Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?
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@alowhum
Some more personal remarks (hard to do in english, to be honest):Reading your postings wrt. to the DS18B20 things and your enhancement proposals, I can somehow understand about your frustration. (The DS18B20 and BME280 I also use, so this is a part I can follow to some extend, other than a lot of other hardware you mentioned). I also suffered from changes in the libs that made it not to easy to get things going (routines from "the outer world" becoming private and so on). And some of the comments on your code in the mentioned thread are rather hard to understand or interpret.
As I also did one pull request in the past, I also know how high one's frustration tolerance has to be just to get through the necessary organisational process (including copyright questions and so on).But: this is necessary stuff to go through... And the devs here are really doing a great job in quality assurance - at least imo.. But to be honest: It also took me quite a lot of time to find out, how difficult it in fact is to choose the right compromise between a lot of aspects.
Just one example: Your last proposal wrt. to temperature was to use BME280 as a future standard. Did you ever use more than 2 temp sensors on one node? Most likely not, as this is more or less only possible using the 1wire protocoll (I have around 25 of them on 3 nodes using 7 Pins as data lines).
And BME280: Try to compile the last version of the lib for ATMega328: It's broken... And the lib consumes way more memory (ok, to be honest: most likely most is for doing forecast calculations).
So please keep two things in mind:- The two of us just see a small part of the world and are just about to start understanding how things really fit together. So going just one step after the next is best way to do. Don't be to eager, good ideas will find their way in the MySensors or Arduino code base.
- There are a lot of forums around, but only a few have the spirit you find here: If you ask your questions, you will most likely get a friendly answer that could bring your project forward!
So a big thank you to all the devs and mods around here! Great job!
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Examples based on external libraries are also difficult to maintain as libraries change over time and after some months sketches could fail to compile. Personally I'd prefer SHT31 over BME280 because of accuracy and the internal heater to dry up the humidity sensors to get more precise readings.
Unfortunately working with nodes at this level it is not for beginners IMHO, you need some skills especially when it comes to debug problems: if you are not able to fix come compilation errors and understand how to debug a complex nodes network, you will eventually get stuck sooner or later. -
Not always easy to find time
I just can say there are a lot of ideas, work in progress etc by MySensors team. to improve user experience, but I can't tell you more :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:@alowhum
maybe, you could:- publish articles, howtos on openhardware or the forum so it could be easily linked in mysensors.org, and get feedbacks from the community etc
- PR on github when possible, there is a dedicated repo for mysensors sketch too
- do your own website, or blog etc where you would share your xp. sure why not
there are pros and cons I imagine. in each case you'll help people ;)
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Not always easy to find time
I just can say there are a lot of ideas, work in progress etc by MySensors team. to improve user experience, but I can't tell you more :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:@alowhum
maybe, you could:- publish articles, howtos on openhardware or the forum so it could be easily linked in mysensors.org, and get feedbacks from the community etc
- PR on github when possible, there is a dedicated repo for mysensors sketch too
- do your own website, or blog etc where you would share your xp. sure why not
there are pros and cons I imagine. in each case you'll help people ;)
@scalz said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:
I can't tell you more :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Yes, that's what I was referring to. But anyways, I should be ignored again.
Edit: definitely should.
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Intended as constructive criticism: I think more expressive diagnostics would go a long way toward helping newcomers troubleshoot what's going wrong with their particular situation. The serial output is cryptic to the uninitiated, and although there is a log parser, it seems incomplete and probably not very illuminating to newcomers.
Toward that end: I was very intrigued by someone's recent posted project that was a kind of connection "doctor" that would help diagnose. Seemed like it had a lot of potential and might even buttress the above. Anyone tried it?
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@scalz said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:
I can't tell you more :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Yes, that's what I was referring to. But anyways, I should be ignored again.
Edit: definitely should.
there can be certain things preventing one disclosing projects.. Most of it is probably the fear of getting swarmed by requests about progress of the project, since it is so awesome that people just can't wait for it :)
Do remember, that we are all here using our (limited) sparetime, and have a lot of other activities going on as side projects as well.. For my part, I have about 1 hour a day during the evening, that I can devote to "Me time", that is for mysensors and all the other projects that I work on. And also trying to learn new skills, that could be useful for my daytime job :). And I do have way too many projects rolling at the moment.. :) And I know that @scalz is not on the lazy side as well, when it comes to fun projects that take up his time.. :)
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Of course, projects are always difficult to manage and often they must be completely flipped like an omelet.
But what seems recurrent is that only a small group of people knows whats the next step in development. So someone starts doing anything and by the time he wants to pr discovers that the sources had changed path and what he has done, now doesn't make sense. Or simply, opinions and ideas are ignored as they happen to be incompatible or undesirable for the (secret) idea of the project.
I think is something inherent with open source projects. But sometimes is discouraging.
I think it may be solutions for publishing wanted changes and preventing people annoying developers.
I would like a future where desired functionalities would be published in a list and anyone could sign for doing them.Sorry if words look rough, I assure is not intended, I still have problems with the english.
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Of course, projects are always difficult to manage and often they must be completely flipped like an omelet.
But what seems recurrent is that only a small group of people knows whats the next step in development. So someone starts doing anything and by the time he wants to pr discovers that the sources had changed path and what he has done, now doesn't make sense. Or simply, opinions and ideas are ignored as they happen to be incompatible or undesirable for the (secret) idea of the project.
I think is something inherent with open source projects. But sometimes is discouraging.
I think it may be solutions for publishing wanted changes and preventing people annoying developers.
I would like a future where desired functionalities would be published in a list and anyone could sign for doing them.Sorry if words look rough, I assure is not intended, I still have problems with the english.
@sergio-rius You know about the MySenors roadmap? It's open visible to everybody here: https://github.com/mysensors/MySensors/projects. Aint't that the sort of "list" you were thinking of?
Not being part of the dev community, but most likely there are no "hidden side projects", so in case you have additional ideas for the roadmap, feel free to open an issue on github ;-) .
But most likely we are far OT by now here.
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@sergio-rius You know about the MySenors roadmap? It's open visible to everybody here: https://github.com/mysensors/MySensors/projects. Aint't that the sort of "list" you were thinking of?
Not being part of the dev community, but most likely there are no "hidden side projects", so in case you have additional ideas for the roadmap, feel free to open an issue on github ;-) .
But most likely we are far OT by now here.
@rejoe2 No, I didn't see this. Been out more than a year by an accident and I'm still getting used to all the changes.
Thanks! -
@neverdie If you are referring to me, no. I'm not complaining. Just wanting to contribute but I'm to slow to take the train in time. Sorry if seemed anything else.
@sergio-rius Sorry for the somehow misleading referer: Meant was : "Me not beeing ..."
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Just my 2 cents
What @NeverDie is saying is true - it may be seasonal or just a decline trend very hard to say.
I do see this across all HA forums.
Firstly, a normal temp/hum node is not exciting any more - it has to be more intellegent. Like Alexa, please tell me ...
Another thing is that generally with social media development, I did notice a lot of forums activity has declined or simply stopped.Let’s not forget that there are many plug and plug HA solutions and DIY may not appeal to all people
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DIY in HA requires a lot of skills to be put together: I don't know many people with programming background, electronics, soldering, electrical work, computers, networking and so on. In addition if you start looking at machine learning to make stuff actually smart, that would kill everyone enthusiasm :sweat_smile:
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DIY in HA requires a lot of skills to be put together: I don't know many people with programming background, electronics, soldering, electrical work, computers, networking and so on. In addition if you start looking at machine learning to make stuff actually smart, that would kill everyone enthusiasm :sweat_smile:
@gohan +1 to that.
My father was electrician and tought me something. I'm programmer and I also do lots of database and network design and management... And I can assure you that combining skills needed for today's ha development is not trivial.
It's because microcontrollers language and flashing methods. If powerful and efficient ones that could run any Java or lua like language, loaded through simple Bluetooth were developed, the situation would radically change.
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DIY in HA requires a lot of skills to be put together: I don't know many people with programming background, electronics, soldering, electrical work, computers, networking and so on. In addition if you start looking at machine learning to make stuff actually smart, that would kill everyone enthusiasm :sweat_smile:
@gohan That's true, but I am talking about "Wow" factor. Remember the first iPhone? When I got my first iPhone 4, it was quite something. Now, I am looking at the same phone and saying how come I liked it? The same is here. 5 years ago a remote temperature sensor was - WOW! Now, this is just a sensor. I am sure you have plenty of these around.
The question is what incentives newbies have to learn all those skills you mentioned vs plug&play devices available where no learning/DIY is required. There is a video on the youtube about a guy doing DIY mobile iPhone from components in China upgrading a flash memory from 16Gb to 128Gb just to prove that this can be done.
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@gohan That's true, but I am talking about "Wow" factor. Remember the first iPhone? When I got my first iPhone 4, it was quite something. Now, I am looking at the same phone and saying how come I liked it? The same is here. 5 years ago a remote temperature sensor was - WOW! Now, this is just a sensor. I am sure you have plenty of these around.
The question is what incentives newbies have to learn all those skills you mentioned vs plug&play devices available where no learning/DIY is required. There is a video on the youtube about a guy doing DIY mobile iPhone from components in China upgrading a flash memory from 16Gb to 128Gb just to prove that this can be done.
@alexsh1 Truly, but that's what it's meant to be.
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Actually zwave, x10, zigbee and enocean devices have been on the market for some years if you wanted some HA and they are plug&play (they stil require someone with Electrical skills), but 50$ a piece didn't make them very affordable for everyone
