Finally upgrading to 1.4 and I have a couple of questions...
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Ok, first off, I know I'm way late to the game but better late than never right?? I am having some communication issues with some of my nodes so I think it's finally time to upgrade to 1.4. I've been putting it off because I'm having too much fun building sensors.
Anyway, I have a couple of questions before I start.
- I have quite a few sensor nodes built now and most with custom code. How are people dealing with the upgrades? Are you just taking them all offline until you can get them all upgraded? Or is there a way to run a 1.4 gateway along with a 1.3 gateway? Maybe one could be Ethernet? I think I know then answer but I thought I'd ask.
1.a If the answer is yes to taking them all offline, can I have two gateways built and switch files out on the Vera side while testing? For example, upload 1.4 files to Vera and plug in 1.4 Nano Gateway then test my code for my sensor on 1.4. When finished go back to 1.3 on Vera, Gateway and sensor. I know it's a lot of work but I'm just trying to think of all my options.
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I thought I remember seeing an upgrade guide but I can't seem to find it. I have searched all over the forum. Does such a thing exist and if so, where is it located?
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Any tips or tricks before I start?
Thanks in advance!
Pete
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I just went through it and like you... I had mostly custom nodes. Learning the new API seemed a lot more daunting than it was. There was a few great posts here that helped a lot (thanks @korttoma).
I did it brute force and disconnected everything, but I can tell you it was a challenge until I got my Ethernet Gateway working. I suffered from the Serial Gateway glitching out very often sometimes every day. Since I switched to the Ethernet Gateway, I can say that I have not lost connection to my Vera controller and I have never had such a responsive network.
Check out this thread for more on switching over to ethernet
then there is always the forum here for help!!!
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It took me a while to make the jump too. - i didnt want to be without some of the stuff in production whilst i got my head around things...
my solution was to buy a second Vera lite on ebay. UI7 was also available and being curious thought id have a look at UI7 whilst giving myself a mysensors test system...justification done!
So ive had the luxury of being able to run a parallel setup wher UI7 vera is all test...
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@gregl and @BulldogLowell thanks for the replies. It's helpful to know what other people have done. I have also have had a couple of issues with my serial gateway so switching to the Ethernet is definitely going to be part of the upgrade process. The connection has been rock solid but my problem comes up if/when we lose power at our house. I have never been able to get the serial gateway to work with Vera without a unplug of the Vera which poses a problem if we are on vacation.
I was disconnected all weekend but was pondering this problem. I may end up buying a used Vera on ebay or just go dark for a week or so but thought I'd throw this out there as a potential solution:
Am I able to have two gateways connected to Vera at the same time but communicating with the sensors at different frequencies? Here's what I'm thinking... Leave my existing sensors fully functional on the serial gateway nRF24L01 channel frequency then add an Ethernet gateway with a different frequency. Then, as I upgrade a sensor to 1.4 I could change the frequency on the sensor and it would just start communicating with the Ethernet gateway with minimal downtime.
I would guess the hardest part of this theory would be with the Vera files. But, I took a look at them and it seems like it might work to replace all the references in the files from '1' to '2'. @hek do you think this work work? I don't know too much about Vera plugins but this could possibly be a good solution for this and future version upgrades.
Thanks again,
Pete
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Hi Pete,
Do you have a vera3? Or vera lite?
If lite, then watch your vera memory... Too many plugins and devices and vera will fall over... :-(
I'd get a second vera...or there is a new vera just about to ship.. Vera edge... Its got same memory as vera3 so not a massive upgrade, and It will only run UI7.
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Well I decided not to try the multiple gateway method. Too many opportunities for me to screw something up. I decided to work on the code ahead of time and convert all sensors in a weekend.
For the most part it was very smooth. I had two nodes that wouldn't communicate with the gateway then I figured out that they were trying to communicate with a node that I had inadvertently made into a relay node. Once I cleared Eeprom and re-uploaded the code they found the gateway and worked great.
One node I still haven't figured out. It will update all sensors (I have a barometer, DHT22 and moisture sensor connected) but it stops after the first time. I haven't had time to try to debug but it was working fine in v1.3. I'll post back when I finally get it figured out in case it helps anyone else who still needs to upgrade.
