To ensure that I don't release the blue smoke I decided to build and test the node in a number of steps. For the first step I soldered the components of the power supply and tested the output voltage.
This first step was successful connecting a bench power supply set to 2.8 volts yielded an output of 3.3 volts.
The next step was to solder the remaining capacitors and ICs and resistors. When designing the board I used 0603 for the resistor and capacitor footprints. This was a mistake because they are difficult to hand solder due to the size. Next time I will use the next size up.
The other SMD that was difficult to solder was the LCC8 humidity sensor. In fact I initially soldered it on upside down and had to remove it, in the process of which I destroyed the part. Below is an image of the final board with the debug and ISP header but without the radio module this will be added later.
When I initially attached the ISP I found that it would not connect to the board. The reason for this was that the ISP clock was set to the default of 1Mhz. The ATmega48PA is shipped with internal RC oscillator at 8.0MHz and with the fuse CKDIV8 programmed, resulting in 1.0MHz system clock. Reducing the ISP clock to 1/4 of the CPU frequency resolved the issue.
When I resolved the connection issue to the device I was able to flash the firmware and start testing the sensor board. The first check was to determine if the ADC voltage monitoring circuit worked. This is where I ran into another problem. I powered the board with a bench power supply @ 2.8 volts. Reading the battery voltage via the ADC resulted in a value of 2.1 volts. After examining the battery sensing circuit it initially looked like the p channel FET was not switching on fully causing a voltage drop of 0.6 volts across the Source to Gate. Checking the Drain voltage measured 2.1 volts which was wrong because it was not switched on, i.e. 0 volts applied.
On a hunch I checked the datasheet of the FET against the footprint on the board. I discovered the PMBFJ177 footprint is different the Gate and Drain are interchanged. I will need to get another J177 FET that matches the board footprint.
Once these issues where resolved I was able to debug the code that reads the humidity and temperature from the CC2D33S sensor using the AVR dragon.
The next step is to add the radio module and figure out a strategy to debug and test the radio module and its code.
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