Sensebender Micro

[Heinz]

Today I integrated my first 2 sensebender micros into my homeautomation and they almost worked out of the box. I like this board really much! Good work, I will order more!

Pitfall:
When updating the mysensors lib from 1.4.x to 1.5 the sensor failed to get an id from the controller which btw was still running on 1.4.x.
After having done all the things like "clearing eeprom", "soldering a capacitor to the radio" and so on... I noticed that I changed the RF_CHANNEL from the default 76 to some other value in MyConfig.h some months ago (probably for some paranoia reason).
When updating to lib 1.5 the sensor sketch got the 76 while the gateway still used the other one and so the communication between both failed. After changing the radio channel to the one the controller uses, everything worked very quickly!

Probably this post helps someother guy who fell into the same trap.

[johnr]

Hi,

My sense bender works perfect when sending directly data directly to serial gateway (vera 5), however when I move it out of range to the serial gateway and want it to connect to my repeater node it does not want to discover the repeater node. Anyone else had this problem?

[hek]

Remember that it takes a few ( ~5) failed transmits until it searches for a new parent node.

[Dwalt]

@johnr

Is your repeater node still on MySensors 1.4? I had a similar problem and upgrading to 1.5 solved it.

[johnr]

You are probably right. I did not realise sense bender was pre loaded with 1.5

I think easiest for me would be to downgrade sense bender to 1.4 is it possible?

[tbowmo]

Sensebender is still on 1.4, as we haven't prepared new firmware for it yet.

Mysensors 1.4 and 1.5 should be compatible with each other, right @hek ?

[hek]

Yes, it should.

But as @Dewalt says, there was a bug in repeater functionality. So upgrading the repeater is a good tip.

[johnr]

Upgrading repeater to 1.5 solved this issue. Thanks for the quick help. 1.4 sensors communicate OK with the 1.5 repeater as far as I can see right now.

[Fabien]

I try to make a 3D box for SenseBender Micro with CR123 battery.
Screenchot :

[Fabien]

first print test :

[tbowmo]

@Fabien

Nice work, what is the dimensions of the enclosure?

[mvader]

@mvader said:
question about the default sketch for this board.
if i read correctly

// How many milli seconds between each measurement
#define MEASURE_INTERVAL 60000

// How many milli seconds should we wait for OTA?
#define OTA_WAIT_PERIOD 300

// FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL, this number of times of wakeup, the sensor is forced to report all values to the controller
#define FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL 30 

// When MEASURE_INTERVAL is 60000 and FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL is 30, we force a transmission every 30 minutes.
// Between the forced transmissions a tranmission will only occur if the measured value differs from the previous measurement

// HUMI_TRANSMIT_THRESHOLD tells how much the humidity should have changed since last time it was transmitted. Likewise with
// TEMP_TRANSMIT_THRESHOLD for temperature threshold.
#define HUMI_TRANSMIT_THRESHOLD 0.5
#define TEMP_TRANSMIT_THRESHOLD 0.5

if temps don't change more than .5 i shouldn't see a transmit but once every 30 minutes
i have 2 running right now
and both send temp and humidity every 1-2 minutes and the numbers are the same or in some cases only different by .1
i have it set to .5 so the question is

1. why does it transmit every minutes when the temp and humidity are the same
2. why is it transmitting even with as little as .1 change
   1 board is running 1.2 and the other is running the 1.3 sketch from git
   Battery however does transmit every 60 minutes as it's supposed to.,
   thx

[tbowmo]

@mvader

Have you tried to hook up a serial connection to your sensebender? It writes the difference from the last transmitted measurement, everytime a new measurement is taken (every minute).

[Fabien]

@tbowmo 47x37 height : 27
I will make some improvment (can not test, my printer is in maintenance mode !) and post files for others.

[mvader]

@tbowmo said:

@mvader

Have you tried to hook up a serial connection to your sensebender? It writes the difference from the last transmitted measurement, everytime a new measurement is taken (every minute).

so if i want it to transmit less frequently (save battery?) i would increase the measure interval. correct?
I have some situations where i want frequent measuring (1 minute), and some where 15 minutes or 30 minutes would do fine.

[tbowmo]

@mvader

Yes, you could save battery, by changing to 10/15 minute check interval..

But still, the interesting thing is why it transmits every minute.. That's why I would suggest to check the serial output..

[korttoma]

There is an explanation to the problem further up in the thread:

@gloob said:

Hello

I found an error in the sensebender micro sketch in the latest release.

The calculation of the temperature change is wrong.

float diffTemp = abs(lastTemperature - (isMetric ? data.celsiusHundredths : data.fahrenheitHundredths) / 100);

needs to be replaced with

float diffTemp = abs(lastTemperature - (isMetric ? data.celsiusHundredths : data.fahrenheitHundredths) / 100.0);

The division with 100 needs to be 100.0 otherwise the result will be an integer instead of a float value and the difference will be the decimal places of the last temperature.

[tbowmo]

@korttoma

thanks for helping my memory :)

[mvader]

@korttoma i did see that. but your saying that is what is causing it to transmit every 1 minute?

[korttoma]

@mvader yes, it is rounding the temperature difference to the nearest degree so the difference is almost always more then the 0.5.