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Need feedback for correct direction

samjaynes last edited by

I have been researching home automation for several months now off and on (time permitting). I have two Arduino Unos, Raspberry Pi 2, and Raspberry Pi 3. I admit, I am a newbie to wireless RF communications, etc, but willing to learn.

I have been looking at this site, the Uber instructable that people have referred to, OpenHAB, etc. My initial scope is to monitor my garage door monitor, parking sensor, and hopefully some lights at some point. Then maybe into camera.

The issue I have is a lot of the articles I read are old, and I am wondering if I am exploring old technology when there could be easier implementations out there.

Would it be easier to buy an open source out of the box solution?
If DIY, what framework is preferred? Is a seperate gateway needed, or can that be house on the same OS board (For example, Pi with OpenHAB, Mosqitto, and NRF2401L etc)
If DIY, is NRF2401L+ still decent, or 8266 better? Suitable from garage to in the house?
If DIY, what is the preferred UI / app level? OpenHAB, etc
If DIY, your feedback...

Thanks again for your time, look forward to getting some current feedback
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@andriej Hi, I had problem using the main branch mysensors/Raspberry, that because of the bit-field struct (header_s) in Sensor.h They will get packed in different order on the arduino compared to the RPi (at least with my compiler, gcc). In order to fix this I created the 1.4dev branch. It uses full bytes instead of the bit-fields, but you need (of cause) to compile both the sensors (arduino) and the gateway (RPi) using the 1.4dev branch. We need to fix this in the main branch later on (and use the same files as in mysensors/Arduino/libraries/MySensors)
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@eiten Ran into the same error but of course the community is always at hand, ready to help! Great! I'm using MySensors 2.3.2 release version. Downgrading the ESP8266 board library to 2.7.4 as suggested by @OldSurferDude did the trick. I'm still clinging to MySensors. So simple and inexpensive to use! All sensors and other stuff connects over three MQTT GW in three locations back to my Home Assistant. PS: Get well soon! Regards, Gunnar
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@mimaret It was a pleasure. Thank you for your feedback!
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@OldSurferDude Thanks a very valued to know. I was wondering today why my (big) powerbanks fall down after short time. I have small 1 & 2-pieces powerbanks, they work very well. I use also BSM hw-168 or hw-107 for charging single 18650. Will try to use them outside also with small solarpanels.
Running out of nodeId's
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@TheoL Not only did I put in delays, too, but I put in delays that were based upon the ID (which was stored in NVRAM)! This helped. caveat: This is probably not accurate be helps to explain the challenges with a large network. My initial experience with Arduino/nRF24 was using the libraries from TMRh20. Those libraries allowed a node to be a repeater, but only for 6 nodes. The primary node 0, master, only allowed 6 nodes to connect to it. The nodes connected to it also allowed 6 nodes. Subsequent nodes had to go through one of these repeating nodes. But the depth was only 4 deep. The master assigned node IDs if the node didn't already have one; similar to a MAC address. The master also kept track of the addresses (ARP table?). Addresses were 4 octets (base in the form of D/C/B/A. A node connected directly to the master had an address of 0/0/0/a (where 0/0/0/0 was reserved for the master). A node connected through another node had an address of 0/0/b/a, and so forth. But what happens is that a parent node has to mange the data from all its child nodes and their child nodes and their child nodes. Thus a node would get so bogged down dealing with this traffic that it din't do its sensor task very well. It is my belief that MySensors either uses TMRh20's libraries or has developed some aspects based on his initial work. I see that that TMRh20 has a version 2 and I have not experimented with it. I did find that MySensors worked better than version 1. Thus, my curiosity. I am also duly impressed at the magnitude of hardware. Currently a nano like device from Aliexperss is US$2-3, nRF24 ~ US$1, power supply ~ US$1.50, power cord ?, case?, sensors!? While the hardware cost is daunting, even with a PCB it's a lot of work building those up. So, yeah, I'm impressed! -OSD
Old hardware migration
General Discussion • • dbemowsk

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@OldSurferDude My old 2.0 setup is with nRF24L01 radios. This is a link to the thread on some light switches that I designed and built. https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7376/us-decora-wall-switch-continued/2 I am aware that you cannot have two MQTT gatways. When I designed my old setup I was not that familiar with MQTT so I never ended up implementing it. On the home assistant server that I have set up though, I have installed the MQTT broker on there so I should be able to comunicate with any MySensors stuff over MQTT in the future devices I make/set up. As I mentioned, I do have a Home Assistant box that I have started about 4 months ago and eventually want to migrate my Vera equipment to the HA box. As for the YAML and Python, I'll muddle my way through. used to program in PHP and have done enough on Arduino that I'm sure it won't hurt my brain too much.

Need feedback for correct direction

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Need feedback for correct direction

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