How can I figure out what part is not working?

ESPHome
1

I have a RC522 RFID reader connected to an ESP32.
Everything worked fine yesterday, and today I added a new I2C device to it and when that to worked I hot glued the connections to make sure nothing short circuited.
Then I hot glued the cable to the RC522.

Now when I test the RFID reader it does not seem to work.

I get this in the logs:

[21:37:05][C][spi:064]: SPI bus:
[21:37:05][C][spi:065]:   CLK Pin: GPIO34
[21:37:05][C][spi:066]:   SDI Pin: GPIO36
[21:37:05][C][spi:067]:   SDO Pin: GPIO35
[21:37:05][C][spi:072]:   Using HW SPI: SPI
[21:37:06][C][rc522:099]: RC522:
[21:37:06][C][rc522:110]:   Update Interval: 0.1s
[21:37:06][C][rc522:113]:   Tag 'Tag'
[21:37:06][C][rc522_spi:021]:   CS Pin: GPIO33

But nothing when I try to read the cards.
Could it be because of the cables glued to the antenna of the reader?
Is there any way I can figure out if it’s the connections on the reader, the cables, the ESP connections?

Usually hot glue is crap and comes of quite easily but this seems to be very sticky.

2

I2C and SPI are not the same thing.

What do you mean by this?

Did you extend the antenna away from the receiver?

3

Correct.
That is two different protocols and two different sensors.

The antenna on the RC522 is the square part of it.
The cables to it is glued on top of this square part.
Could it be that the cables take some of the power of the RC522 so that it does not see the tag.

Now that I think about it, I actually think I tested it just before I glued it. And it was working then.

4

Picture?

5

Not home right now but I used a Ethernet cable and its glued on like this:

image
image432Ă—525 57.8 KB

Maybe I can use the soldering iron to melt off the glue

6

20053f60bd3d5ac347794f569e57c07154c2b5c6
20053f60bd3d5ac347794f569e57c07154c2b5c6432Ă—525 71.6 KB

7

That was my thought too after gluing it.
My thought before gluing was to use the holes and zip ties to as strain relief but since my zip ties was too large I figured glue could work.

But the cable has been routed that way all the time and it has worked, but after gluing it it stopped working.

Oh well… Lets hope I can get it off again.

8

Do not use heat. That will make a mess.

Put a few drops of isopropyl alcohol around the glue seams and wait. It will loosen up. Not completely but it will be a lot easier to peel off.

1 Like
9

It’s already a mess :grin:
The card reader won’t be visible when mounted so it doesn’t really matter.
But I can give alcohol a try

10

Alright…
I managed to get all the glue off and it still didn’t work.
Went in to the give up mode and ordered a new RFID reader (because that is the easiest part to replace).
When I then looked at the parts again I noticed one of the solder joints was looking a bit suspicious.
Sure enough one of the solder joints had broken off.

So probably the cable was not the issue after all.

1 Like
11

Good news.

You’ll still get better range if you don’t cover the antenna.