My RCWL-0516 breadboard experiment

@donpk I just tried a second board and it WORKS. I paced it out at 6 yards/meters but beyond that it may have been blocked. One thing I would recommend is to wire up a board from scratch for each unit tested to ensure a common wiring mistake is not destroying each board you stick into the same circuit. Also, there is a delay after the LED goes out of a few seconds before it will sense again. When I tried it I allowed a count of 4 before moving again.

@zander I've also been doing some more experimenting. My first version - the one with poor results - was on a solderless breadboard. Since in the past I've had intermittent connection issues with solderless breadboards, I built a second version using solder and wire on a small perfboard. I also powered it with a 9 volt battery instead of my Arduino board. With the battery version I was able to move around the house.

My first trial with V.2 was in the same location as the first setup on my workbench near the Arduino.  I had similar poor results, however, as soon as I moved to other rooms, the performance was excellent ranging from ca. 1 meter to 5 or more meters. I should add that the location with the poor results is less than a meter from my internet gateway/WiFi unit. In his video, Bill speculated that WiFi interference might cause a problem with the RCWL-0516, although he hadn't noticed any problems.

I want to do some more experimenting, perhaps go back to the breadboard version to eliminate the bad connection theory and also try turning off the WiFi to see if that changes anything when the sensor is near it.

@donpk Good news. I forgot about the WiFi issue, I will try turning mine off and test board  one again. Do you notice a delay after sensing? What I mean is it senses you, you then move out of range and you then have to wait after 3 or 4 secs before it will sense you again?

@donpk I turned off all my WiFi etc, and it made no difference to either board. It is looking very much like some of these boards are DOA. I have 10 but only need 6 can use 8 though so I am crossing my fingers.

@zander Yes, I notice that delay. Interesting about the WiFi. There seem to still be some things going on I don't understand, which isn't surprising.