💬 Building a Serial Gateway

[wahid]

Hello,
im kind of lost, i need to install a distance sensor buried in a well of water, and will need a lot of tweaking and reprogramming until i get the desired correct measurements.
so i need OTA, extremely low power (battery powered, sleeps most of time), so i went to ultrasonic sensor HC04 which is even powered through GPIO of pro mini, and an nrf24l01+. the main problem is OTA. My concerns are:

1. should i burn MYSBOOTLOADER on sensor and Serial GW ?
2. if bootlader burnt, any sketch can do the OTA?
3. should I use only MySensors GW SW, or can i have my own sketch.
   Any ideas are welcome.
   Thanks a lot

[siouxme]

Is there a way to make a serial2mqtt gateway (e.g. a NodeMCU is getting MySensor data on the serial interface and should just bridge that to MQTT)?

[Yveaux]

@siouxme there is a direct mqtt gateway that you can build, so you don't need the serial step inbetween. See the list of gateways.

[alowhum]

Is it possible to get a list of all attached nodes? I'd like to attach a TFT screen to the gateway that shows all the connected devices.

[mfalkvidd]

@alowhum there is no such thing as an attachment in a MySensors network.

Nodes send messages whenever they like. The nodes may go to sleep at any time, which would make them unavailable.

The gateway does not store information about when a node last communicated, nor about which child sensors have been presented.

[alowhum]

@mfalkvidd Thanks. Would it be possible to generate that list somehow? Perhaps by listening to what nodes connect to it?

It doesn't matter if they are offline or not, it doesn't have to be perfect.

[mfalkvidd]

@alowhum yes. That's how a controller learns about the nodes :)

[alowhum]

But could the gateway itself do it too? If so, do you have any suggestions on where I should start? How can I "hook into" the gateway to find out what devices are communicating with it? Is there example code of this?

[mfalkvidd]

@alowhum yes you could build a controller into the gateway.

The receive function will be called for each incoming message. You can react to the messages inside receive().

[mfalkvidd]

These threads might be useful
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/1973/esp8266-as-wifi-gateway-controller-node
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/4528/esp8266-as-a-gateway-and-controller

[alowhum]

Thanks!!

[rodaman]

After 3 years of using RADIO_RF24 i replaced my all sensors with espeasy. It was just big battle with lost transmissions, disconnections, every day problems. Now for many days silence...Everything works.I still use mysensors in diferrent setup but NRF Radio is asking for trouble.

[maaaaaaaaaartin]

I tried building a serial gateway using an Arduino Nano, but it never worked (both gateway and node start, but node keeps saying NO REPLY). I used the same NRF24 module directly on the Raspberry Pi, and built a Raspberry Pi gateway, it worked perfectly. Any idea on what might be going on? Thanks!

[mfalkvidd]

@maaaaaaaaaartin most common problem is that the power source is not stable enough for the nrf24.

[APL2017]

Can serial gateway be build on Atmel 168 chip instead of 328 in terms of memory? It compiles fine, but leaves little extra memory for variables.

[mfalkvidd]

@APL2017 how much is left?

[APL2017]

Sketch uses 13634 bytes (95%) of program storage space. Maximum is 14336 bytes. Global variables use 731 bytes (71%) of dynamic memory, leaving 293 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 1024 bytes.

I noticed parsing error in my controller log and switched to 328P. I bought 168P by mistake and wondering how I can use it. Does simple mySensors node require less ROM/RAM than gateway?

[mfalkvidd]

@APL2017 a very simple node, yes. But a node using a sensor library can often need more flash and ram than a gateway. I have tried to fit things into the atmega168 (I also bought wrong devices) but gave up. Unless you think it is a fun and interesting challenge, it will not be worth the time.

[APL2017]

@mfalkvidd Thank you, I will donate 168P to some other Arduino enthusiast.

[mariusl]

Why would the gateway send a NACK to any node? The node only received one OK and then just NACK
17764 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,1-1-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=1,st=OK:
22773 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
22775 TSM:FPAR
29779 ?TSF:MSG:SEND,1-1-255-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,ft=0,st=NACK:
34789 !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY
34791 TSM:FPAR