Hardware

Mac OS X Sierra driver Working also with Mac OS, but Sierra crashes and here is link for working driver

Sparkfun also sells a breakout board and has a hookup guide, https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/rfm69hcw-hookup-guide

Thanx guys ! I ordered a ADXL345 digital three-axis acceleration of gravity tilt module on ali to see what this will do with such small measurements. stumbled upon this via one of Wallyllama's links : https://tc1seismometer.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/tc1-vertical-seismometer-plans/ Seems easy enough to have some fun with as well.

@PaulD One option is to use a voltage divider, to get the voltages down to 2,5/5V, and then design a schmitt trigger, to convert the 2.5/5V to 0/5V output swing. For schmitt trigger design you could have a look at http://www.aaabbb.de/NonInvertingSchmittTrigger/NonInvertingSchmittTrigger_en.php Another option, is to have a virtual ground at 6V, that you connect your arduinos ground pin to.. (It can not share the same powersupply as the PIR sensors then). The arduino will then see a voltage swing of 0-6V (Can be limited with a resistor / zener diode on the input on the arduino). The virtual ground can be created with a simple resistor divider, between GND and 12V line of the pir sensor. I would probably go for option 1, as it allows you for detecting if the PIR sensor is online (is there 6V on the signal pin?) and trigger another pin, in case it disappears.

You cannot skip the capacitor when using a radio with a CR2032. Just use a good quality ceramic one to limit the losses.

My UPS is working fine now for the past several months. My current setup is like this: AC -- Power suppply power bank -- power bank -- supercaps -- voltage regulator 5V -- raspi. The supercaps are needd because when the powerbank switches there is a short power interruption. The supercaps are buffering this. The 5V voltage regulator is needed, because when the power bank is charging and discharging at the same time its output voltage drops to 4.6 V or so. The voltage regulator keeps this at 5 V at all times.

So first i pull the mysensors code from github to my raspberry pi. For running a mysensors gateway node on my raspberry pi using RS485 for transport i would then set it up with :+1: ./configure --my-gateway=serial --my-serial-is-pty --my-serial-pty=/dev/ttyUSBMySGW1 --my-transport=rs485 --my-rs485-serial-port=/dev/ttySC0 --my-rs485-baudrate=19200 --my-rs485-de-pin=23 Then make and make install that gateway and voila.. I can do the same for an RF based gateway running on the raspberry pi itself using a directly connected NRF module, which would recreate the mysensors files and install those. Which means i have either the RS485 or the RF gateway. Not both at the same time. My point is, how to set this up properly so i can compile 2 mysensors gateway instances on the same raspberry pi and run them at the same time. 1 for RF and one using RS485 ???

@fleinze interesting experience. Thanks for sharing.

Currently I mostly use Alkaline but on some project I use old handy-lipo-batteries. They are nice since they include some basic safety circuits. Most of my projects work on 2xAA-Alkaline with 1mhz-AVR .. pretty good experience so far .. even with uses ones.

@flopp said: I guess you need one Gateway for each channel? Yes

Not near a cad program at the moment, but try the following: Connect output of U8 / capacitor C34 pin 2, to pin 1 of D1, connect J1 pin 4 (vcc) to D1 pin 2, and attach your +5V to D1 pin 3. This way the source with the highest voltage will supply your circuit.. The actual VCC will be Vin - drop voltage over D1 (0.3V usually), that is 4.7V in your example. But that is next to nothing..

For advanced users. Not an out of the box thing, nor usable with mysensors. for writing your firmware, you may need to look if cc2650 is Arduino compatible (Energia). but i'm not sure..then you would need TI's compilers and tools. For use, when you have your firmware ready, it depends on the controller which protocols it supports. perhaps nodered too. you'll need a receiver (GW). for bluetooth or others protocols

@mfalkvidd I actually mean for something that is assembled already which I can just integrat it. I look for something like this: http://selfbuilt.net/shop/gy-80-inertial-management-unit

Welcome to the club! Regarding radio's: The RFM69's with a C in the type have a smaller form factor (which is pin compatible with the predecessor RFM12B). The the 'W' and "HW' versions are larger in size and have more programmable pins (which MySensors does not use) but have exactly the same functionality within MyS. All the footprints on the boards available in OpenHardware.io are for the 'W' and 'HW' versions so I'd go with one of these. The 'W' uses way less power than the 'HW' which would be good the for the battery life of your nodes. Sensors powered by the grid can be 'HW', but usually, in the house a 'W' delivers enough TX power to get the message across. It might be a good idea to make your gateway with a 'HW'. Hope this gets you a bit further. Good luck and show us your results!

For info on ISM frequencies, check out these pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_band http://store.cutedigi.com/rfm69-wireless-transceiver-915mhz-13dbm/

I for sure learned to double check any print terminal i take out of sample boxes. Damn... The 230V part of the board has a 5.08mm pitch for all lanes. I cut out the PCB pads and via's of the experimental board on both sided for insulation. The decoupling for 5V was done with 470u and 100n as close as possible to the Arduino. Same for the radio with 47u and 100n. There is only 1 real way to do this. Same goes for all the other connections. There are no other components in there. Except for the psu output and the radio voltage i cant think of anything that causes the issue with the radios.

@dennis_henk the programming side is simple :) Follow the instructions here https://www.mysensors.org/build/ethernet_gateway