Sensebender Micro

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:

sensor values transmitted every minutes
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());

5546dug

@fabian how is the box working out were there any mods and are the stl files ready yet?

jovo

ok, it seems the aggregated upload is solved with the change from Thomas.
Now I modify the "14" in "11" as suggested by martin. I have 105% now, but that could be right because I measure 3.1V from my 2 fresh AA's

The only 'new issue' I discovered is that one sensor actually stops being received updates from due low power. The measured voltage on the batteries is still 2.1V and the battery indicator was at 23%.
Could it be that I have bad fake radios that don't operate lower then 2.1V? (since there is no other external components added to my setup, I suspect only the radios).

Fabien

@5546dug said:

@fabian how is the box working out were there any mods and are the stl files ready yet?

Sorry, my 3D printer is out of service, I'm waiting for chinese parts ... I will post correct STL files in 1 or 2 weeks.

mvader

I'm having trouble with the transmission times.

// How many milli seconds between each measurement 900000 is 15 minutes
#define MEASURE_INTERVAL 900000

// How many milli seconds should we wait for OTA? 3000 is 3 seconds
#define OTA_WAIT_PERIOD 3000

// 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

I would expect a wake up and measure every 15 minutes. transmit if greater than .5 and go back to sleep
also i would expect a forced transmission every 30 minutes.
but that doesn't seem to be happening.
here are my last few transmit times
4:07pm
5:59pm
6:15pm
6:47pm
7:50pm
8:34pm
9:10pm

I don't see a static 30 minute transmit.
(from 4pm to 6pm?) i'm sure the temp and/or hum changed in 2 hours

any suggestions on what may be wrong?
default sketch (1.3 from git) but changed the measure intervals
sensor lib 1.5
thanks

Dwalt

@mvader If your interval between readings is 15 minutes and the force transmit interval is 30, your actual interval is 15minutes * 30 = 7.5hours. Also, see this thread for sleep time accuracy. 15 minutes of sleep can last 16-17 minutes...

mvader

@Dwalt said:

@mvader If your interval between readings is 15 minutes and the force transmit interval is 30, your actual interval is 15minutes * 30 = 7.5hours. Also, see this thread for sleep time accuracy. 15 minutes of sleep can last 16-17 minutes...

really.. hmm
so if you look at the default comment
when MEASURE_INTERVAL is 60000 and FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL is 30, we force a transmission every 30 minutes.
That says measure for temp/hum every 1 minute - send if greater than .5 (defined later in the sketch)
regardless of what goes on send stats every 30 minutes

can you help me understand why those 2 number would be multiplied together? one shouldn't have anything to do with the other.
i read that as they are definitions for 2 different process.
but i may be totally misunderstanding.

I do buy the sleep accuracy part of it though :)

Dwalt

@mvader No, it is not 30 minutes, the FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL counts the number of 'wakeup and take a reading' events, which in the original sketch is every 60 seconds. After 30 wakeup-and-read without a transmit, force a transmit. If you change your FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL to 2, it will transmit every 30 minutes if the readings do not change more than 0.5.

The MEASURE_INTERVAL is based upon time (millis) and the FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL is based upon counting events (wakeup cycles).

mvader

@Dwalt said:

@mvader No, it is not 30 minutes, the FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL counts the number of 'wakeup and take a reading' events, which in the original sketch is every 60 seconds. After 30 wakeup-and-read without a transmit, force a transmit. If you change your FORCE_TRANSMIT_INTERVAL to 2, it will transmit every 30 minutes if the readings do not change more than 0.5.

thanks for the clarification! :+1:

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