:

MCU Relative boards
ASR6501 CubeCell-Board, CubeCell-Module, CubeCell-Cupsule
ASR6502 Coming soon

Questions:

  • What is the difference between ASR6501 and ASR6502?
  • What Heltec products will use the ASR6502?

image

Full PDF is there.

EByte sells ASR6501 (sample) modules as low as 2+ USD per one piece delivered (depending on frequency band).
Since ASR6501 has only 1 UART access available - this SiP has little or no use for my purpose.

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I noticed (but did not see such low price).
No generic Arduino support is available for ASR650x I guess. I have only seen Arduino support for the CubeCells.

If not Arduino, what SDK/toolchain would you use for ASR650x?

the new CubeCell products with the ASR6502 will be ready next week

have a look here:

http://community.heltec.cn/t/some-new-cubecell-products/1372

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@bluejedi is right using the modules from EByte for example does not bring you the nice arduino integration.

you have to use the SDK from cypress for example

Is it possible to give an estimate for availability of PlatformIO support?

I noticed (but did not see such low price).

Ebyte has 2-3 stores on AE. At least one of them does typically make a ‘sale’ offer at any particular moment. This is one example

No generic Arduino support is available for ASR650x I guess. I have only seen Arduino support for the CubeCells.

Since ASR6501 is a S-i-P - most of stuff is hardwired inside the package. This makes such devices very compatible between different final product manufacturers.
Even firmware binaries are likely transferable in such cases, not only SDKs.
Example of such compatibility within single SiP (valid not for ASR but for similar AcSiP S76G package) is this one - firmware binaries from RAK7200 LoRaWAN GNSS assets tracker can run on TTGO T-Motion tracker (and likely vice versa).

Has anyone successfully used a DHT22(AM2305) in combination with a CubeCell board?

@hunter8801 Can you give any update on PlatformIO support?

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I am very sorry for this.

I tried platform.io support at the end of last year, but I did not succeed because I don’t have enough sense about this platform.

Not long ago, the founder of platform.io contacted me and gave some suggestions and support. These days I am busy with the release of the new ASR6502 series (the original plan was released last week, but there were some problems in production because of COVID-19 The impact of many components can not reach our factory on time).

The support of platform.io is already in my plan, and I will deal with it when the ASR6502 series is released.

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Thank you! Many people are waiting for Platform.io support for CubeCell boards. In our case this is the main reason why our company hesitates with switching to this platform.

Some new products of CubeCell series released:
https://heltec.org/proudct_center/lora/cubecell/

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When using the things stack server which MAC and PHY version is right for the cubecells?

It would be nice to add a comparison between the different CubeCell products so one can select a board based on requirements.


HTCC-AB02S product page Overview says:
Ultra low power design, 50uA in deep sleep;

HTCC-AB02S product page Tech Specs says:
Low power design Deep Sleep 3.5uA

Apparently the 50uA in the Overview is correct and 3.5uA is uncorrected copy/paste?
Why is deep sleep current 14+ times higher than for the other CubeCell boards?