💬 Building a Raspberry Pi Gateway

[arraWX]

@ricorico94 Yesterday I managed to make a working rpi gateway. I am on rpi3, use a socket adapter board for the radio and use domoticz. I posted all the details here: https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7793/nrf24l01-problems-in-2-1-1-and-2-2-0-beta/24

[ricorico94]

Hi,
@arraWX : I looked at your post. Unfortunately, the error I face is before the start, as it's during the make, so it appears I follow the first steps you describe (config & make), but I still don't know how to solve the make errors.

In case it can help understanding what's going on or what to do, I ran the command:

gcc -v 

which displayed: gcc version 4.6.3 (Debian 4.6.3-14+rpi1)
Could it be an issue this "+rpi1" whreas I've a PI 2 ?

[arraWX]

Do not know if it is of any help, but mine says: gcc version 4.9.2 (Raspbian 4.9.2-10)

[ricorico94]

Hi,
I tried to update gcc, just in case.. though I'm not sure of what I do.:confused:
I ran:

pi@raspberrypi ~/MySensors $ sudo apt-get upgrade gcc

and after a little while, it ended without obvious mistake.
but if I do gcc -v again, I still get
gcc version 4.6.3 (Debian 4.6.3-14+rpi1)
(even after reboot)
Is there another step to be done, or am I using wrong command ?

[gohan]

try running first sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get upgrade , it should update all packages

[ricorico94]

@gohan : JUst tried it, but same result.. no change on version number.
is there something like apt-get install to be done also ?

[gohan]

I don't know really... I am using dietpi on a RPI3 and there is a convenient tool that you can check what to install and installs for you and among the others I have chosen the "Build-Essentials" that contains all the common packages for compile, so I don't know what packages are included.

[marceloaqno]

@ricorico94 Do you see gcc-4.9 in the list returned by the command below?

sudo apt-cache search gcc

If it's listed, try installing it by specifying the version:

sudo apt-get install gcc-4.9

[ricmail85]

Hi, wouldn't be proper to include in the guide also the command "--my-rfm69-irq-pin=22" during the configure procedure in order to improve the throughput for the rfm69 radios?

[ricorico94]

Hi,
Thanks to @marceloaqno and @Gohan and @arraWX , I could progress somewhow.. but still not working.

When listing the versions as per Marceloagno advice, I could see gcc-4.6 and -4.7 and 4.8 but nothing else (no 4.9).
I then decided to take the risk of installing the 4.8.. The commands from Marcelagno did not work (well, I mean gcc - v was still showing 4.6).
Then I followed this tutorial on upgrade step by step to upgrade to gcc-4.8 and then the make command apparently succeeded (well, plenty messages, some warnings.. but no error apparently, as ar as I could see. I dd not find the folders desribed in website, but the commands were still ok.. weird, but I'm too rookie..)

I then followed again the Mysensors tutorial with
sudo ./bin/mysgw -h
sudo ./bin/mysgw -d (and no error message. great!)
sudo make install
but then I ran
sudo systemctl enable mysgw.service
and I got error message

sudo: systemctl: command not found

After some search, I saw that it's a Jessie command whereas I discovered that my good old version of Rasp Pi, which was built from the standard Domoticz image in 2015 is still Wheezy

pi@raspberrypi ~/MySensors $ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 7 (wheezy)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="7"
VERSION="7 (wheezy)"
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
ANSI_COLOR="1;31"
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

Any idea of what I should do now?..
another commande equivalent to the systemctl ?
an upgrade to Jessie (any risk ? and how to do it safely ?)

br,
Ricorico94

[petewill]

I am new to Linux and hopefully have an easy question...
I have followed the build instructions and everything seems to be working well so far. One issue I'm having is getting node-red to see the usb port (/dev/ttyUSB020). I did some searching online and found that if I run the following command node-red will see the port and things start working.

sudo chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB020

The problem is that each time I reboot the Pi the command needs to be run again. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can resolve this so I don't need to run the command each time the system is booted? Thanks in advance.

[mfalkvidd]

@petewill you can put the chmod command in /etc/rc.local
That will execute it on every boot.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/rc-local.md

[gohan]

@petewill or you can compile the gateway as ethernet or mqtt that are both supported by node-red, making life a little easier

[petewill]

@mfalkvidd Thanks. I thought about doing something like that but I wasn't sure that was the best process or if something should be modified during the install. I'll give it a shot this way though. Thanks again.

[petewill]

@gohan Sorry, I did not see your reply earlier. I tried an ethernet gateway in node-red a while ago and could never get it to work with Vera. There was some port conflicts or something. I have never played with mqtt. I need to learn it at some point but I am hoping to finish this project so I can move on to some others. :) Do you think I will gain significant advantages by using that over a serial/usb gateway?

[gohan]

From a node-red perspective, IMHO, mqtt is easier to handle even without specific mysensors nodes, but it all depends what you need to do. I played with it some months ago but I got stuck when I had to start using javascript as I still don't know that language, but it was quite easy to link mysensors values to the dashboard without actually touching any code.

[petewill]

@gohan Thanks! I seem to have the serial stuff working well (but haven't yet put it into production) so I think I'll go that way for now. I definitely need to look into mqtt at some point though.

[gohan]

Ofc it has its PROs and CONs but I believe it is the way to go for the future.

[fleinze]

I compiled the gateway for spi1 because I have a display using spi0. Two problems I came across:

1. the master branch doesn't work. It compiles, it seems to work but it never receives anything.
2. the development branch works but I needed to define the right cs-pin even if I redirected the pin in config.txt (with dtoverlay=spi1-1cs,cs0_pin=16)
   The following configure worked for me:

./configure --spi-driver=SPIDEV --spi-spidev-device=/dev/spidev1.0 --my-rf24-cs-pin=36 --my-rf24-ce-pin=33 --my-rf24-irq-pin=31

[Inso]

For the ones having problems with the stable build (Version 2.1.1), always getting "mysgw: !TSM:INIT:TSP FAIL":
Seems there is a bug, you have to install "development" (Version 2.2.0)
Maybe someone adds an note on top of the tutorial, so others won´t also spend hours in searching for the problem on their Pi/Hardware.