I have encountered a problem while testing the Standalone Industrial Vibration Temperature Sensors (PR55-67A) with the wireless USB modem (PR55-17A). Early this week, everything was functioning smoothly, and I was receiving data regularly. However, I noticed that the batteries in my sensors drained yesterday. After replacing the batteries, I can no longer receive any messages from the sensors (there’s no running indicator on Node-RED as well), even though the blue and red lights of the sensor are on and appear to be functioning properly (when I use a magnet to restart the sensor, both lights blink as they should).
Do you have any troubleshooting suggestions or steps to help me get the sensors working again? Thank you!
Additionally, the ‘RS’ red light on the USB modem’s motherboard is no longer blink in sync with the blue light of the sensor when it is taking and sending data.
Hi @howardcairs Thank you for your feedback. To address potential configuration issues, please follow these steps to delete the Wireless Gateway, Wireless Device nodes, and the Wireless Configuration node (COM4/115200), then redeploy and reconfigure them from scratch. The procedure is as follows:
Delete the “Wireless Gateway” and “Wireless Device” nodes from your flow.
Navigate to the Configuration Nodes tab, double-click on your “USBModem!!” configuration node, and click the “Delete” button.
Click the Deploy button.
Stop and restart Node-RED.
Drag and drop a new “Wireless Gateway” node into your workspace. Double-click it to open its properties, then click “Add new ncd-gateway-config config node.”
Enter your COM port number in the Serial Port property and enable the “Add RSSI to incoming packets” option, as you had in your previous flow. Click the Update button, then click Done. Connect the “Wireless Gateway” output node to the Debug 12 node, and finally click the Deploy button to save and apply your changes.
Additionally, you may consider performing a factory reset on the sensors. The procedure is as follows:
Press and release the Reset button.
Immediately hold the CFG button and release it after 20 seconds.
Wait for 5 seconds.
Press and release the Reset button again; the sensor will be factory reset.
Please could you try this and let us know if you get sensor data correctly.
Thank you,
Eduardo M.
Thank you for recommendations.
I have followed the six steps, but the problem remains unchanged—no signal is being received. Please see the attached screen capture and flow diagram for reference.
I then attempted a factory reset, but the problem persists—no signal is being received.
Additionally, does performing a factory reset change the channel mask setting? My channel mask was originally set to 00FFFFFFFE00000000 as configured on your end.
I have also attached a video showing that the ‘RS’ red light on the USB modem’s motherboard does not blink in sync with the blue light of the sensor during signal transmission.
Please continue to assist us in resolving these issues. Thank you!
My available hours are from 10 AM to 12 PM and 2 PM to 6 PM this weekday in Hong Kong time. In the meantime, please feel free to provide any solutions, and I can continue to try them.
P.S. Hong Kong time is 14 hours ahead of Osceola, Missouri.
Hi @howardcairs Sure, we can try the following. Could you please install the XCTU tool on your PC? This tool helps us retrieve all the USB Modem radio module parameters and allows us to check communication with the NCD sensors. It will help us rule out any issues with the radio module parameters or communication, and see if the problem is more related to Node-RED.
I’m sharing a video with you. Please follow the instructions from 00:00 to 02:17, and kindly share screenshots of the actual parameters in the USB Modem. Also, ensure that Node-RED is stopped while using XCTU, as the serial port can only be accessed by one application at a time.
Based on the information provided in the link above and various community posts, it appears that the sensor needs to be “awaked” or placed in configuration mode in order to be scanned by the XCTU tool.
Could you please guide me on how to put the Standalone Industrial Vibration Temperature Sensors (PR55-67A) into configuration mode?
Hi @howardcairs Yes, that is correct. Just to clarify, you can access the radio module on the USB modem directly using XCTU (setting the communication parameters COM port and baud rate 115200). Once the connection is established, we need to check if data is being received from the sensor. To do this:
First connect to the USB modem
Go to the ‘Consoles Working Mode’ tab
Click the ‘Open’ button.
This will allow us to observe the incoming messages in the ‘Frames Log’ window, as shown in the following image:
To perform the test, you will need to force a data transmission from the sensor. This can be done by resetting the sensor, either using a magnet or by pressing the RESET button.
I highly recommend following the steps in this video (follow the instructions from 00:00 to 02:17):
To put the sensor in configuration mode:
Step 1 : Power up the sensor.
Step 2: Every sensor has 2 buttons: Reset and Configuration (RST and CFG). Enter configuration mode by holding both buttons down. Next, release the reset button. Wait 6 seconds and release the CFG button.
I believe I have identified the issue. The channel mask of the sensors was reset to the default setting (FFFFFFFFFFF7FFFF) after the battery change for reasons that are unclear.
The channel mask is stored in flash and it should have ben retrained during power cycles, the only thing i can think of if may be there was a brownout condition and it wiped the module memory.