Guide: Setting up and testing MQTT Client Gateway

[Mike Cayouette]

@hek

I remembered that ack is disabled on my sketches, as I did not see a point in using it with the serial gateway connected to node-red. I will recompile my sketch with ack enabled.

Thank you for your help.

Mike

[hek]

Not the same type of ack. This is the one sent automatically by the NRF radio. You can't disable it in sketch.

[Mike Cayouette]

I have tried a few things but without success, I keep getting the following output on the gateway when I try to send a message to a sensor

0;0;3;0;9;send: 0-0-0-106 s=3,c=1,t=2,pt=0,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:0

Oddly the sensors have no problem sending a message to the gateway. For example when I reset my dimmer the serial output on the gateway is the following

;0;3;0;9;read: 106-106-0 s=255,c=0,t=17,pt=0,l=3,sg=0:1.5
0;0;3;0;9;Sending message on topic: mygateway1-out/106/255/0/0/17
0;0;3;0;9;read: 106-106-0 s=255,c=3,t=6,pt=1,l=1,sg=0:0
0;0;3;0;9;Sending message on topic: mygateway1-out/106/255/3/0/6

I have used an external power supply rather than connect the radio to the 3.3v pin on the nodemcu breakout board but that did not change anything, I also added the following but without luck

#define MY_RF24_PA_LEVEL RF24_PA_LOW

The only thing I have not done was compile the sensor with the library in the dev branch, but I was under the impression I did not need to.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Mike

[ahmedadelhosni]

@Mike-Cayouette Can you check what I have found and tell me whether it temporary solved your problem or not ? http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2193/gatewayesp8266mqttclient-in-development-branch/11

[Mike Cayouette]

@ahmedadelhosni That worked, I can now send messages from my gateway.

Thank you for your help

Mike

[ahmedadelhosni]

@Mike-Cayouette Glad that it worked. Please note that these would be temporary workarounds for MQTT support only. I guess that won't work if the sensor node is far away from the gateway and needs a repeater in the middle, because in that workaround you don't check your look up table.

[Mike Cayouette]

@ahmedadelhosni I have not had to add any repeaters to my network yet so I should be good until a more permanent solution is worked into the library. Thank you again for you solution.

@hek Do you expect a more permanent fix for this solution to be pushed to the dev branch?
http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2193/gatewayesp8266mqttclient-in-development-branch/11

Thank you,

Mike

[hek]

Ok, verified sending a message to a node here now when repeater mode is enabled. Works fine and message is received.

Here is the change I made. Soon merged into development.
https://github.com/mysensors/Arduino/pull/251

[Lars65]

Great work. I use an ESP8266 12E, and it works just fine. :)

[John]

All though this topic is related to the development branch, has the topic structure been fixed (except for prefix)?

[ahmedadelhosni]

@hek What about the first issue which I reported about ? Still returns TRUE and returns.

if (strcmp_P(str, MY_MQTT_SUBSCRIBE_TOPIC_PREFIX) != 0) {
	// Message not for us or malformed!
       	return;
}

Is it reproducible at your side ?

[hek]

@ahmedadelhosni

No, I couldn't reproduce any problems with topic naming.

I use the default subscribe/publish prefix in the sketch and can send messages without any problem.

[Samuel235]

@hek said:

You can run the MQTT gateway on an Arduino+W5100 ethernet module or the ESP8266. Connect radio and ethernet module exactly like for the normal gateway.

Have we managed to get a MQTT Gateway working on a Arduino with an ENC28J60 module rather than a w5100?

[hek]

@samuel235

I didn't bother trying. The ENC-library is gigantic and the MQTT implementation used does not support the ENC-module.

[ahmedadelhosni]

@samuel235 I don't really encourage you to use ENC. I spent months trying to make it stable and I failed. There are several manufactures and as far as I know that there are several software workarounds to fix problem in the silicon chips. I turned to use W5100 and it is much better till now.
N.B.: Some people managed to run ENC with good stability but as I have said, there may be different manufacturers so I got confused and tried the W5100.

[Samuel235]

@ahmedadelhosni I have now turned to the W5100 shield myself. Works a charm, super smooth!

[vickey]

I tried to make MQTT client gateway but it is giving following error while compiling

C:\Users\Ahmed\AppData\Local\Temp\build8359488613260197686.tmp/arduino.ar(core_esp8266_postmortem.c.o): In function `abort':
C:\Users\Ahmed\AppData\Roaming\Arduino15\packages\esp8266\hardware\esp8266\2.0.0-rc2\cores\esp8266/core_esp8266_postmortem.c:177: multiple definition of `abort'
GatewayESP8266MQTTClient.cpp.o:C:\Users\Ahmed\Documents\Arduino\libraries\MySensors/core/MyMainESP8266.cpp:46: first defined here
collect2.exe: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Error compiling.

Any suggestions @hek ?

[hek]

@vickey
Sorry haven't seen this error. Which ESP board version do you have installed in the IDE? (See Board manager).

Please do no double post on the forum! Only creates annoyance.

[vickey]

@hek I am using Stable ESP8266 version 2.0.0 from stable release

[ciprian]

If it helps:
in ESP8266 ver. 2.0.0 was added abort in
here
cores/esp8266/core_esp8266_postmortem.c:

void abort() __attribute__((noreturn));

void abort(){
    // cause exception
    s_abort_called = true;
    do {
        *((int*)0) = 0;
    } while(true);
} 

i comment the lines in MySensors/core/MyMainESP8266.cpp and it compiled ok.