Home Assistant Green Controller with Sensebender gateway?
-
Hi folks - I am new to this space so please don't crucify me if this a dumb question: A few years ago, I purchased a heap of NRF24L01+ boards and a few Sensebender gateway boards planning to hook these up to Widows hosted Domoticz controller. Ran out of time to play then - and are now looking at a Home Assistant Green instead of Domoticz as I am now keen on a fanless host. My question is what would be the best Green/Sensebender interface to use (assuming it is possible/practical?).
Thanks in advance for your help/mercy :)
-
You have three ways to for the gateway to communicate to Home Assistant (HA), serial, ethernet, and MQTT.
It comes to this: A serial gateway will be in very close proximity to the HA Green. It is very simple to set up. ethernet or MQTT can be anywhere there is ethernet or WiFi, but not so simple to set up.
The latter two require ethernet connectivity hardware added. This makes the configuration much more complicated and, if going this way, I'd recommend the RPi zero 2W with your radio of choice running Raspberry Pi OS as your gateway. The gateway software runs in the OS (I run this set up).
The serial gateway is a wired connection to your HA Green and the HA Green would power it. The location of your HA Green/serial gateway probably take some experimentation.
The downside is the range of your radio. Fortunately, with repeater nodes or nodes that also act as repeaters, too, this isn't too bad. I find the range, line-of-sight, no obstructions about 10m. Or, 3m through 1 wall.
I am unfamiliar with Sensebender. Googling it I find one from Itead one from OpenHardware. I'm not finding much in the way of documentation. :(
I am familiar with the RF-Nano (Arduino Nano compatible with nRF24 built in) and would offer much the same capabilities as the Sensbender. The range on the RF-Nano is a bit less than that of the stand-alone nRF24.
The Nano is powered from the computer, though from what I can glean from the docs, the Sensebender would also require a serial-to-USB adapter (use 3V3 pin on adapter for power). This is amazingly simple hardware.
The Nano gateway can also have sensors. This is very cool for me because I run HA in a virtual box under Ubuntu on a refurb PC. The serial gateway is a Nano compatible and I use it to "push" buttons on a remote. I'm not using a radio at all. Essentially the Nano and MySensors gateway software gives me I/O ports for my pc.
Let us know how your project goes.
-
You have three ways to for the gateway to communicate to Home Assistant (HA), serial, ethernet, and MQTT.
It comes to this: A serial gateway will be in very close proximity to the HA Green. It is very simple to set up. ethernet or MQTT can be anywhere there is ethernet or WiFi, but not so simple to set up.
The latter two require ethernet connectivity hardware added. This makes the configuration much more complicated and, if going this way, I'd recommend the RPi zero 2W with your radio of choice running Raspberry Pi OS as your gateway. The gateway software runs in the OS (I run this set up).
The serial gateway is a wired connection to your HA Green and the HA Green would power it. The location of your HA Green/serial gateway probably take some experimentation.
The downside is the range of your radio. Fortunately, with repeater nodes or nodes that also act as repeaters, too, this isn't too bad. I find the range, line-of-sight, no obstructions about 10m. Or, 3m through 1 wall.
I am unfamiliar with Sensebender. Googling it I find one from Itead one from OpenHardware. I'm not finding much in the way of documentation. :(
I am familiar with the RF-Nano (Arduino Nano compatible with nRF24 built in) and would offer much the same capabilities as the Sensbender. The range on the RF-Nano is a bit less than that of the stand-alone nRF24.
The Nano is powered from the computer, though from what I can glean from the docs, the Sensebender would also require a serial-to-USB adapter (use 3V3 pin on adapter for power). This is amazingly simple hardware.
The Nano gateway can also have sensors. This is very cool for me because I run HA in a virtual box under Ubuntu on a refurb PC. The serial gateway is a Nano compatible and I use it to "push" buttons on a remote. I'm not using a radio at all. Essentially the Nano and MySensors gateway software gives me I/O ports for my pc.
Let us know how your project goes.
Thanks for your comprehensive response OldSurferDude. Judging from the lack of mentions, it looks like the Sensebender gateway never really took off. I will follow your suggestion with RF-Nano, but will need to make sure that the HA Green will support a serial interface (nothing taken for granted now) - will probably go down the RP path if not. Will let you know how I go - I may be away for some time :)
-
Funny that it's been forgotten a bit, but the Sensebender was official hardware of Mysensors. https://www.mysensors.org/hardware/sensebender-gateway
The official source was through itead, and it's actually still available to order, which really surprised me! https://itead.cc/product/mysensors-gateway/
It worked well when I used it, but whenever I had another idea of something I wanted to build, I kept running into problems with mysensors, and had to rework things. I finally ended up giving up and going with ESPHome, since it's still actively supported. I didn't throw away my hardware, and still might come back someday, but with my limited free time, I chose that route.
-
More information showing the versatility of your journey
From my perspective, the choice between ESPHome and MySensors comes down to what kind of coder you are. If you are comfortable with python, you should go with ESPHome. If you're comfortable with compiled programs, like c++, go with MySensors with the Arduino IDE. The learning curve for one or the other depends on from which background you come.
ESP devices use WiFi to connect. I have found that typical home routers (my experience is with Asus) have a problems when you get to about 25 devices WiFi connected devices. The symptoms are devices have problems connecting or disconnect intermittently.
MySensors is not well supported in that there are only a few people that check in regularly. That said, the documentation is very good and answers can be found on this forum. In a sense, self supported. It provides a pretty rock-solid protocol/API. It is your hands-on, bit-banging, low-level code that you do to make your sensor/actuator go.
ESP devices have the ability to be updated OTA (over the air) and are supported in MySensors
I find that ESPHome blends the protocol/API with the actual function which can make it difficult to debug. Natively, it is lacking some capability. This lack can be covered with JSON and Jinja, which steepens the learning curve. But, again, a python background is helpful.
Tasmota is another way to go when using ESP devices in Home Assistant. It is a state-machine (which works well for simple devices). The protocol/API is rock-solid. It has templates for a lot of devices and it just works. After initially programmed, updates are OTA. I have even updated a Tasmota programmed device with Arduino IDE OTA code and vice-versa.
With HA as your controller, none of the technologies are mutually exclusive!
-
Funny that it's been forgotten a bit, but the Sensebender was official hardware of Mysensors. https://www.mysensors.org/hardware/sensebender-gateway
The official source was through itead, and it's actually still available to order, which really surprised me! https://itead.cc/product/mysensors-gateway/
It worked well when I used it, but whenever I had another idea of something I wanted to build, I kept running into problems with mysensors, and had to rework things. I finally ended up giving up and going with ESPHome, since it's still actively supported. I didn't throw away my hardware, and still might come back someday, but with my limited free time, I chose that route.
@ejlane Thanks for the Sensebender info :)
-
More information showing the versatility of your journey
From my perspective, the choice between ESPHome and MySensors comes down to what kind of coder you are. If you are comfortable with python, you should go with ESPHome. If you're comfortable with compiled programs, like c++, go with MySensors with the Arduino IDE. The learning curve for one or the other depends on from which background you come.
ESP devices use WiFi to connect. I have found that typical home routers (my experience is with Asus) have a problems when you get to about 25 devices WiFi connected devices. The symptoms are devices have problems connecting or disconnect intermittently.
MySensors is not well supported in that there are only a few people that check in regularly. That said, the documentation is very good and answers can be found on this forum. In a sense, self supported. It provides a pretty rock-solid protocol/API. It is your hands-on, bit-banging, low-level code that you do to make your sensor/actuator go.
ESP devices have the ability to be updated OTA (over the air) and are supported in MySensors
I find that ESPHome blends the protocol/API with the actual function which can make it difficult to debug. Natively, it is lacking some capability. This lack can be covered with JSON and Jinja, which steepens the learning curve. But, again, a python background is helpful.
Tasmota is another way to go when using ESP devices in Home Assistant. It is a state-machine (which works well for simple devices). The protocol/API is rock-solid. It has templates for a lot of devices and it just works. After initially programmed, updates are OTA. I have even updated a Tasmota programmed device with Arduino IDE OTA code and vice-versa.
With HA as your controller, none of the technologies are mutually exclusive!
@OldSurferDude Thanks for the additional perspective - I haven't done much coding, so no prefs there, but have assumed the MySensors will better support a battery powered sensors ecosystem
-
There is a collection of techniques that can reduce energy consumption of the Nano. (eg, remove power applied LED) I've read about µA's during sleep periods.
The ESP-12F clearly achieves this and can be a MySensors by adding a radio. Note that if WiFi is not disabled, savings are probably lost because the WiFi is energy hungry. This would have me leaning towards MySensors rather than ESPHome.
My experience tells me that the Nano is more durable than the ESP.
Another tip: If you're going to put your sensor in a harsh environment, after you have assembled it, "paint" it with electrical lacquer.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login