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Introducing the RFM12Pi V2 - Raspberry Pi Wireless Expansion Board

Since, November last year we have more and more been leaning towards using a Raspberry Pi as our web connected base station of choice. See here for our original blog post on using the Raspberry Pi as an emoncms logging  and visualisation server.

Here is the latest version of the RFM12Pi Raspberry Pi wireless expansion board. Like the V1 the RFM12Pi V2 allows the Raspberry Pi to receive and transmit data via RFM12B 433/868mhz from and to other wireless nodes such as the emonTx, emonGLCD and Remote Temperature nodes.

RFM12Pi V2 - Raspberry Pi Expansion Board

The RFM12Pi V2 is now for sale in the OpenEnergyMonitor online shop, it comes pre-assembled and ready loaded with firmware, when used in conjunction with the read-to-go emoncms Raspberry Pi SD card image it makes for a truly plug-and-play energy monitor web-connected base-station setup. We're also selling a PCB only version and of course the hardware design, Arduino based firmware all Raspberry Pi emoncms setup is all open-source.



For the ultimate super-quick and easy setup we have also made available pre-loaded Emoncms Raspberry Pi SD cards. 
Emoncms Raspberry Pi Pre-loaded SD card 

The new features of the RFM12Pi V2 are:
  • ATmega328 based, has more memory and hardware serial support
  • Using the ATmega328 hardware serial (+optiboot) and AVRdude (pre-installed on SD card image) it's possible to upgrade the firmware on the RFM12Pi V2 direct from Raspberry Pi, instructions are on the wiki.
  • Runs on ATmega328 internal 8Mhz oscillator (to save unnecessary components)
  • SMT used, board layout is optimised for pick-and-place assembly
  • Lower profile to fit inside most Raspberry Pi enclosures
See the the RFM12Pi V2 wiki for more technical details regarding the hardware and firmware.

To get up and running all that's needed is to connect the RFM12Pi onto the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins, insert the pre-build SD card and bootup the Pi. Once booted up browse to the Pi's local IP address or the host name (http://emoncmspi) and then configure the RFM12B network setting from within emoncms.

emoncms Raspberry Pi Module Config Page


Monitoring data is logged to the Raspberry Pi's SD card and can be mirrored to emoncms.org or any other emoncms server for backup and remote viewing. The Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to be able to serve emoncms graphs and widgets.

emoncms dashboard served from the Raspberry Pi - viewed on a Nexus 7 Tablet 
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