Cannot use radio transmitter after switching to LowPower library

Question

My Arduino Mini board has DHT22 temperature sensor and 433MHz radio transmitter modules. I'm using DHT and RCswitch libraries to make use of them. Code looks like this:

void setup() {
  tempSwitch.enableTransmit(RADIO_PIN);
  dht.begin();
}

void loop() {
  float temp = dht.readTemperature();

  unsigned long message = createTemperatureMessage(SENSOR_ID, temp);
  tempSwitch.send(message, 32);

#ifdef MY_DEBUG
  unsigned int sleepCount = 1; 
#else
  // 3600s / 2 / 8s == 225
  unsigned int sleepCount = 225;
#endif
  for (; sleepCount > 0; sleepCount--) {
    LowPower.powerDown(SLEEP_8S, ADC_OFF, BOD_OFF);
  }
}

So I'm reading temperature and sending it using RCswitch library. Initially I just had delay(1000); instead of fancy LowPower sleep loop but I wanted to make my "device" more battery-friendly so I switched to low-power sleep.

The problem is that now Arduino is only sending data first time and after sleeping 30 minutes (in "release" mode) it does not send anything anymore. If I reduce 30 minutes to 8 seconds it is capable of sending data as well as if I replace sleep with delay(30*60*1000);.

From beyond it looks like something is not caching up after the sleep. Do I need to "wake" radio module in any special way? How to fix that?

Answer 1

I've never tried this, but if you are putting the Arduino to sleep I would expect it to cut power to the devices (does it?) if it does then after a 30 minute sleep I would expect the devices to come back up in the initial state. Guessing by your code the initial state of the radio is Tx Disabled, so try moving the

tempSwitch.enableTransmit(RADIO_PIN);

to before the

float temp = dht.readTemperature();

line.

I'd also be concerned that the DHT22 is not in the correct state after you wake up.

Can you try doing a 1 second LowPower sleep in debug mode, I suspect it would work more often.