This is the first and unexpectedly working (!) prototype:
It has a dimension of 80 mm x 80 mm. The strange shape is because a had a case in mind. Therefore, I had to align the batteries this way because there are studs in the corners.
The board is populated with ready-made modules which take a lot of space. The light sensor module was even bigger, so I had to cut it brutally with my pliers into shape.
Beneath the Wemos D1 module, there resides a ATTiny85 for the PIR sensor interaction.
The PIR sensor is connected via cable, so I can interchange it.
It turns out that the PIR sensor is very sensitive to voltage variations on the power rail.
Every time the ESP connected to the network, the PIR sensor was triggered.
Finally I was able to get rid of it with a bigger capacitor on the ESP power input and a 33 pF capacitor directly on the pins of the PIR sensor for fast spikes.
I was wondering if the code for this project is available? I am trying to run an ESP & PIR sensor node on 2xAA batteries for a long time but I cant seem to reduce the power consumption a lot.
Hello Kris,
the prototype is a bit out-dated. In the end we didn’t connect the PIR sensor directly to the ESP8266, but have connected the PIR to an ATtiny85, which in turn wakes the ESP8266, which is in deep-sleep for most of the time.
The ATtiny doesn’t wake the ESP on each trigger of the PIR however but basically is an low-pass filter of the signal.
I don’t think we have the repository public at the moment, but I can do that later on today.