Things get funky when there's a bit more traffic
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I'm using MyController and 115200 serial baudrate on the gw. The thing is that it's a little bit hard to debug this(at least for me) because these things happen somehow intermittent. I watched MyController logs and indeed I see that sometimes I receive values which are correct from the controller point of view but in reality are not because I don't have those extra sensors attached in hardware :simple_smile:.
Regarding the gw and interleaved serial prints I was thinking to use a atsamd21 or any arm MCU that is supported by software in order to process things faster and maybe use a higher serial baudrate(if the MCU allows it and the baudrate error rate is acceptable). But to be honest I don't think this helps if the messages are interleaved as in that situation I'm assuming that we need some kind of arbitration right?
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I'm rolling my own(with CP2102 usb-serial converter) https://www.openhardware.io/view/316/MySensors-RFM69W-serial-GWATMEGA328P. Oh and I changed several serial GW's all based on Atmega328p of course but with different usb to serial converters like: CH340G, atmega16u2 from Arduino UNO board and I think I used arduino nano at some point in time with FTDI 232 chip.
Results are the same. Not to mention that after 20-25 days the usb to serial connection stops working so bye-bye serial gw and no output from it. That's why I changed and tested so many usb to serial converters and different boards. But that's another issue and story not related to this tread which I'm still investigating.
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What do you mean by a "more standard gw hw" :simple_smile: ? Isn't the serial gw the defacto? If I remember well this was the first one supported. I tried the ESP8266 based one but after a day it started to become unstable and in the end iresponsive. I used the nodemcu board to test it - maybe because of the board and/or power supply issues because I've read that esp modules are very picky regarding that part so I abandoned it.
What I wanted to try was the orange pi board with rfm69w attached directly on the SPI port but no luck as it only supports nrf24l01 in the mysensors 2.1.1 version. Maybe I'll come back to it when switching to the new upcoming version of mysensors core.
Next W5100 ethernet board...well I didn't had any pleasant experiences with this one either before (not mysensors related) so I think I'll skip this one too.
Is there something else that I missed?
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One other thing that I'm waiting for is the MySensors core to become fully portable and independent of Arduino framework so that I can use it for example with STM32 mcu's and libopencm3 or cmsis or cubemx hal maybe. I'm not really a software guy - still learning this part. And maybe I'll never be the software guy type :simple_smile: in the future too...but still we have now such powerful ARM mcu's and cheaper too and it's a pitty to not take advantage of them. Now it's true that in most of the cases the old plain 8bit ones are more than enough for simple tasks like reading sensors and driving some relays...so why bother with those 32bit complex beasts :simple_smile:
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What do you mean by a "more standard gw hw" :simple_smile: ? Isn't the serial gw the defacto? If I remember well this was the first one supported. I tried the ESP8266 based one but after a day it started to become unstable and in the end iresponsive. I used the nodemcu board to test it - maybe because of the board and/or power supply issues because I've read that esp modules are very picky regarding that part so I abandoned it.
What I wanted to try was the orange pi board with rfm69w attached directly on the SPI port but no luck as it only supports nrf24l01 in the mysensors 2.1.1 version. Maybe I'll come back to it when switching to the new upcoming version of mysensors core.
Next W5100 ethernet board...well I didn't had any pleasant experiences with this one either before (not mysensors related) so I think I'll skip this one too.
Is there something else that I missed?
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Thank you all for your suggestions I appreciate. I will try the ethernet gw too and see what happens.
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@mtiutiu
There is also the Sensebender GW,
or in case you're interested i already designed an atsam usb dongle (i'll upload my latest files though), and could send one to you if you want. i'll order some others pcb projects during the weekend (and always choose express shipping), and i'll order the new rev at same time so..it's as you wish, just tell me, no problem, it's a quick tiny board to assemble ;) -
@mtiutiu
There is also the Sensebender GW,
or in case you're interested i already designed an atsam usb dongle (i'll upload my latest files though), and could send one to you if you want. i'll order some others pcb projects during the weekend (and always choose express shipping), and i'll order the new rev at same time so..it's as you wish, just tell me, no problem, it's a quick tiny board to assemble ;)I saw that project - really nice btw(as all of your hw projects). I inspired a little bit from yours and I created my version using the atsamd21e variant as you can see here: https://github.com/mtiutiu/kicad/tree/master/mysensors/gw/serial_gw_ATSAMD21E.
Waiting for the boards though...The fact is that I like to design my own boards whenever possible as you may noticed already. And the satisfaction is bigger of course when you design your own and in the end it just works :simple_smile: .
Sensebender GW is a great project too and very well made as I studied it a little bit so big congrats to @tbowmo. But as I said I like to roll my own boards :simple_smile:.
Thanks for the support @scalz . And to express my gratitude for the openhardware community I always try to give something back as I already did on the openhardware.io site.
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@mtiutiu
thx for the kind words, i appreciate. I understand you, same for me.
Your designs are nice too, i've seen them ;)
I'll upload my updated sch as i've changed a few things and routes, and it's also thinner now.your atsam gw looks good, i see you've simplified a few things, curious as usual.. :)
no usb protection, regarding usb specs ?
why not using the more powerful radio (HW/HCW rev) as it's a GW? Will you put the antenna wire in the enclosure, or let it go outside? however i prefer a connector for this.
Well, just some feedbacks, i've different mcu&gw too, so i know it's fun to experiment but not interested to reinvent the wheel each time lol.Keep the good work :+1: , i hope you'll get your stuff working as you wish, and i should be back asap on software, put more load on my network and see what happens (still a lot entertained by hw too)
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@mtiutiu
thx for the kind words, i appreciate. I understand you, same for me.
Your designs are nice too, i've seen them ;)
I'll upload my updated sch as i've changed a few things and routes, and it's also thinner now.your atsam gw looks good, i see you've simplified a few things, curious as usual.. :)
no usb protection, regarding usb specs ?
why not using the more powerful radio (HW/HCW rev) as it's a GW? Will you put the antenna wire in the enclosure, or let it go outside? however i prefer a connector for this.
Well, just some feedbacks, i've different mcu&gw too, so i know it's fun to experiment but not interested to reinvent the wheel each time lol.Keep the good work :+1: , i hope you'll get your stuff working as you wish, and i should be back asap on software, put more load on my network and see what happens (still a lot entertained by hw too)
Thanks. Well yes...I simplified things a little bit. Your board is better designed than mine ofc regarding the antenna and other protections. But most of the time I found that those are not really necessary at least for me and in my current setup. So yes... I need to start thinking for all the worst cases and environment issues that may arise when designing hw which is not so easy btw imho. In the end is fun to experiment and learn more stuff about electronics because this is the main reason I'm doing this btw.
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yep i completely agree, lot of fun, and headache too sure :smile:
