Suddenly a Sensor is Missing, not the whole Node. (RPI Eth Gateway, HA)

[se-O-matic]

Hi,
i'm running a sensor network for a couple of years without problems. The setup is described below.
Some days ago i build an other sensor node and now suddenly a random sensor is missing a view days after HomeAssistant restart.
So, after a restart everything works perfect. But after a view days the temperature reading of one node, not always the same node, didnt work. The values for humidity and battery level still work from this node. After a restart of the Pi everything works again.
One time I didnt restart for a couple of days, even more temperature sensors failed. And again the humidity readings still work. After a restart everything works again.

My network:
A Raspberry Pi 3 with 64 Bit Raspbian. Homeassistant running in Docker.
A RFM69 rf module is connected to the GPIO of the RPI to run a ethernet gateway. I had to recompile it because of the 64 Bit structure.
I have several sensors based of an arduino structure and the RFM69 modules:

• 3 Temperature/Humidity PLUS ONE NEW Temp/Hum sensor
• 1 Temp/Hum/Light sensor
• 1 USB charger sensor (report two current values, if switched on)
• 1 power meter sensor (actually offline to rewrite the code for an new power meter with different protocol)

Additionally a couple of actuators and switches over zigbee (SonOff USB stick), like curtains and wall plugs.
And one BTLE temp/hum sensor.

---

Now I 'm a little helpless where to start the debugging. I think the problem occurs between the mysensors gateway and HomeAssistant.
Is this a space problem for storing the data?
Maybe I can switch to a more convenient setup, like an mysensors USB gateway and the HASS-OS from HomeAssistant instead of the "experimental" docker stuff?

I hope someone has a good idea to help.

Thanks!
se-O-matic

[eiten]

Hi @se-O-matic

can you please post your source code of the node in question?
You only restarted Home Assistant, not the nodes, correct?

Thanks and regards, Edi

[se-O-matic]

Hi,
thanks for the reply.
Yes, a restart of the raspberry is enough.

This is the code of the temperatur sensors:

/*
 * My Sensors Node for temperature and humidity
 * 
 * Hardware: MSN R00
 * BME280 (temp, hum) at I2C
 * 
 * Runs at 2 x AA batterys
 * 
 */

// RFM69CW at 433 MHz / Raspebrry Pi as ethernet gateway
#define MY_RADIO_RFM69
#define MY_RFM69_NEW_DRIVER
#define MY_RFM69_FREQUENCY RFM69_433MHZ 
#include <MySensors.h>

// BME280 library from Adafruit, need the Adafruit "Unified Sensor library", too
#include <Adafruit_BME280.h>

// Define child IDs and messages
#define CHILD_ID_TEMP  0
#define CHILD_ID_HUM   1
MyMessage msgTemp(CHILD_ID_TEMP, V_TEMP);
MyMessage msgHum(CHILD_ID_HUM, V_HUM);

// Define strings, which are send to the controller
#define SKETCHSTR "Temp Humidity Sensor"
#define SKETCHVER "1.0"

// Sleep time for sensor 
uint32_t SLEEP_TIME = 300000;    // sleep time between reads (seconds * 1000 milliseconds)

// Constructor for sensor
Adafruit_BME280 bme;
#define BME280_TEMP_OFFSET -1.0    // calibration ofsset for the temperature

// Battery stuff
#define EMPTY 536         // Brown Out ATMega   //536 equal to 1.8 V
#define SCALE 0.2415      // (100/950-EMPTY)    //950 equal to 3.2 V
int BATTERY_SENSE_PIN = A0;   // select the input pin for the battery sense point
int batteryPcnt = 0, oldBatteryPcnt = 0;

// Global variables for sensor values
float temp = 25.0, hum = 50.0;
float temp_last = 0.0, hum_last = 0.0;

// Helper for calculate battery percentage
int calc_pcnt(int value){
  int batteryPcnt = ((value - EMPTY) * SCALE);
  batteryPcnt = (batteryPcnt > 100) ? 100 : batteryPcnt;
  batteryPcnt = (batteryPcnt < 0) ? 0 : batteryPcnt;
  return batteryPcnt;
}

void setup() {
  // use the 1.1 V internal reference
  analogReference(INTERNAL);

  //BME280 stuff
  bme.begin(0x77);
  bme.setSampling(Adafruit_BME280::MODE_FORCED,
                  Adafruit_BME280::SAMPLING_X1,   // temperature
                  Adafruit_BME280::SAMPLING_NONE, // pressure
                  Adafruit_BME280::SAMPLING_X1,   // humidity
                  Adafruit_BME280::FILTER_OFF );

  oldBatteryPcnt = calc_pcnt(analogRead(BATTERY_SENSE_PIN));
}

void presentation()
{
  // Send the sketch version information to the gateway and Controller
  sendSketchInfo(SKETCHSTR, SKETCHVER);
 
  present(CHILD_ID_TEMP, S_TEMP, "Temperature");
  present(CHILD_ID_HUM, S_HUM, "Humidity");
}

void loop() {
  //read temp and hum and lux
  bme.takeForcedMeasurement();
  temp = bme.readTemperature();
  temp = temp + BME280_TEMP_OFFSET;
  hum = bme.readHumidity();

  if(temp != temp_last){
    send(msgTemp.set(temp, 2));
    temp_last = temp;
  }
  if(hum != hum_last){
    send(msgHum.set(hum, 2));
    hum_last = hum;
  }

  // send the battery level
  batteryPcnt = calc_pcnt(analogRead(BATTERY_SENSE_PIN));
  if (batteryPcnt < oldBatteryPcnt) {
      sendBatteryLevel(batteryPcnt);
      oldBatteryPcnt = batteryPcnt;
  }
 
  sleep(SLEEP_TIME);
}

It's also hosted on github: https://github.com/se-o-matic/msn/blob/master/Software/msn_BME280/msn_BME280.ino

Thanks!

[eiten]

Sorry @se-O-matic , but I can't see any problem. Does the temperature recover with time? I only can imagine that you have a collision on air.

[se-O-matic]

No, it does not recover.

The Problem is not easy to debug. I now want to build a serial gateway. With that, I am more flexible to test. Maybe to run MySensors on a second raspberry pi with a standard Home Assistant HASS-Os image. Or I check the MySensors network with MyController.
At this moment i run the whole system on 64 Bit raspbian, with HA in docker, which is a little bit experimental and i had to fix some lines in the ethernet gateway to compile it for 64 bit. So this is experimental, too.