Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?

[alexsh1]

When I was doing electronics at school, Plug&play devices just did not exist.

There is choice right now.

[gohan]

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

[NeverDie]

I think what most people wanted wasn't actually HA but rather remote control. And now they have it, via the myriad of devices that can now be controlled via their smart phone or Alexa.

[alexsh1]

@neverdie This is how I started. I needed a remote for hot water heating (when returning from vocation)

[alowhum]

I've been working on a small demonstrator site to get some discussion going about how to make MySensors more appealing to beginners. It's meant as a discussion piece for now. Curious to hear your thoughts.

http://www.cloakingcompany.com/home/

[alexsh1]

@gohan my school days were long before that. Even 486 was not out yet.
The PC I used at school had 16kb of memory and I used a Hifi tape to load a simple program for 5 mins

[gohan]

I had a C64 with tapes

[alexsh1]

@gohan said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:

I had a C64 with tapes

Commondore was a luxury (64Kb of RAM!!!!). Only one out of many had it at home :-)

[tbowmo]

@gohan @alexsh1

I had a lambda8300 (zx81 clone) as my first computer 2kb ram, I had a expansion module with a whopping 32kb of ram. this was mid 80's. In 1988 I got a C64. Ahh the nostalgia :)

[zboblamont]

@tbowmo Hah, you were lucky, I finally upgraded from the monochrome to colour...

[Nca78]

@tbowmo said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:

I had a lambda8300 (zx81 clone) as my first computer 2kb ram, I had a expansion module with a whopping 32kb of ram. this was mid 80's. In 1988 I got a C64. Ahh the nostalgia :)

Enough to run MySensors, we should have a Z80 version with serial transport. Or infrared for a full wireless experience on the Canon X-07 I typed my first programming lines on.
That thing was awesome, very well built, portable and with advanced features allowing some very original use:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eAAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56&dq=Canon+X-07&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmvILvtoXSAhXJAMAKHfYhBQ0Q6AEIJDAC#v=onepage&q=Canon X-07&f=false

[Yveaux]

@nca78 First port Arduino to it ;-)

Btw, nice magazine link :+1:

It show Tesla's predecessor:

and some saw add-on (not sure if it would pass today's safety standards though ;-) )

[alexsh1]

@zboblamont Good for you. I still play with these:

[NeverDie]

@alexsh1 By "play" I hope you mean making them, not riding them!

[alexsh1]

@neverdie Nope! I meant riding :relaxed: :relaxed: :relaxed:

[zboblamont]

@alexsh1 You will go far....

[alowhum]

So.. no reaction on the little demo website I created?

https://www.cloakingcompany.com/home

[Nca78]

@alowhum said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:

So.. no reaction on the little demo website I created?

https://www.cloakingcompany.com/home

It seems nice (can't see everything as it's extremely slow to load, probably due to my shitty internet connection), this could be a great starting point for beginners. A list of simple tutorial with a cleaner and much more modern looking UI that current website and a commercially available arduino/nrf24 adapter could go a long way to ease adoption of MySensors.
The only problem I see is it's based on an atmega setup which will probably soon be deprecated for MySensors.

[alowhum]

@nca78 said in Fewer home automation postings? What's behind it?:

The only problem I see is it's based on an atmega setup which will probably soon be deprecated for MySensors.

Yes that is an issue. For now I'm trying to keep the sketches so simple that the simple signing and encryption feature will still work. I read that in MySensors 2.3 a goal was to make the encryption and signing features use less ram, so there might still be some life left in the Nano :-)

I also found an STM32 board that has a NRF socket built in. But that has to be manually soldered, and it also make sensors less easy to connect (fewer GND and VCC pins).