Hardware

@gregl I have messed about with them too, but it seems for me they are not-ready-for-primetime, but with some hard-knocking effort you can get it to do some basic things. Smart guys will develop a great library and it will all come together, I am sure. Spark Core is my new favorite. After sitting on the bench from last year's initial shipment, I finally got to play with it. It is amazing with its tremendous out of the box capabilities. The Photon (which ships april) is only US$19, has 1 Mb of FLASH and 128 Kb of RAM, moving at 120Mhz... wow! Way overkill for a motion sensor, but it brings a lot of life to the world of Home Automation for a small price. ($10 for a surface mount version!!!) I'm in the process of moving my Vera auxiliary controller project over to spark... I'll re-post the wireless version as soon as I can get it in a proper box.

@ferpando @rosskinard Has anyone made any headway on this project?

@hek said: @bluman Candidate for the project contest perhaps? If all my parts turn up from China in time then it should be ready to submit for judging!

For the size and cost I think you better chose an AC powered device. Additional to the link posted by @m26872, @petewill just posted full instructions on how to build this on $8 Lamp (Outlet) "Smart Plug" Module

@gregl said: I think the main reason why most door/window switches are usually NC is so that should a burglar gain access to the wires to the sensor and cup/snip them the alarm would be tripped. Of course in this type of use batteries are not a consideration.... Back to mysensors.... i too like the status sent periodically so i know if a sensor is alive or dead. Fair point. When it really comes down to it, I got started thinking about this in relation to a mailbox sensor. I want to put it there and not touch it for a year. It's flippin cold in Tennessee right now.

@tbowmo said: Hmm only 64MB of ram, and 400Mhz cpu. Seems very small, still it could run a limited Linux system it is designed for openWRT

:) Most will be of the DS18B20 kind. But still, a good silicone sealant around the sensor should still make it watertight. /M

Works fine for me at 3.3V and 16Mhz. Have not had any problems whatsoever.

Thnx. Any specific hints how to do that with this hardware; I will try to get this working with a few pro-mini's as relay, I might have missed this on the educational pages here, but I'm wondering how to start the network / do the roll-out. "The first time a new sensor boots up" section tells me something about that it will find it's way home (which is great, must have cost some time to get this programmed I guess), but my challenge at the moment is to find out how to get this done effectively. Should I start with the gateway and see how far I can get with a single node and replace it at that position with a repaeter node, or can I simply place some repeaters and check with a serial monitor that they contact the gateway? Thanks, Boozz

@funky81 See the link near the top of the (edited) original post, to a thread which follows up on this one. For board designs created by the community, that thread going to be more up to date (and it tracks some information about what's available). This thread was earlier, but lists commercial options as well, so it's still of some value. I'm thinking to let the other thread keep up with community designs, but if you know of a good commercial offering for our purposes, please leave a reply and I'll add it to the list here.

I'm thinking of 4 PIR sensors (at each end of the two aisles). And I was thinking of a reed switch at the top of the garage door opening, and one at the door into the house. And the most convenient location for the relays controlling the lights is still a 7th location. I could put 7 wireless nodes into the garage, but then I have to run power to all of them - if 5v we still have the same long wire issues, if 120VAC then I need 7 power supplies. And the local control now involves passing messages between nodes rather than just sensing input pins and controlling output pins on the same uC. The cables supply power to the RF enabled nodes will have the same length (whether DC or AC power) as the cables going to a simple sensor, and follow the same routes. So it would be possible to do that, but at considerable cost in money and time and complexity - compared to just running a three or 4 wire cable from the main node to a $2 PIR located 1o-20 feet away, if that can easily be made to work (perhaps with the addition of a couple of small, cheap passive components. I don't know if I do need to worry about inductance, capacitance, reflections etc - that's why I'm asking. These things aren't usually specified one way or the other - you kind of need some practical experience. If those are indeed killers that cannot be fixed with a couple of passives, then I may go to the "make every sensor a full node with AC power supply and distribute AC to them instead" route. But wouldn't it be nice if I can do a $2 easy fix instead? One data point - in the Do It Yourself Christamas lighting control community, they routinely get away with sending TTL or CMOS signals quite a ways from a control unit to an optoisolator input (which controls a Triac to form a SSR which does PWM dimming of an AC circuit). The signals are just a 120 Hz PWM signal but the edge timing is at 120Hz * 256 PWM divisions. You won't find much about driving a 50' cable from a TTL or CMOS output in the datasheets, but it works in this application! It would not work if you were sending a 1 Mbps signal tho. So I have some hope that a PIR 20 feet down a cable may be able to pass back a quite usable logic signal, since it changes rather rarely. But I was hoping for some advice about the gotchas. Remember the sensors I've mentioned are magnetic reed switches, LDRs, and PIR sensors - only the latter needs power per se separate from the signal.

@daulagari Thanks :) It worked, and I have logos on my next sensor pcb.. ;) Had googled all the things that came to my mind before throwing the question in here, but I haven't seen that page before..

I apologize if you are aware of this, but are you pressing the reset button once the sketch is ready to transmit? Using a sparkfun FTDI board with knockoff pro minis, I press the reset button as soon as the first TX light blinks on serial board. If I don't: similar errors.

At the bottom of the linked article it says... Edit: [CNLohr] points out there’s a more preferred toolchain that most people have switched to. https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki/Toolchain

@C.r.a.z.y. I usually add store links directly from the build pages that is related to the example. On the main "store" there is a lot of items just for inspiration. Not all have ready-to-use MySensors Arduino examples.

@jonnyfishman said: would it be better to trigger the callback manually to pick up a response? No that won't help (as long as you call gw.process() ).

The plan is to make some LED lights without the need for a wall plug transformer, as they take up space and are fairly hard to hide away. So I'm planning to make some small 220vac->12/5vdc converters with as little components as possible. Link to plan: http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-TUBE-LGHT-AC/