ESP8266 WiFi gateway port for MySensors

[joshmosh]

@hek
Good morning. I had wired up my nodemcu a nRF24L01+, loaded the gateway sketch and bingo ! Zero problems, works like charm. Thanks a lot !!!

I am using Domoticz as controller, with a serial USB gateway to connect my various sensors. In the serial console of the ESP8266 gateway I see that the messages of my sensors show up, but since I have not yet announced the gateway to Domoticz, there seems to be no interference. If I connect the ESP8266 gateway to a controller (in my case Domoticz), I guess that it will be required that the nodes need to choose the respective gateway (by using the parentNodeId) with which they like to communicate ? Currently, I am using parentNodeId = AUTO in all my nodes.
I will do some testing to get an idea of the reach of my WiFi compared to the reach of my serial USB gateway (I have a nRF24L01+ with external antanna and booster in my gateway, so I am able to "see" a portable node even outside my house and 50 m away.

Again, thank you for this very useful extension of MySensors. I think I have not yet an estimate of the full potential of it

Cheers
Josh

[gloob]

Hello,

I also tried to build a WiFi gateway today.
I get the following serial output when starting the gateway:

ESP8266 MySensors Gateway
Connecting to *************
...Connected!
IP: 192.168.1.218
0;0;3;0;9;gateway started, id=0, parent=0, distance=0

Does this mean that everything is correct and I can integrate it into my FHEM solution?
Currently I'm working with a serial gatway. Do I have to modify something in my sensors when I switch to the new gateway?

[Yveaux]

@gloob said:

I get the following serial output when starting the gateway:

Looking good! Congrats!

I have no experience using FHEM, but you should be able to use the WiFi gateway just like the regular ethernet gateway (as seen from FHEM).
So look around on this forum for any posts regarding usage of FHEM & ethernet gateway and you should be good.

[Yveaux]

@joshmosh You cannot have multiple gateways in a single MySensors network. The node-ID of the gateway is always hardcoded to 0.
If you want to run multiple networks, each should have a unique RF24_CHANNEL & RF24_BASE_RADIO_ID combination. For best results make sure to have a separate RF24_CHANNEL for each network, and don't use directly adjacent channels.

[FotoFieber]

Playing with AES signing and encryption I enabled verbose debug.

#define MY_DEBUG_VERBOSE

The sketch crashes with this setting but seems to work fine without verbose debug.

Is this a problem of my setup or a problem in the code?

The log pf the serial terminal:

write_register(0x04,0x5F)
write_register(0x06,0x27)
write_register(0x06,0x07)
write_register(0x00,0x0C)
write_register(0x07,0x70)
write_register(0x05,0x4C)
write_register(0x00,0x0E)
write_register(0x00,0x0E)
STATUS		0x0E RX_DR=0 TX_DS=0 MAX_RT=0 RX_P_NO=7 TX_FULL=0
RX_ADDR_P0-1	0x0E0E0E0E0E 0303030303 
RX_ADDR_P2-5	0xC3 C4 C5 C6 
TX_ADDR		0x0E0E0E0E0E 
RX_PW_P0-6	0x00 00 00 00 00 00 
EN_AA		0x3F 
EN_RXADDR	0x03 
RF_CH		0x4C 
RF_SETUP	0x07 
CONFIG		0x0E 
DYNPD/FEATURE	0x00 00 
Data Rate	1MBPS
Model		nRF24L01+
CRC Length	16 bits
PA Power	PA_MAX
write_register(0x01,0x3F)
write_register(0x01,0x3B)
write_register(0x1D,0x06)
FEATURE=0x06
write_register(0x1C,0x03)
write_regis

[Yveaux]

@FotoFieber said:

Is this a problem of my setup or a problem in the code?

I'll opt for the first, but lets see:

• What ESP hardware are you using?
• Which Arduino/ESP8266 port/MySensors version are you using?
• Did you define both DEBUG and MY_DEBUG_VERBOSE?
• What did you do to 'Play with AES signing and encryption' ?
• AES stuff is untested for ESP8266, however, you don't seen to get that far as it crashes during startup.
• My startup log (see here ) shows what it shoes during startup with DEBUG and MY_DEBUG_VERBOSE enabled.

[FotoFieber]

@Yveaux

• ESP12E
• Development Version
• Defined both DEBUG AND VERBOSE
• Playing with AES:

#define MY_RF24_CHANNEL  13
#define MY_RF24_BASE_RADIO_ID ((uint64_t)0xF8A813FC09CL)

#define MY_RF24_ENABLE_ENCRYPTION
#define MY_RF24_ENCRYPTKEY  secret....

#define MY_SIGNING_SOFT // Software signing enabled

#define MY_SIGNING_SOFT_SERIAL secret....
// Key to use for HMAC calculation in soft signing (32 bytes)

#define MY_SIGNING_SOFT_HMAC_KEY secret

It seems to work perfect without the verbose debug.

I will test now without AES. My gut tells me, I should look inside the AES stuff.

[joshmosh]

@Yveaux said:

@joshmosh You cannot have multiple gateways in a single MySensors network. The node-ID of the gateway is always hardcoded to 0.
If you want to run multiple networks, each should have a unique RF24_CHANNEL & RF24_BASE_RADIO_ID combination. For best results make sure to have a separate RF24_CHANNEL for each network, and don't use directly adjacent channels.

@Yveaux
Thank you for this piece of information - I was not aware of this fact.
My idea was to reduce cost and parts count for sensors by using ESPs instead of nRF plus Arduino. Since I have Domoticz as controller, there is pehaps no need for an additional gateway, because Domoticz can handle TCP-attached sensors. Of course this would require to use WiFi instead of nRF24 as underlying transport for MySensors. My interpretation of some of hek's contributions is that he is working on it for realisation in version 1.6.

[FotoFieber]

@Yveaux
Downloaded the development branch again and used the sketch included as example. The sketch is hanging too. My gut was wrong, AES is not the problem.

[vickey]

Hi.
I am having an issue with my ESP8266 gateway. I have tried all versions of mysensors including developmental versions, but my esp8266 does not show any serial debug, nor it gets connected to my router. I also enabled debug in configuration file. When I install AT firmware, it replies to AT command, it also works with nodemcu firmware, but it does not respond with Arduino firmware. May someone help me?

[Anduril]

Finally I got my NodeMCU and tried the WiFi gateway too. But I get the following messages (with Serial.setDebugOutput(true);):

ESP8266 MySensors Gateway
Connecting to WLAN
scandone
f 0, ....scandone
.add 0
aid 1
pm open phy_2,type:2 0 0
cnt 
..................rm 0
pm close 7 0 0/9299504
..reconnect
f -240, ....scandone
no WLAN found, reconnect after 1s
.reconnect
f 0, ....scandone
.add 0
aid 1
pm open phy_2,type:2 0 0
cnt 
................rm 0
pm close 7 0 0/8288631
..reconnect
f -240, ....scandone
no WLAN found, reconnect after 1s
.reconnect
f 0, ....scandone
.add 0
aid 1
pm open phy_2,type:2 0 0
cnt 
................rm 0
pm close 7 0 0/8124923
..reconnect

Additionally I tried to use

  IPAddress ip(192, 168, 38, 18);  /* Set to whatever IP address you'd like the gateway to have */
  WiFi.config(ip);

to avoid DHCP, but that gives error during compiling:

no matching function for call to 'ESP8266WiFiClass::config(IPAddress&)'

Any hints how to solve?

Thanks

Edit:
to find the problem I tested to connect the ESP to the wifi-hotspot of my smartphone... worked. Is it maybe a problem if the password contain special characters which behave strange during compiling?

[Yveaux]

@Anduril said:

no WLAN found, reconnect after 1s

That's a clear indication the ESP cannot connect to your WiFi accesspoint.
Is the SSID matching your accesspoint ('WLAN')?
Is the encryption supported by the ESP (see e.g. https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266#Features -- not sure if it is accurate)
Weird characters in the password could be problematic (and of course the password is case-sensitive).

Changing between DHCP/Fixed IP won't make a difference here, as the ESP doesn't even connect. IP configuration starts once connected.

[Anduril]

@Yveaux
SSID is 'WLAN' (all capital). Encryption is WPA2 which should be supported. The password contains '|' (don't know the name, vertical line) and 'ß' (german character). I use them among other more common ones to raise the complexity of the encryption. As I am using a bunch of wifi devices I don't want to go around and change passwords for all if not absolutely necessary. Is there a way to specify these 'weird characters' e.g. by ASCII codes or anything else?

Changing the IP was not to solve this problem but for future use, as my DHCP is not very good. Can you tell me how to fix IP else?

[Yveaux]

@Anduril try to print your password to the serial console and see if it matches the password you entered in the sketch.

[Anduril]

good idea @Yveaux, seems that 'ß' is the problem. serial.print shows ß at that position. Do you know how to avoid that?

[Yveaux]

@Anduril probably Unicode problem of the editor. I assume you use the Arduino editor? Try a simple editor like notepad to type the problematic character, or directly type it in windows by setting your keyboard in numpad mode and type it's ascii code: alt+225

[Anduril]

@Yveaux tried with a nano to print out "ß" to serial, no problems. After that I tried that sketch on ESP:

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  const char *pass = "ß1ß";
  Serial.println(" "); //to break line after rubbish at init
  Serial.println(pass);
}

[not readable/copyable stuff]
ß1ß

So in general it should be no problem compiling the char 'ß' even on ESP.. Also in the ESPGateway sketch I don't see anything that is changing the *pass, but maybe you know what is going on with this string in more detail.

edit: it seems to happen even before void setup in the gw sketch. I uncommented everything in setup, loop and output, but still get the distorted serial print of pass.

[Yveaux]

@Anduril I guess it shouldn't make a difference. What happens if you copy/paste the "ß1ß" string from your test sketch into the ESP gateway sketch as password and print that to serial? (make sure to use the same editor on both sketches)

[Anduril]

@Yveaux already tried that. When using my own sketch I get "ß1ß", when using the gw sketch (with really everything commented out, so no functionality) I get "ß1ß". I thought that it might be a problem of UFT encoding, had this issue with transfering LaTeX files created on linux system to windows system and vice versa: the system that creates the file sets the charset.
But I also created a completely new .ino with the gateway-code inside and new created gatewayutil.h with data copied in notepad++, but no succes.
And yes I use Arduino IDE as editor. Is there a good way to use another editor and compile/upload without the IDE?

[Yveaux]

@Anduril I'm still convinced it has something to do with Unicode, but very hard to nail from a distance without the actual files...
Maybe @hek has seen this before?