Keeping MySensors relavant
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Hi there.
I've been using MySensors for many years now. Before I discovered MySensors I was using Arduinos and the nNF24 radio using TMRh20's library.
I think MySensors is still relevant. It serves as a simple gateway for very low level sensors and actuators. For example, I have a water lift system that takes water from a seep and pumps it up 9 meters to blue barrels. The logic to do it is simple, but communication between the various levels makes running wire not practical nor reliable in an active garden, particularly one on a hillside. Yes, power is needed, but only in a few places.
So a few relays to turn on pumps and twice as many float sensors to know when the barrels are full and empty. "Start the pump when it is full and the next level is not full. Stop the pump when empty or the next level is full" The MySensors environment is ideal for this.
ESP devices have the WiFi radio. Two downsides, the ESP devices are not as robust as Arduinos (I have a lot of dead ESP devices and very few Arduinos) and too many overwhelm the WiFi network.
Zigbee, I can't make it work reliably and like Z-Wave, it doesn't have the flexibility. Insteon falls in this category, too.
And the radio range is about the same for all systems.
Cost for Arduino or ESP is negligible compared to others.
But, again, figure out how to get the sensor data and drop into MySensors.
So help me out here, be a MySensors advocate. When appropriate, I link to MySensors in the Home Assistant forum.
-OSD
