Parallel Gateways

[jocke4u]

Hi,

I have an Arduino Ethernet Gateway with NRF24L01+ PA/LNA since several years. Now I want to switch over to Raspberry Pi Ethernet Gateway with the same type of radio.

Is it possible to have two gateways running in parallel or will they interfere with each other and/or the sensors?
Just to make the development/testing without much downtime.

Are there any special issues to think of when doing a migration and/or actions that need to done?

[rejoe2]

@jocke4u In which aspects do you expect problems?
Imo it's just a question how your controller deals with that. E.g. in FHEM, one can switch around IO devices without problems, and a second GW will just "see" all messages beeing send. Note: Using both to controll anything most likely isn't a good idea.
I assume, you already know the PI-GW-variants to be more tricky than ordinary serial WiFi or ethernet gateways?
If you are about to build up new hardware, you may have a look at https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/11135/something-s-cooking-in-the-mysensors-labs/10 as well and e.g. prepare the hardware to use different type of transports as well in the future?

[mfalkvidd]

@jocke4u make sure you use a different radio channel for the second MySensors network and you'll be fine.
define MY_RF24_CHANNEL in the gateway and all sketches. Documentation: https://www.mysensors.org/apidocs/group__RF24SettingGrpPub.html#gafb356a7718f74a37f2081fb636dfacd2

If you use a rpi gateway, use

 --my-rf24-channel=<0-125>   RF channel for the sensor net. [76]

in the configure command.

[jocke4u]

@rejoe2 I don't know, thats why I asked if I should expect problems
My thinking is to have Home Assistant connected to GW1 (mostly logging values not really acting) and develop/configure/test GW2 and using MysController to just watch the traffic i.e. my wish is to have all sensor messages to both GWs and when happy I reconfigure Home Assistant to GW2 and shut down GW1.

I already have RPi hardware, radios etc on the shelf.

In what sense do you consider RPi-Ethernet-GW to be more tricky than Arduino-Ethernet-GW?

[jocke4u]

@mfalkvidd By using a different channel you mean that (1) get the GW up and running and then (2) migrate each sensor from GW1 to GW2, right?

[mfalkvidd]

@jocke4u correct

[jocke4u]

@mfalkvidd Thanks, maybe a better approach since I anyway should upgrade the sensors since they haven't been touched for a very long time and running 1.5.x

[mfalkvidd]

@jocke4u yes. Having two gateways in the same MySensors network will lead to odd stuff happening, and running 1.5x nodes with a 2.x gateway can also lead to odd stuff happening.

[rejoe2]

@jocke4u said in Parallel Gateways:

In what sense do you consider RPi-Ethernet-GW to be more tricky than Arduino-Ethernet-GW?

See https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/11145/started-with-mysensors-and-about-to-give-up-some-feedback for a lot of people reporting about running into problems. Imo it doesn't make much sense fiddling around with a very complex base (Pi) when using a very simple base (arduino@serial or LAN-gateway) is possible...
Just my2ct.

Wrt. the other stuff, I completly agree with @mfalkvidd's approach; at first sight it seemed you were looking for a drop-in replacement. But as soon, as you want to update nodes also, different channel is a very good idea.

[skywatch]

@jocke4u I run 2 RF gateways and it's not a problem. When you 'migrate' a node to a new gateway make sure to run the mysensors clear eeprom sketch first to get rid of the old routing table or you might have issues.