ESP8266 WiFi gateway port for MySensors

[scalz]

@hek @Yveaux : I don't know if this could help. but some times ago I found a lib when you were talking about this issue but I have never had enough time to test it. It is a "non blocking" ack with some buffering version for wifiserver. I think that does not solve completely the buffering issue :confused: But maybe a small step..
I don't remember where I read this but igr was saying it would be better to have a lib for this than modifiying the wifiserver lib for compatibility with other arduino wifi libs. So maybe this guy did it.
http://www.forward.com.au/pfod/pfodParserLibraries/index.html
In the middle :)
I also read that for esp, bigger tcp packet were processed faster than small :open_mouth:
very tricky issue to debug when so much layers..

[robosensor]

Also it is possible to partially solve this issue by fetching all available messages from NRF24 FIFO and concatenating them into one TCP packet for ESP. It is possible that this will be useful for other gateways too.

@Yveaux said:

IMHO it really is time to investigate the impact on the library to support message queueing (fetched & sent from interrupt).

But no chances that MYS protocol will be changed? I'm talking about reliable delivery and message ids. That topic is very close to this.

[Yveaux]

@robosensor I think message buffering could be the first step to (more) reliable delivery.

[scalz]

this was the thread I read. pfod lib creator and esplibs team were talking about this.
https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/1430
And it seems there is another lib too for this:
https://github.com/me-no-dev/ESPAsyncTCP

[Yveaux]

@scalz Thanks for the links man!

Now we're at it: anyone knows if a blocked socket connection can be interrupted at all by an external pin interrupt on ESP(Arduino) ? Otherwise buffering on interrupts will make no sense...

[Mark Swift]

Thanks for looking into this guys... I've been doing some tests and basically the ESP gateway is not an option for me right now due to too many radio failures.

Using the normal serial gateway I tested one of my nodes that sends about 15 values during each loop; it was perfect every time!
The same test with the ESP shows failures every few messages or so, introducing a large radio delay between each send fixes it, but the issue can still occur if other nodes call in at the same time.

Another interesting thing, when I don't specify a gateway, or static IP I get no failures, when I do, I get failures, what!?

[Yveaux]

@Mark-Swift Don't know if you already ditched the ESP gateway completely, but you could give my latest experiment a try: https://github.com/Yveaux/Arduino/tree/development
It adds a reception queue to the gateway which will immediately retrieve a message from the radio when it comes in. This process should even continue when the ESP is blocked on some TCP transfer.
Only thing you have to do is connect the IRQ line from the nRF radio to the ESP (e.g. to pin 1), and define the IRQ pin at the top of your gateway sketch:

#define MY_RF24_IRQ_PIN  (1)

I tested this on a UNO, and can easily sleep the gateway for 1 second or more when messages come in at 0.1sec interval -- none gets lost. The buffer is set to 20 by default, but you can increase it when the amount of RAM allows it:

#define MY_RF24_MESSAGE_BUFFER_SIZE  (50)

I don't have a NodeMCU setup ready so I cannot test it on ESP myself...

[Mark Swift]

@Yveaux I'll sure give it a shot when time allows, most likely tomorrow... I've actually worked around the issue by using a regedit hack on my Windows server to remove the 200ms TCP delay. I also fried a Node MCU tonight due to frustration and not concentrating!

Thanks for the efforts, sounds a great solution :)

BTW, I figured out my main issue was trying to put the nRF24l01+PA+LNA and ESP in a small project box, I guess that also causes issues, especially with the crappy cheap unshielded PA modules (I'm awaiting a proper shielded version).

@robosensor also...

[Mark Swift]

@Yveaux Is there a way I can track dropped messages?

[Yveaux]

@Mark-Swift my queueing code counts how many messages could not be stored due to the queue being full, and therefore got lost. If the radio drops messages because it's FIFO is full we won't know...

[Mark Swift]

@Yveaux I just tried to compile it and get the following error:

In file included from /Users/markswift/Documents/Arduino/libraries/MySensors/core/MyTransportNRF24.cpp:23:0,
from /Users/markswift/Documents/Arduino/libraries/MySensors/MySensor.h:260,
from /Users/markswift/Documents/Personal/Hobbies/Arduino/GatewayESP8266MQTTClient/GatewayESP8266MQTTClient.ino:132:
/Users/markswift/Documents/Arduino/libraries/MySensors/drivers/CircularBuffer/CircularBuffer.h:23:25: fatal error: util/atomic.h: No such file or directory
#include <util/atomic.h>

[Yveaux]

@Mark-Swift Sorry, my bad. This is AVR only code... Have to look for the ESP equivalent...

[Yveaux]

This util/atomic.h is an easy fix, but then the next error occurs: current ESP8266 Arduino port (even tried upto 2.2.0) does not support SPI access from within interrupts (SPI.usingInterrupt is not supported.
See https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/1943.
This means I cannot reliably get the message data from the nRF from within an interrupt on ESP8266, using the regular Arduino SPI library.
Have to think if there's another solution (or push this issue to be solved ;-) )
To be continued...

[Mark Swift]

nightmare!

Let me know how you get on...

[signal15]

Is anyone having luck running the ESP without problems at all? I'm on 1.5 and it's my first gateway, and I cannot get sensors to include. Should I try the development branch? Or, should I build a different gateway altogether? I just need something that works at this point.

[alexsh1]

Let me reiterate what @signal15 asked - did anyone successfully have esp8266 running as the GW on 2.0b? I have just acquired Wemos mini and would like to try it

[Anduril]

@alexsh1 @signal15 I can confirm that the ESP gateway is working fine and stable. I even enabled the ESP OTA update function and that's working fine too.

[signal15]

@Anduril

Can you point me to documentation on how the OTA update stuff works and what the capabilities are?

[Anduril]

@signal15 well there is a doc about OTA here. I discussed this topic with tekka, who is the author of the GatewayESP8266OTA example in the mysensors lib here.
It took me some time to get this working, but now I can upload new firmware to my ESP using wifi. Only drawback is that is seems to be not compatible with the mqtt version of the gateway. At least I was not able to get this working and stopped on that.
If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

[marceloaqno]

I recently built a mysensors node with esp8266 where I needed many I/O pins which made me realize the possibility of using the pin RX (http://www.forward.com.au/pfod/ESP8266/GPIOpins/ESP8266_01_pin_magic.html).
Initializing the serial with:

Serial.begin(MY_BAUD_RATE, SERIAL_8N1, SERIAL_TX_ONLY, 1);

allows to use RX pin for I/O.

So I was wondering if it would be useful to add a way in which the serial port can be initialized:

#define MY_SERIAL_MODE SERIAL_TX_ONLY
#define MY_SERIAL_MODE SERIAL_RX_ONLY
#define MY_SERIAL_MODE SERIAL_FULL   (default)

github.com/marceloaqno/MySensors/commit/687fecc6b4abb782eae8e1abb3b07016bfeac291

Also, to use the esp8266 analog pin, I had to comment the line:

ADC_MODE(ADC_VCC);

from MyHwESP8266.cpp.
Is there another way to use analog readings without messing the code?

Excellent port by the way, I have been using here and it works great!!