Sensebender Micro

[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.

[tbowmo]

Just a hint, itead studio is starting a sale with 10% off on all imall items.. So maybe it's time to buy some Christmas presents for the inner geek :)

[akbooer]

Oh no! Lousy timing, I just bought some...
... in fact, they arrived today.

Speaking of which, whilst I got them to run the default sketch, do I actually need a programmer to do anything different, or can this be done OTA (from a Mac) ?

[tbowmo]

@akbooer

The default sketch doesn't support OTA, as it wasn't available in the stable branch at the time of launch

[5546dug]

@tbowmo Good sales but did not see the Sensebender too bad .

[tbowmo]

@akbooer

It's here http://www.itead.cc/mysensors-micro.html

[epierre]

@hek I've soldered a second unit to compare, same error, I flashed back the sensebender version from the examples and on both I am stuck here: "Sensebender Micro FW 1.2radio init fail"

Gateway is 1.5 BTW, one radio is from itead the other not.

[epierre]

@Sparkman said:

@epierre Can you confirm the settings you used in the IDE to program it?

1.6.5 version

Are you sure there are no solder bridges where you soldered the radio or socket for the radio?

same behavior on two units

Have you tried powering it with a couple of AA batteries after you uploaded the sketch?

not yet but why should that change anything ?

[mvader]

This post is deleted!

[akbooer]

Just tried out my first Sensebender...
soldered pins and battery power...
turn on...
led flashes once...
start inclusion...
3 devices...
Vera restarts (actually, it's openLuup running on an Arduino Yún)...
there they are...
and updating every minute!

Thanks so much to all who made this level of sophistication so easy!! (Z-wave was never this simple!)

Whilst I need a couple of temp/humidity sensors, I also need to reflash one as a 4-switch sensor. Can I do this with an Arduino Uno configured with the ArduinoISP sketch as described here ?
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

Any advice or useful pointers? Thanks.

[tbowmo]

@epierre

What do you use as supply voltage for the thing? What is the output from testmode?

Did you add a capacitor on the radio module? How did you mount them together? (picture?)

[tbowmo]

@akbooer

Should be doable with an arduino as isp. Another option is to use the serial upload.

[jovo]

I am a noob in coding so I need some advice for tuning the sensebender.ino
current observed problems:

1. sensor values transmitted every minutes
2. battery level info seems wrong

I am running the default senseblender.ino.

on 1) What I understood in this forum, it should transmit the temp. values only every 30min (or direct when change is >.05). However, I see them arriving in my controller (Domoticz) every minute. What should I change to have it send every 30min?

on 2) I observe in Domoticz that the battery levels reported (in the Devices section) are inaccurate. For example: one sensebender with 3.2v measured power reports 80, where I would expect round 100 (this one has new batteries). Other sensebenders with still 2.63v report 53. How to calibrate the battery measurement?

I have been searching this forum, but was unable to find the answer.
Alternatively, a pointer to a wiki on sensebender.ino that has this explained would work as well.

[tbowmo]

@jovo

The firmware that the sensebender is shipped with is pretty old, compared to the one that's available in the current master branch of mysensors library. A lot have been done to do better transmit control (like, limiting number of transmits etc.)

About the battery voltage, the sensebender is measuring against an internal vref, which isn't that accurate. I can't remember the specifics at the moment, but it's hidden somewhere in the datasheet. The measurement method has a lot of inaccuracy, but on the other hand it saves external components and power.

I didn't focus on it, but one could perhaps make some kind of calibration routine, use a known supply voltage and do some internal calculations and store an offset in eeprom.

[Fabien]

@jovo for battery mesurement it's correct 100% is for 3.3V and 0% for 1.9 V (BOD fuse setting). so for 2.63 you have 52,14 %

[martinhjelmare]

@jovo As @Fabien wrote, the default code puts 3.3 V as 100%. Look for the percentage calculation. You will see that it's basically (vcc - 1900)/14. This makes sense if using a step-up converter where you get 3.3 V. But if connecting directly to two AAs, 100% should be around 3 V. So just replace 14 with 11 in the calculation.

[jovo]

Thanks for the comments and suggestion.
Now I have installed the master branch code from the mys. library.
Unfortunately no change. Still very frequent updates (under the same circumstances).
I sense it has something to do with :
bool tx = force;
but I am not quite sure where to change it in.
I will continue my search.....

[tbowmo]

@jovo

There is a small error in the sketch, that falsely converts floats to ints. Look at line 243, it's dividing by 100:

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

This should be changed to 100.0 instead. This way the calculation is returning as a float.

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