▲ | gh02t 9 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||
I hate these chips after a multi-year crusade to get one to work. I've bought 3 different variations of it on breakout boards (SparkFun, DFRobot, and another one off of Tindie) and spent 10s of hours fiddling with them trying to get them to work with no luck. That includes multiple attempts at tuning the antenna and calibrating the capacitance, tuning all the other detection parameters, multiple different microcontrollers, several different power supplies and physical arrangements etc in case of interference. Anything and everything I could think of and test. Everything I did failed and I have never been able to get anything other than noise out of these sensors at best. YMMV, as I know these chips have a history of problems but supposedly do actually work. After I finally gave up on these things I ended up getting an Acurite 06045M, a cheapo SDR dongle, and a Pi Zero W running rtl_433 for like $60 and that has worked perfectly for years and is fairly straightforward to plug into Home Assistant over MQTT. It very reliably detects strikes and gives a pretty good estimate of distance (but NOT bearing), plus you get an outdoor temp/humidity sensor for free. I think the 06045M might actually use the AS3935 internally so presumably you can get them to work and when they do work they work very well, but nothing I could do as a (pretty advanced and well-equipped) hobbyist could make them work, and I've heard others had similar issues with them. So maybe stick to buying something commercial with it inside? | |||||||||||||||||
▲ | bri3d 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Yes, that Acurite sensor and the one I have connected to my weather setup (Shenzhen Fine Offset / Ambient Weather) are all AS3935 based. I also have an Aliexpress "JMCU" AS3935 breakout/antenna board that I bought to play with after being pleased with the Ambient Weather sensor, and it seems to work OK to me as well - I had to tune the watchdog thresholds and gain to eliminate false positives, but after doing so it works great. | |||||||||||||||||
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▲ | Neywiny 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Hmmm so they're fiddly is what it comes down to. I was thinking of the one from Mikroe. The 06045M has the same 40km as that chip so I believe the other commentor that it's the same chip. Thanks | |||||||||||||||||
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