Step-by-step procedure to connect the NRF24L01+ to the GPIO pins and use the Raspberry as a Serial Gateway (MySensors 1.x)

[den2k]

weird. Permission Denied problem again.

What is the USER : GROUP that is needed for this to work?

[mfalkvidd]

@den2k I think your best chance is to post in the Home Assistant category. I don't have any experience with Home Assistant unfortunately.

[mfalkvidd]

@jpbabou said:

Hi
something is missing..

Is there a problem with the repository
Tks a lot for your job!

pi@domoticjp ~ $ sudo git clone https://github.com/mysensors/Raspberry.git
Cloning into 'Raspberry'...
remote: Counting objects: 273, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
remote: Total 273 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 270
Receiving objects: 100% (273/273), 215.00 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (114/114), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
pi@domoticjp ~ $ cd Raspberry/librf24-bcm
-bash: cd: Raspberry/librf24-bcm: No such file or directory

The guide has been updated to reflect the updated in the MySensors Raspberry repository now. Thanks @jpbabou !

[martinhjelmare]

@den2k

Hi!

Have you added the user that runs homeassistant to the dialout group? This group is usually owner of serial ports.

Check default group of serial port (change for your port below) after connecting it:

pi@martin-pi:~ $ ls -l /dev/ttyUSB0 
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 dec 18 03:21 /dev/ttyUSB0

Check groups that user pi is in:

pi@martin-pi:~ $ groups pi
pi : pi adm dialout cdrom sudo audio video plugdev games users input netdev spi i2c gpio

If pi runs homeassistant, which should be the case, and is not in dialout, add pi to dialout:

sudo adduser pi dialout

Changing owner of a port will only work until you disconnect it. Default owner will be restored upon reconnect, if you haven't written a special udev rule.

Edit:
According to the readme in the mysensors raspberry repo (https://github.com/mysensors/Raspberry), the group of the device is tty. So you should probably use that, and not dialout. But you will know, when you check with ls -l.

[Scala]

@mfalkvidd Hi there and thanks for a great and super detailed step-by-step tutorial.

I've got mine running in no time with your instructions, but after a couple of minutes I've got the following error:

2015-12-30 20:51:30.356 Error: MySensors: Unhandled sensor (sub-type=32), please report with log!
2015-12-30 20:52:01.390 Error: Serial Port closed!... Error: End of file
2015-12-30 20:52:02.315 MySensors: retrying in 30 seconds...
2015-12-30 20:52:31.319 MySensors: Using serial port: /dev/ttyUSB20
2015-12-30 20:52:31.320 Error: MySensors: Error opening serial port!
2015-12-30 20:52:32.321 MySensors: retrying in 30 seconds...
2015-12-30 20:53:01.324 MySensors: Using serial port: /dev/ttyUSB20

I also attached a partial screen capture showing that it was working before 8-)

Any idea on why is this happening and how to solve it?

Southern regards and happy new year to all!

[mfalkvidd]

You are using a sensor type that your version of Domoticz doesn't support. What type os sensor is it? Which version of Domoticz are you using? Upgrading Domoticz might solve the problem (if the newer version supports this sub-type).

[Sander Teunissen]

When I try to run the init.d script:

sudo /etc/init.d/PiGatewaySerial start

I get the following error:

[....] Starting PiGatewaySerial (via systemctl): PiGatewaySerial.serviceFailed to start PiGatewaySerial.service: Unit PiGatewaySerial.service failed to load: No such file or directory.
 failed!

No such file or directory.... Obviously a missing folder or file, but I am not savvy enough to debug this.... Any help appreciated..

[mfalkvidd]

@Sander-Teunissen my guess is that you forgot the sudo make install part of the installation instructions.

[Sander Teunissen]

@mfalkvidd Yesterday I stopped trying and shutdown the Pi. This morning I tried the same again and it works !!
Pretty sure I haven't done anything else.
Thanks anyway.

Sander

[MrRikkie]

Hello, If followed the instruction and everything seemed to work without any problem.
However when I enter the command : sudo cat /dev/ttyMySensorsGateway
I get the message : cat: /dev/ttyMySensorsGateway: No such file or directory
Does anybody have any idea how to solve this ?

[mfalkvidd]

@MrRikkie what output did you get when you ran sudo /etc/init.d/PiGatewaySerial start ?

[MrRikkie]

@mfalkvidd said:

sudo /etc/init.d/PiGatewaySerial start

No output and no error message. Just a new command line.
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/PiGatewaySerial start
pi@raspberrypi ~ $

[Sander Teunissen]

When I

ls -l ttyMySensorsGateway

I get

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan  3 20:21 ttyMySensorsGateway -> /dev/pts/0

It's all root. This results in all kinds of acessability issues. I followed all instructions exactly. Anyone any ideas how to change this ?

Sander.

[martinhjelmare]

@Sander-Teunissen

Try writing a udev rule to set owner of the device (ttyMysensorsGateway) at boot. If you don't need to use the link you could write a rule that names the pts device to the same name every boot, I think. At least for usb devices this works. Haven't tried it in this particular case.

[mfalkvidd]

@Sander-Teunissen said:

When I

ls -l ttyMySensorsGateway

I get

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan  3 20:21 ttyMySensorsGateway -> /dev/pts/0

It's all root. This results in all kinds of acessability issues. I followed all instructions exactly. Anyone any ideas how to change this ?

The permissions for a soft link are not used (and if they were, any user would be allowed to do anything since everything is rwx). The permissions for the target is used instead. So it is the result of

ls -l /dev/pts/0

you need to worry about.

[ahmedadelhosni]

Hello @mfalkvidd , I read the topic again but I am a bit confused. Normally we have a sketch on the Arduino board to enable signing for example or implement our desired code. I don't understand how to edit this before compiling ?

[mfalkvidd]

Sorry @ahmedadelhosni, I haven't tried to compile the Raspberry gateway for signing. @Anticimex will probably chide me for that, and rightly so :)
It should just be a matter of modifying MyConfig.h to enable signing, as per the instructions in http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/1021/security-introducing-signing-support-to-mysensors but maybe the MySensor files in the Raspberry repo haven't been updated with the signing features.

[Anticimex]

The signing backends are updated for multi arch support thanks to @tbowmo and his SAMD gateway project, but they still assume Arduino compatible api:s for io, so if the raspberry repo/port provide that, it should work. If not, it should just be a matter of adding support for the raspberry spi:s for setting pin direction and states and (if sw backend is to be used) provide a random number generator. The code is C/C++ and hw independent in other aspects.

[Anticimex]

If anyone would like to add support for rPi to the signing backends, I suggest using a Linux generic approach using sysfs to handle io. Same for rng (using an appropriate device node, rpi has a hw rng that should be used).
If the design is Linux generic and uses proper design to abstract raspberry board specifics, it opens up for reuse by any hw that uses a Linux kernel :)

[hayduke]

I've been struggling with this setup for a few weeks now. I've resisted posting to try and figure it out, but I'm not making any progress. When I first setup the rpi with the nrf24 directly connected, everything worked great. I was running a node with temp and motion pretty reliably. I had some difficulty getting the relay node to work, but I got that working eventually as well, but not reliably. While trying to resolve this, I started getting these errors (log from Domoticz):
2016-02-19 10:43:36.007 MySensors: Using serial port: /dev/ttyUSB20
2016-02-19 10:43:36.008 Error: MySensors: Error opening serial port!
2016-02-19 10:43:37.008 MySensors: retrying in 30 seconds...

I see the post above about this being related to using sensors not supported. Since it started with the relay node, I took that out of the setup, but I'm still getting the error.

I've rebuilt the entire rpi, mysensors, and domoticz, but I can't get it to work reliably. If I start the gateway manually via a putty session, it will work for a few minutes, but then it stops and goes back to the command prompt in putty and I can see the log in Domoticz start showing the above errors.

I have setup the gateway to start automatically, but it doesn't seem to restart correctly after a reboot.

I suspect I have a version mismatch in my code somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. My last effort was to remove all code from my computer and start over, ie reinstall Arduino and a fresh download of MySensors code (v1.5).

I've also tried changing the permissions on the tty devices, but that didn't seem to help either.

I was real excited about this project when I first read about it. When I finally got some parts in, I had some quick success that kept me motivated, but my enthusiasm is waning a bit with my total lack of progress on this issue. :(

Thanks in advance for any help.