Allow sniffing at gateway level

[Moshe Livne]

I don't know if this is possible, but can the gateway send everything it writes on the serial to another node that will act as debug monitor? Currently the only way to see what the gateway writes is to use wireshark which is not trivial on headless rpi.

[hek]

Probably easer to setup a sniffer-node next to the gateway.
http://www.mysensors.org/controller/sniffer

[Moshe Livne]

@hek I beg to differ.... This project is much more complicated both to setup and understand and it is on a much lower level. It is a "hack" not an integral part of the software.
Also, theoretically, the arduino "sniffer" can also act as a watchdog or detect network anomalies more easily then digging through the logs with wireshark.
Again, theoretically, myscontroller or other easily created tool can show you the network topology in real time while this sniffer will require you to do it yourself or analyze dumps.
The basic idea of mysensors is the KISS principle, no? Using a sniffer node you can in 2 min see the network communication and even have the arduino or a simple program decode it.

[hek]

Nothing stops you to send off log messages to another node, but the problem is that you will be affecting the system you want to monitor. Messages will get lost and it will occupy the gateway radio/mcu.

[Moshe Livne]

@hek that is true... is there a way to write in the unix "plugin" side messages to a FIFO? does the gateway writes everything to the serial including topology? I guess it does otherwise MSController won't be able to display it.

[hek]

The gateway does not hold full network topology. Only enough information to route a packet to the next repeater or the final destination.

MYSController solves the topology puzzle by examining the packet each node sends at startup (or when they switch parent) holding which parent the node has (I_CONFIG).

[Moshe Livne]

@hek but the gw write this information to the serial, right? There are lots of problems people have because of routing. I know I had a couple (uncleared eeprom that still had hardcoded parent, nodes deciding to connect to the gw instead of the repeater etc) and i would really like to see the topology without stopping domoticz

[hek]

Yes, the gateway send this information to the controller.