Where did everyone go?

[TheoL]

@Dizzwold This is not the right topic. And perhaps not the right forum. I think it's best to ask this in the candle forum

[TheoL]

What I miss is the creativity. In the beginning everybody had crazy ideas and build awesome projects. I'd like to see that back xd

[Dizzwold]

Hi Guys,

I've searched for a Candle smart home forum and this is the only place I can find.

Can you please direct me to the correct forum?

I've already made an appology on the following thread;

https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/10634/candle-the-privacy-friendly-smart-home/10

I'm sorry.

[zboblamont]

@TheoL It comes in waves...
A lot of the energy over the "crazy ideas" peaked interest in the commercial world to capitalise on the IoT craze, a financial example of IFTTT.

I'm nowhere close to smart on development as the majority here, having bought (not developed and built) solutions to my own specific needs, experimenting only on the margins, but with the MySensors and Domoticz environment core as it was central to what I required for other things, data acquisition and on-site containment.

However, I strongly suspect a second wave of interest is about to land as the chicken of the brick walls erected for commercial interests (a la Apple) come come to roost.
Proprietary protocols and incompatibilities are a nonsense in this digital age, as is the "Cloud" being pivotal to whether Light Switch A turns off Light Switch B, and whether device Z is incorporated.

I'm certain the "crazy ideas" will return, it's only the when which is at issue ;)

[zboblamont]

@Dizzwold No need to apologise, it's more a case of waiting until somebody comes along who might know the status of Candle, such as @alowhum who has just been tagged.

[TheoL]

@zboblamont I'd never have my house logic or my data in the cloud. Logic means you can't do much if you're internet is gone. And data, well I don't want all data like when I'm at home in the cloud :). But maybe I'm old fashioned

[zboblamont]

@TheoL Old fashioned perhaps but self-reliant.
I avoid cloud services as much as possible, hence the early choice of MySensors, Domoticz and a dedicated router, still trundling away on a UPS 24/7 in the background through the many power cuts.
I may not have internet, and may well be sitting in the dark, but can still see what's happening in and around the house.

I'd thought recently to get replacement "smart" light switches for this place and the radio equipped version might solve a potential rewire, but on discovery the "smart" solution depended on a server thousands of miles away, it was back to the drawing board.

[TheoL]

@zboblamont That's what I love about my sensors. I created my own "SMART" lights, whit fairy light led strings. To provide sufficient light and are manual operable as long as they have power xd

Lately I have to turn off some of my Ikea lightbubles after each update of the gateway. As they are greyed out in the app. If you're not on time replacing the switch batteries, getting everything setup again is a nightmatr

I do use Inter For Things. Like wether prediction for watering the garden. But It's not bad if it misses one day.

[mbj]

I started building various sensors and control functions based on Mysensors quite a few years ago. Some I use originate from the solutions published at the build sections, others are of own design. At that time very few affordable off-the-shelf products were available.

My main controller is OpenHab and MySensors data are sent/received using MQTT. The other part of my IoT network is based on Z-Wave and once getting this mixture to work it just runs with very few hiccups. Main problems are nearly always associated with upgrading to new software versions, especially OpenHab has taken lots of time during conversions.

So for the moment I have everything I need running, it runs very stable and is in a "maintenance" state. Time is limited so focus and activity has had to shift to other things but I try to follow the forum.

For me Mysensors has been a great experience and I will continue using it if other similar sensors/functions are needed. I like building the Mysensors items myself and will not choose anything else if an own project can succeed.

With heaps of IoT things and systems available off the shelf to reasonable prices I think MySensors has to focus on robustness, simplicity and good guides so enthusiasts being tired of the complexity and non-compatibility of commercial solutions are willing to dig out the soldering iron and learn how to make own things.

[kasparsd]

@chey said in Where did everyone go?:

Personally when I look at the MySensors github and see Issues and PRs being created but no one is doing anything with them, that's a bit of a turn off.

When I look through the PRs I see a lot of "good stuff" there yet there is no movement.

I had the same observation and was wondering if we could do anything about this.

I maintain a dozen of open source projects and I know how unpredictable the contributions can be with life getting in the way and priorities changing. However, MySensors appears to be a project with relatively active user base and many people willing to contribute.

The latest commit to the development branch was more than 100 days ago (on July 27) and there are a bunch of pull requests that could be merge as they have had code reviews and they are very limited in scope and have little potential for introducing regressions.

Is there a way that members of the core team (or people with commit access) could give commit access to new members that have shown interest in contributing? There is always a chance that new contributors will have different approach to deciding on what features go in and how the project is maintained (and potentially introduce regressions or bugs) but that's at the cost of moving the project along and having it live.

[NeverDie]

@kasparsd said in Where did everyone go?:

@chey said in Where did everyone go?:

Personally when I look at the MySensors github and see Issues and PRs being created but no one is doing anything with them, that's a bit of a turn off.

When I look through the PRs I see a lot of "good stuff" there yet there is no movement.

I had the same observation and was wondering if we could do anything about this.

I maintain a dozen of open source projects and I know how unpredictable the contributions can be with life getting in the way and priorities changing. However, MySensors appears to be a project with relatively active user base and many people willing to contribute.

The latest commit to the development branch was more than 100 days ago (on July 27) and there are a bunch of pull requests that could be merge as they have had code reviews and they are very limited in scope and have little potential for introducing regressions.

Is there a way that members of the core team (or people with commit access) could give commit access to new members that have shown interest in contributing? There is always a chance that new contributors will have different approach to deciding on what features go in and how the project is maintained (and potentially introduce regressions or bugs) but that's at the cost of moving the project along and having it live.

@hek @mfalkvidd Sounds like a solid suggestion. Commercial products may come and go, but mysensors's continuity is part of its appeal. I suspect that many of the commercial products won't survive long term (many have already come and gone), so mysensors's strategy should be to remain the last man standing.

[ejlane]

@kasparsd Yes, this is a very disheartening thing to see.

I would rather not have to maintain a local version with some of the fixes that I see talked about on the forums, but since there's no movement on the code, at least from looking at github, I'm left with doing a bunch of it myself if I want to incorporate the changes.

Especially bad when the changes are in a pull request and just languishing there. It's discouraging when I want to go work on something but I need to deal with the core mysensors code before I can even get to that step.

I mean, I'll deal with it cause I still appreciate mysensors and find it a net benefit, but I can certainly understand why some people either give up on it or maybe never pick it up in the first place, seeing stuff like that.

[JeeLet]

Yes MySensors must continue, and it continues to live :)
it's a system open to all possible modifications.

an economical system, not obsolete in 1 years, not polluting Hertzian and reliable with the implementation of field bus (Rs485 - CAN)

why such a madness of technology to tell me that in my living room it is 20°C or that my front door is open?

a web server for a temperature sensor is nonsense.

Yes to the Minimalist System :)

Faithful reader of Elektor since the number 1, I see the technological progression
which leads us to our loss.

IoT objects on LoRaWan still a polluting thing*.

ByBye

• waste / health / freedom

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[OldSurferDude]

@NeverDie

I'm new-ish to MySensors. I came here because I was looking for a gateway from RF24 to MQTT and I'm well on my way to getting the MySensors version to work.

Why isn't MySensors working? I find two things really frustrating. The documentation is spotty at best. It's taking me days to get as far as I have. When I write up my own procedure for my own documentation, I find it's maybe just 20 steps, but each step needs a detailed explanation. For example, through a lot of trial and error, I found that to turn on the relay in the relay with button example I had to publish a message of 1 to the MQTT topic mysensors-in/13/1/V_LIGHT/0/2. Only later did I find the Serial Protocol 2.x. But it does't show a V_LIGHT nor S_LIGHT. Yes, I figured out that example is out of date, but that's part of the point I'm trying to make. And how did my node ID become 13 and stay 13 when I press reset on the Arduino?

You can see more detail on my frustrations in the MQTT gateway discussion

Which segues into my other frustration. about documentation. Many members offering advice do not provide links to their statements. For example, in the MQTT gateway discussion:

gohangohan MOD 3 Sept 2017, 13:15
(at)Richard-van-der-Plas "Just clone the 2.2 dev instead of the stable, the rest is the same
(emphasis mine)

How does one do that? Particularly in a world where case is important and there are three different quote marks, (excuse me, one is sometimes known as a gravé) all with different meanings.

There are many like you @NeverDie who know MySensors in-and-out. I am an experienced hardware and software engineer, retired (one of the engineers that developed ink jet printing and one of the engineers that developed a navigation system for the 747) It's not like I don't have a fundamental understanding of what's going on here. I have yet to find a way to search the forum other than using google search.

Don't get me wrong, the MySensors concept is great and functions pretty well, but if it's not well documented, then it is useless. Then when someone asks a simple questions only to get an answer with no explanation of the how, the newbie and experienced alike don't bother with the forum because the forum offers no help, either.

We had a poster at HP (when it was a great company) "No job is done until the paperwork is complete" (image of person sitting on the toilet)

[NeverDie]

@OldSurferDude If I have a question about something I generally post the question. Sometimes someone will answer it, and all is good. But on those occasions where no one answers it to my satisfaction, and I later do figure it out myself, then I return and post the answer to my own question. I think if everyone followed this protocol, it would help. What I see across forums (not just mysensors, but just about all forums everywhere) is people who post questions with a "Thanks in Advance" attitude, but who never bother to close the loop if they do find the answer. Or they never confirm whether or not someone's suggestion worked or didn't work. The result is that when searching for an answer, one has to search through a lot of posts which don't contain any useful answers. So, I would encourage everyone to return and post answers to their own questions, if no one else already has, because in all likelihood someone else will have the same question in the future. I think that one small change might make a huge difference.

[TheoL]

It would be great to see some improvements added to MySensors lib. Like a good message Queue and stuff like that. Ways to get more state out of the lib so you can provide a bit more user feedback. Right now I have some of those in my own lib. When I have time I'll post some on this forum. So others might benefit.

But I'm currently hooked up to modular synths. Learning a lot of analog technology. Which broadens my Arduino horizon.