ThingsOnEdge 'Crickets'

alanwsg

Does anyone use the 'Cricket' WiFi/MQTT modules from Things On Edge Ltd?

tallmansix

No, but looks interesting, got Raspberry Pi4 left over from a previous project that I'm looking to reuse - what are you doing with it?

alanwsg

tallmansix said:

No, but looks interesting, got Raspberry Pi4 left over from a previous project that I'm looking to reuse - what are you doing with it?

I have four of them, I use them to plot temperatures from around the house onto Node-red. They're very easy to use because they run for about 10 months on a pair of AA's (sending a reading every 10 mins) so you can just plonk them down anywhere in range of your router.

BUT, I'm not doing much with it them at all right now.

On Friday morning they all stopped working.
On investigation, I found the website where they load their config from was down, the companies FB and Twitter pages have been deleted and they're not replying to Emails.

I suspect I am now the owner of four small bricks!

sebtomato

My script that was connecting to mqtt.thingsonedge.com has stopped working too in recent days.

alanwsg

sebtomato said:

My script that was connecting to mqtt.thingsonedge.com has stopped working too in recent days.

I had a reply from Sylwester Bala (Their CEO), they've gone bust and shutdown COTA and MQTT services.

He says we can still use them in 'Local' mode - i.e. connecting to the toe_device network but I can't get it to work, I can connect but never get the config page before the device drops the connection.

It seems their servers did something to my devices before shutting down and I can't get them back into 'Factory default' state.

If you've any ideas, I'd like to know.

sebtomato

alanwsg said:

sebtomato said:

My script that was connecting to mqtt.thingsonedge.com has stopped working too in recent days.

I had a reply from Sylwester Bala (Their CEO), they've gone bust and shutdown COTA and MQTT services.

He says we can still use them in 'Local' mode - i.e. connecting to the toe_device network but I can't get it to work, I can connect but never get the config page before the device drops the connection.

It seems their servers did something to my devices before shutting down and I can't get them back into 'Factory default' state.

If you've any ideas, I'd like to know.

Their products were very niche, so not surprised that it's not a sustainable business.

I will see if I can configure the device locally but going on holiday, so won't be for a while.

I had a project to replace the TOE Cricket by an Attiny 45v or Attiny85v and ESP32 controllers anyway, as the Cricket was a bit too restrictive in terms of what it can actually do. I want to be able to run my own code.

An ESP32 consumes too much power in standby, but if it's controlled/powered on by an Attiny that can run for months on batteries, monitoring events or timer events, this should work.

alanwsg

sebtomato said:

An ESP32 consumes too much power in standby, but if it's controlled/powered on by an Attiny that can run for months on batteries, monitoring events or timer events, this should work.

I've started using Pico W's.
I'm well impressed so far, much more flexible and their Wifi is rock solid.

BUT they do need to be plugged in to a mains adaptor.

sebtomato

alanwsg said:

sebtomato said:

An ESP32 consumes too much power in standby, but if it's controlled/powered on by an Attiny that can run for months on batteries, monitoring events or timer events, this should work.

I've started using Pico W's.
I'm well impressed so far, much more flexible and their Wifi is rock solid.

BUT they do need to be plugged in to a mains adaptor.

That's exactly the point of the ToE Crickets: very low power consumption, and being able to be powered by just one AAA battery (1.5v).

There are many devices that have wifi, GPIOs etc. but not many that can run for months on one AAA battery, and/or run at a very low voltage.

In my case, I don't have access to a power supply where the device is installed, and don't want to replace the batteries every few days or weeks.

I guess I will need to create my own replacement device, with an Attiny monitoring events/recurring waking ups, and powering another device only when required, like a Pico W or an ESP32. Maybe a Pico W will be a good solution in term of low voltage (min 1.8v, same as an Attiny85v or Attiny45v, so would need 2 x AA batteries).

alanwsg

sebtomato said:

I guess I will need to create my own replacement device, with an Attiny monitoring events/recurring waking ups, and powering another device only when required, like a Pico W or an ESP32. Maybe a Pico W will be a good solution in term of low voltage (min 1.8v, same as an Attiny85v or Attiny45v, so would need 2 x AA batteries).

I tried powering a Pico W with a 18650, it ran for about 3 days.
That was with WiFi connected all the time, I haven't tried switching the WiFi off when not needed, or even if that's possible.

I'm really quite annoyed that I can't seem to switch my Crickets back into 'local' mode.
The config server's final act seems to have been to send some dodgy config to the devices.

sebtomato

alanwsg said:

sebtomato said:

I guess I will need to create my own replacement device, with an Attiny monitoring events/recurring waking ups, and powering another device only when required, like a Pico W or an ESP32. Maybe a Pico W will be a good solution in term of low voltage (min 1.8v, same as an Attiny85v or Attiny45v, so would need 2 x AA batteries).

I tried powering a Pico W with a 18650, it ran for about 3 days.
That was with WiFi connected all the time, I haven't tried switching the WiFi off when not needed, or even if that's possible.

I'm really quite annoyed that I can't seem to switch my Crickets back into 'local' mode.
The config server's final act seems to have been to send some dodgy config to the devices.

With wifi on all the time, 3 days is already an achievement. Even if wifi is off and Pico is on standby/low power/sleep mode, I don't think it will run for more than several weeks.

That was the strength/USP of the Cricket.

An Attiny45v or Attiny85v microcontroller can run for months/years on two AAA batteries, and can be waken up by some signals or the built in RTC/timer.

As a PoC, I have an Attiny45v powered by a coin battery (3v), flashing some LEDs every 4 seconds and then hibernating. Has been running for 4 months now.

However, they can only run basic Arduino code and don't have wifi, but could power another board for a few seconds that has wifi, on an event or on a timer. That was basically how the Cricket managed to run for months on a battery: the ESP32 module was only powered when needed, for a few seconds. A low power consumption microcontroller/RTC was handling events.

alanwsg

sebtomato said:

With wifi on all the time, 3 days is already an achievement. Even if wifi is off and Pico is on standby/low power/sleep mode, I don't think it will run for more than several weeks.

I've setup a Pico W to send it's internal temperature over MQTT every 15 mins.
In between it disables WiFi and sleeps.
It's running on a single 18650
We'll see how long it last.