Does a Bluetooth controller/gateway exist?



  • Dear hackers

    I’ve bought a caravan and would like the drown it in sensors.
    The question is if MySensors is the way to go. There is no Wi-Fi in the caravan.

    Does a controller exist that I can extend to serve values via Bluetooth that I can read from a mobile app?

    The idea is to have AA-battery powered sensors talking to a gateway attached to the caravan battery (only turned on when caravan is in use).
    The gateway (a rasp pi or an Arduino?) should when powered on receive and log sensor values. From a ble interface a mobile app (that I create) should read and present sensor values.

    Bonus question: is it possible to buy an off the shelf board with deep sleep and nrf24l01 already soldered? Does “StableNode” exist?

    Bonus info: I have app developer background and is bad at soldering.

    Best regards
    Henrik



  • Hello Henrik,

    In your scenario, I would not use a RPi. Maybe a ESP32 with BLE is already enough as a controler, if you don't need to log too much data or add an SD card. You could even combine two NRF52 (see below) and use one for BLE and the other for MySensors.
    For your sensoirs, you could use a Keywish RF Nano or an NRF52 module like (this one)[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32974237147.html] which combines a NRF24L01 and an ARM cortex M cpu and have very low sleep current.
    Maybe it's best for you to use passive nodes when not using the RPi, so you don't have to care about address management and so on on the gateway.

    Regards, Edi


  • Mod

    @Henmyg just to be clear, you need a gateway to communicate with the mysensors network, and a controller for the logic/ui (and possibly handing out node ids for the gateway).
    It is possible to combine both in a single device (eg raspberry pi) but I've not seen a controller implementation for esp32 yet.
    A raspberry pi running the controller could connect to your phone over Bluetooth, or serve a local wifi network just for your camper.
    I would take a look at the controller section of mysensors, pick a popular one that runs on a raspberry pi and has a nice ui for your phone ; then you don't need to develop anything yourself.
    If you go that route I suggest to build a separate gateway (serial, ethernet or wifi) and have a pi run the controller. It is possible to also run the gateway on the pi, but as a beginner I suggest to build a standalone gateway.



  • Thanks a lot.
    I will start by getting the heads and tails of MySensors by doing a setup in my WiFi covered house.
    Then I will see if the controller can work without internet, with a phone controlled ble Interface instead.
    If this is not possible I will see if it is possible to communicate with the gateway from a phone instead.
    Let’s see if it I get anything working before Christmas...



  • I have a similar project: For my fathers boat, I want to use a Nextion as a central informations display. I will use a asr6501 as self containing gateway/controller, so maybe we can exchange experiences.


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