Best choise for a controller
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@dzjr sorry, it's hard to help in details, when I don't see actual sketch you are using. Please post complete sketch here, that's not workring as expected.
Also could you explain in details what exactly working and what not? Does any Mysensors devices show in HA interface, or do you see them only in json file?
For relay you need to send V_STATUS message. You can try example sketch located in HA documentation and see if it's working.@monte
Among other things, I use a modified old telephone node from @SuperKris , I use fixed powersupply and RS485 as a transport layer.The Sketch is to big to post here
I have put it on my GithubI see all the devices in the JSON file (also on the github),
I also have a display node where i use N2N communication and 8 switch childs for controlling relays, There are more child IDs in the Json file but they were still there to test the display with MYSController, so you can ignore it completely, i have to remove them in the sketch.
The 3rd sensornode i have on de workbench i send some MQ values, doorcontacts, a PIR status and i recieve two childs.
i also uploaded on github.
but i see all the node id's in de json file. -
@NeverDie said in Best choise for a controller:
@TRS-80 Have you decided yet which platform you do like? And if so, what is it?
When I started shopping a few years ago, I followed the advice from linux-sunxi and Armbian and I purchased a Cubietruck, which at that time was the best device (IMO) for a network attached storage type of device, to also run some services on. And the advice was very good, as the platform has not only run absolutely flawless these last few years, but has also continued to see updates, etc., exactly as predicted. I am on a recent kernel, and have full normal Debian software repository available to me! Very nice!
Incidentally, I run all sorts of services on it, not only HA controller (openHAB, which is a big Java based thing), but also network file storage, private XMPP Instant Messaging server (Prosody) for our family, and even more recently, even an email(!) aggregator, collecting from several different platforms and email addresses. And I only started with Linux with this device a few years ago, and look how far I have come already. Yes there is an investment to learn it, but so much professional level software is available that it is mind-boggling to me. Next I will set up completely private and self-hosted VoIP/video between some houses of our family!
Anyway, sorry, back to topic...
Right now I am waiting for 64-bit ARM to mature/stabilize, devices based on RK3399 are exciting (in theory) but I am starting to wonder if they will ever get the bugs worked out. If not these, then something else later perhaps...
(I want to run ZFS which requires 64-bit)
In the meantime I got impatient, I needed a little more CPU grunt for some software motion detection of my IP cameras (using Motion) and so I pulled the trigger on a couple ODROID-XU4 which are still 32-bit but have tons of horsepower (if running a bit hot) and have dropped a lot in price lately (I only gave $50 each for these octo-CPU USB3 true gigabit ethernet monsters (!) ).
But it is very application specific. If I had to buy another "front end" type of device for example for the living room TV, I would nowadays probably purchase something AM90x based, as from my reading these blow RPi out of the water in HDMI output (I still have the RPi in the living room running Kodi, it was one of the first devices I purchased before I knew any better). :D
Also the market is evolving constantly (although sort of slowly). What I mean is, new devices come out all the time with what seem (on paper) to be amazing specifications. But if the Chinese manufacturer is not following GPL and/or working with the community (releasing docs, etc.) then their device will never be well and fully supported in Linux, which is what you are really looking for long-term and why for example I have had such a good experience with my Cubietruck...
It can, admittedly, be a lot to follow, but a TL;DR for starters would be to stick with Armbian "recommended / stable" devices meeting whatever specs suit your application and you will have a much better time... And then for more info, start incorporating the links I posted above into your reading (especially Armbian forum), because the situation is constantly evolving...
I actually started even supporting a few dollars/month to Armbian now for several months, because I think what they are doing is so important in this evolving market right now...
@TRS-80 Which OS do you recommend for running ZFS? Ubuntu has it, but allegedly only at an alpha quality level acording to arsTechnica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/a-detailed-look-at-ubuntus-new-experimental-zfs-installer/
I definitely want the ZFS capabilities. I've been waiting for years for BTRFS to carry those features into Linux, but now I'm not sure it ever will, especially anytime soon. On the one hand BTRFS has been a part of SUSE for a while, but on the other hand Red Hat has deprecated it. I'm not yet close enough to it to have any insight.
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@monte
Among other things, I use a modified old telephone node from @SuperKris , I use fixed powersupply and RS485 as a transport layer.The Sketch is to big to post here
I have put it on my GithubI see all the devices in the JSON file (also on the github),
I also have a display node where i use N2N communication and 8 switch childs for controlling relays, There are more child IDs in the Json file but they were still there to test the display with MYSController, so you can ignore it completely, i have to remove them in the sketch.
The 3rd sensornode i have on de workbench i send some MQ values, doorcontacts, a PIR status and i recieve two childs.
i also uploaded on github.
but i see all the node id's in de json file.@dzjr don't worry about posting long sketches here, just use code block tag and it will format it automatically and shrink it to appropriate size.
Please tell me, does any node show in HA interface?
I see you sending initial state for only one child. You have to do this for every child on a node if you want them to show up in HA interface, because from HA perspective every child of a node is a separate device. So even though they are present on the same node, you should treat them separately. Does this make sense to you?
For so many sensors on one node I suggest you use "for loop" while sending initial state. -
@TRS-80 Which OS do you recommend for running ZFS? Ubuntu has it, but allegedly only at an alpha quality level acording to arsTechnica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/a-detailed-look-at-ubuntus-new-experimental-zfs-installer/
I definitely want the ZFS capabilities. I've been waiting for years for BTRFS to carry those features into Linux, but now I'm not sure it ever will, especially anytime soon. On the one hand BTRFS has been a part of SUSE for a while, but on the other hand Red Hat has deprecated it. I'm not yet close enough to it to have any insight.
@NeverDie said in Best choise for a controller:
Which OS do you recommend for running ZFS?
I have done a fair amount of research into ZFS although that was a couple years ago. ZFS started out at Sun Microsystems a long long time ago, and was native on (Solaris maybe?) and then it was ported to / available on BSD for a long time. It is generally regarded as being stable and well supported on the BSDs since a long time now. But I am a GNU/Linux guy. ;) Ubuntu is of course based on Debian, but I dislike Ubuntu project for many reasons and consider it a meme operating system (IMHO why not just use Debian?).
Anyway, some years ago the ZFS on Linux project began, and as of a few years ago it seemed to me that project not only had much more professional type backing behind it (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, among others) but also seemed to be much more stable and reliable than BTRFS. Now I am much more of a "Free Software" than an "Open Source" guy, so I am rooting for BTRFS, but IMO you cannot screw around with something so important as file reliability, especially when the entire purpose of these improved filesystems is to be more reliable in the first place...
Anyway, those factors, plus doing a lot of research on ZFS (study it's history, and why it was created in the first place, and also it's architecture of doing away with several legacy layers left from old file systems and beginning with a fresh design from the ground up) and like me you may also conclude that ZFS is the horse to bet on going forward. And by now (a few years later) I would be willing to bet that it is getting fairly stable on Linux (at any rate there is clearly a lot of development going on).
Once/if you reach the same conclusion I have, the next step is choosing hardware. ZFS requires 64-bit (and also ECC is recommended, but first things first). Apparently this is much more important than "a lot of memory" which is actually somewhat of a misnomer as it is only required for de-duplication (or certain other features, may be mis-stating exactly which ones).
As 64-bit x86 is a non-starter for me (for many reasons as already stated above), I continue waiting for 64-bit to mature on ARM, so that I, a mere peasant, may also enjoy enterprise-grade file system reliability, at a low cost using commodity hardware, and without having to give up any freedom or security. :D
If you are interested in learning more about what will be required to set up ZFS, I can recommend the following links:
- http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Hardware - For general understanding, but also the link to Marc Bevand's blog post From 32 to 2 ports: Ideal SATA/SAS Controllers for ZFS & Linux MD RAID is excellent. And in general there is a wealth of information in that wiki, more than you could ever want or need to know about ZFS probably.
- Wikipedia ZFS article is actually quite long and detailed, and gives a decent overview of the history and licensing issues / controversy.
- There was one more really good entry level article that I read a long time ago, that laid out all the most important points in a very approachable way, but I just spent quite some time searching for it and still came up empty handed. I think that was back before I started taking notes on everything I do in Orgmode. :D Anyway, have to get back to work now...
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@NeverDie said in Best choise for a controller:
Which OS do you recommend for running ZFS?
I have done a fair amount of research into ZFS although that was a couple years ago. ZFS started out at Sun Microsystems a long long time ago, and was native on (Solaris maybe?) and then it was ported to / available on BSD for a long time. It is generally regarded as being stable and well supported on the BSDs since a long time now. But I am a GNU/Linux guy. ;) Ubuntu is of course based on Debian, but I dislike Ubuntu project for many reasons and consider it a meme operating system (IMHO why not just use Debian?).
Anyway, some years ago the ZFS on Linux project began, and as of a few years ago it seemed to me that project not only had much more professional type backing behind it (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, among others) but also seemed to be much more stable and reliable than BTRFS. Now I am much more of a "Free Software" than an "Open Source" guy, so I am rooting for BTRFS, but IMO you cannot screw around with something so important as file reliability, especially when the entire purpose of these improved filesystems is to be more reliable in the first place...
Anyway, those factors, plus doing a lot of research on ZFS (study it's history, and why it was created in the first place, and also it's architecture of doing away with several legacy layers left from old file systems and beginning with a fresh design from the ground up) and like me you may also conclude that ZFS is the horse to bet on going forward. And by now (a few years later) I would be willing to bet that it is getting fairly stable on Linux (at any rate there is clearly a lot of development going on).
Once/if you reach the same conclusion I have, the next step is choosing hardware. ZFS requires 64-bit (and also ECC is recommended, but first things first). Apparently this is much more important than "a lot of memory" which is actually somewhat of a misnomer as it is only required for de-duplication (or certain other features, may be mis-stating exactly which ones).
As 64-bit x86 is a non-starter for me (for many reasons as already stated above), I continue waiting for 64-bit to mature on ARM, so that I, a mere peasant, may also enjoy enterprise-grade file system reliability, at a low cost using commodity hardware, and without having to give up any freedom or security. :D
If you are interested in learning more about what will be required to set up ZFS, I can recommend the following links:
- http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Hardware - For general understanding, but also the link to Marc Bevand's blog post From 32 to 2 ports: Ideal SATA/SAS Controllers for ZFS & Linux MD RAID is excellent. And in general there is a wealth of information in that wiki, more than you could ever want or need to know about ZFS probably.
- Wikipedia ZFS article is actually quite long and detailed, and gives a decent overview of the history and licensing issues / controversy.
- There was one more really good entry level article that I read a long time ago, that laid out all the most important points in a very approachable way, but I just spent quite some time searching for it and still came up empty handed. I think that was back before I started taking notes on everything I do in Orgmode. :D Anyway, have to get back to work now...
@TRS-80 said in Best choise for a controller:
It is generally regarded as being stable and well supported on the BSDs since a long time now. But I am a GNU/Linux guy. Ubuntu is of course based on Debian, but I dislike Ubuntu project for many reasons and consider it a meme operating system (IMHO why not just use Debian?).
Yes, I'm on the same page as you regarding all the points you mentioned in this passage. Otherwise, a few years ago I would have simply learned BSD and its implementation of ZFS.
I'm at a point where I'd rather not keep waiting indefinitely though.
Thanks for the links! I'll give those a read.
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@dzjr don't worry about posting long sketches here, just use code block tag and it will format it automatically and shrink it to appropriate size.
Please tell me, does any node show in HA interface?
I see you sending initial state for only one child. You have to do this for every child on a node if you want them to show up in HA interface, because from HA perspective every child of a node is a separate device. So even though they are present on the same node, you should treat them separately. Does this make sense to you?
For so many sensors on one node I suggest you use "for loop" while sending initial state.@monte Sorry for the late response, I was working on other HA integrations so I left MySensors for a while. :relaxed:
But now I had a Domoticz jam for the third time, so it was a trigger to make the move with at least one gateway.
I did indeed see some values in HA, but, as you may have seen in the other post, I have been so cheeky to just modify the JSON file, and that works!
I will, however, adapt new sensor nodes to the format desired by HA.
By the way, I want to make you very happy with HA now, what a lot of integrations are possible!
And it looks even better than Domoticz! -
@NeverDie said in Best choise for a controller:
Which OS do you recommend for running ZFS?
I have done a fair amount of research into ZFS although that was a couple years ago. ZFS started out at Sun Microsystems a long long time ago, and was native on (Solaris maybe?) and then it was ported to / available on BSD for a long time. It is generally regarded as being stable and well supported on the BSDs since a long time now. But I am a GNU/Linux guy. ;) Ubuntu is of course based on Debian, but I dislike Ubuntu project for many reasons and consider it a meme operating system (IMHO why not just use Debian?).
Anyway, some years ago the ZFS on Linux project began, and as of a few years ago it seemed to me that project not only had much more professional type backing behind it (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, among others) but also seemed to be much more stable and reliable than BTRFS. Now I am much more of a "Free Software" than an "Open Source" guy, so I am rooting for BTRFS, but IMO you cannot screw around with something so important as file reliability, especially when the entire purpose of these improved filesystems is to be more reliable in the first place...
Anyway, those factors, plus doing a lot of research on ZFS (study it's history, and why it was created in the first place, and also it's architecture of doing away with several legacy layers left from old file systems and beginning with a fresh design from the ground up) and like me you may also conclude that ZFS is the horse to bet on going forward. And by now (a few years later) I would be willing to bet that it is getting fairly stable on Linux (at any rate there is clearly a lot of development going on).
Once/if you reach the same conclusion I have, the next step is choosing hardware. ZFS requires 64-bit (and also ECC is recommended, but first things first). Apparently this is much more important than "a lot of memory" which is actually somewhat of a misnomer as it is only required for de-duplication (or certain other features, may be mis-stating exactly which ones).
As 64-bit x86 is a non-starter for me (for many reasons as already stated above), I continue waiting for 64-bit to mature on ARM, so that I, a mere peasant, may also enjoy enterprise-grade file system reliability, at a low cost using commodity hardware, and without having to give up any freedom or security. :D
If you are interested in learning more about what will be required to set up ZFS, I can recommend the following links:
- http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Hardware - For general understanding, but also the link to Marc Bevand's blog post From 32 to 2 ports: Ideal SATA/SAS Controllers for ZFS & Linux MD RAID is excellent. And in general there is a wealth of information in that wiki, more than you could ever want or need to know about ZFS probably.
- Wikipedia ZFS article is actually quite long and detailed, and gives a decent overview of the history and licensing issues / controversy.
- There was one more really good entry level article that I read a long time ago, that laid out all the most important points in a very approachable way, but I just spent quite some time searching for it and still came up empty handed. I think that was back before I started taking notes on everything I do in Orgmode. :D Anyway, have to get back to work now...
@TRS-80
I think I'm finally sold on BTRFS: https://markmcb.com/2020/01/07/five-years-of-btrfs/Did you opt to go with ZFS on Linux?
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@dzjr I had a look at your list, and as I read through it I realised that the Mozilla WebThings Gateway really needs P1 support. So I created an addon for that.
It might make the Mozilla WebThings Gateway an option for you, although it doesn't support all the things you asked for (DMX, Modbus, APC USB).
It does have great usability, privacy friendly local voice control, and of course MySensors support.
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There are also some very cheap usb-stick size SSD's now. Now sure about the long term quality, but it's.. interesting.
This 64Gb one is 15 dollars including shipping
This 128Gb one is $20.
Finally, this Kingdian one seems very popular. It's $30, but is a bit faster.
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@neverdie but isn't Docker more efficient and simple solution compared to a VM? Considering it will be used for single process anyway.
I have a combination of VM's, Docker and dedicated RPi's in my system and I learned that Docker has very little overhead compared to VM and has greater flexibility when it comes to backups, restores especially if there is ready to use image in the repository.@monte said in Best choise for a controller:
@neverdie but isn't Docker more efficient and simple solution compared to a VM? Considering it will be used for single process anyway.
Yes, I think you're right.
