Custom sensors

[marceltrapman]

While working on my temparature/fan sensor/actuator I wanted to add a 'Fan' device to monitor the fan speed.
I assume you want me to use the variable 1-5 types for this.

But, what if I want to add my own sensor type and ignore the above variable types?

Do you consider it 'safe' to do so starting type id 200 or so or can/should I implement this differently?

[hek]

If you have good candidates, we'll add it to the device-list and make it "official".

[axillent]

@marceltrapman If you need a most simple solution just send your fan speed as power in watts, It will be displayed left-bottom corner of the device in vera

it will be "passive" display

or use dimmer to combine display and controll

[marceltrapman]

I am not looking for how to do this @axillent. I have that covered. It is just that I want to 'discuss' what variable I should use.

@hek Based on your reply I assume you consider 'fan speed' not to be such a candidate?

[axillent]

@marceltrapman we thought it through a few months ago. If we will try to create a new VAR_FAN for each specific solution we will easily run out from the available numbers.
This why we use a special numbers only for limited staff and the rest can be covered with VAR_1-VAR_5

It is still not much experience with the project. May be in a year it will be a good base to review the approach

p.s. IMHO

[hek]

@marceltrapman
@axillent

We have very few device-types today and I think "fan" is a good candidate actually.

(for Vera we might use a dimmer to represent fan but other controllers they might want to show some other symbol etc.)

On variable-ids we should probably be a bit more restrictive (now). But for the next version of the OTA protocol we could perhaps consider having a separate set of variables per sensor type. Then this is a no-issue as we will get 255 possible variable-types per sensor-type.

[marceltrapman]

@axillent I understand and agree :)

I will try to be creative...

[BulldogLowell]

@hek

I like the fan idea. an everyday item that is in a lot of homes.

Here in the US we see mainly 3 speed fans. It would be great to see a four button interface, OFF, LOW, MED, HI

I have never even looked into developing a 'device' on vera; would that be too hard?

We could develop a capacitor speed control board, like what you all did for the RGBW lights, no?

[hek]

Creating a new device type on Vera is not that hard, just a few config files.

But finding a standard set of speeds for a fan is harder. There might be all kinds of configurations here. Maybe a dimmer-slider is the best way to handle this and the sketch has to translate it into the local-attached fans step-levels. So in your example setting fan-slider to just above 50% represents MED-speed on fan.

Then we're back to the Dimmer device with a custom icon :smile:

[BulldogLowell]

@hek said:

Creating a new device type on Vera is not that hard, just a few config files.

But finding a standard set of speeds for a fan is harder. There might be all kinds of configurations here. Maybe a dimmer-slider is the best way to handle this and the sketch has to translate it into the local-attached fans step-levels. So in your example setting fan-slider to just above 50% represents MED-speed on fan.

Then we're back to the Dimmer device with a custom icon :smile:

Right then, that works for me.

anything that works, works! I have a few fans I want to Arduino-ize. :wink:

[axillent]

@BulldogLowell you can use regular dim controll to control fans with just a few speeds
I use so with my kitchen fan which is drived automatically depending on the oven power consumption
my fan has 3 speeds (and off position), so I use 3 SSR to manage one of the 3 speeds and I'm using dim on vera side
whatever value i will select on dim my device will approximate it into one of 4 positions and will return a new value back to vera
this behaves very well

[BulldogLowell]

@axillent

hmmm... you are controlling with arduino?

[axillent]

@BulldogLowell i have build a few devices based on MySensors project and they are doing their job for a few months already

[BulldogLowell]

@axillent

great, did you post them already?

I'd like to start a fan project.

[marceltrapman]

While thinking about this. There are these 5 generic variables. But are there any generic sensors?

Imho the 'ARDUINO_NODE' and 'ARDUINO_RELAY' are boards and not sensors so they can't be used for that.

Shouldn't we have something like 'BINARY' and maybe 'VARIABLE'.

I know that Indigo uses generic naming for z-wave devices that they do not recognise but here we are in a different play field, creating our own sensors.

Or am I missing something here?

[hek]

@marceltrapman

Vera also got some generic device it shows for unrecognized or missing device files. Let me think about it... GENERIC might be good to add to the device list to match the VAR1-5.

[marceltrapman]

'GENERIC' would do too I guess because the var1-5 values can be used for binary as well as any other value obviously.

[hek]

@marceltrapman

Ahh.. ok, now I understand what you mean.. You need to transfer binary data to the controller? I have added a flag in the message-structure for this... but it has not been implemented fully (the serial protocol should produce base64 encoded output for payload or similar when this flag is set).

And Vera controller does not consider this flag.

[axillent]

@marceltrapman are you looking for binary transfer between node and vera or between two nodes?
i would like to see an application which requires binary transfer with vera. Currently do not see it

for node to node it is good to have an ability to transfer any kind of custom data including binary.
in my view it can be very useful to define own custom struct and transfer it between nodes

[hek]

@axillent

Marcel is developing a MySensor plugin for the indigo controller .
http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/62/plugin-for-indigo-for-mac