💬 MySensors NRF5 Platform

[d00616]

@monte said in 💬 MySensors NRF5 Platform:

@d00616 thanks for a reply. I will evaluate my skills for this task, when I actually will get a chip to try it on. I need some really small pcb for my project, and single chip with mcu and rf with the size of nrf51 fits perfectly, but it requires quiet simple communications and full MySensors library will be overkill and hard to adapt for my needs.

If possible use the nRF52 series. There are some improvements like better radio sensivity, lower current consumption, more RAM and flash, better ADC and a better CPU. Maybe in the future there is a Firmware update OTA functionality which is easier to adapt to the NRF52 than the NRF51 platform. Another reason to use the NRF52 is, that the official Arduino NRF5 port only supports the NRF52. This port has a lot more capabilities than the arduino-nrf5 port, but MySensors is not compatible at the moment.

[Nca78]

Should we worry about that ?

[d00616]

@nca78 said in 💬 MySensors NRF5 Platform:

Should we worry about that ?

No. There are some ports of Arduino for NRF5. At the moment MySensors is not compatible with the Primo Port, because it comes with the SoftDevice. It changes nothing for the current state.

[Omemanti]

What is the best way to use a pin interrupt to wake up form a sleep?

like for instance, I got some sort of motion connected to PIN 8.

[NeverDie]

The source code for the PIR project gives one possible answer.

[Omemanti]

@neverdie
I've been dealing with that code but for some reason, I don't get it to work, code-wise it seems I'm lacking..

First i get this error: struct NRF_UARTE_Type' has no member named 'TASKS_SUSPEND
And when I comment that out it seems like its not waking up.

I made a test sketch, which reported the status every 1000ms. this worked accurately for the last 3 days so it doesn't look like it is a sensor problem.

So my hope was that there was an easier methode available..

[NeverDie]

@omemanti Sounds like maybe you're either missing a library or else not linking to one that's required.

[Omemanti]

@neverdie

What am I missing, I just reinstalled the whole shabang.

• Arduino IDE
• Sandeep
• Mysensors 2.2.0

thats all there is installed..

[NeverDie]

@omemanti You want the mysensors development fork.

[NeverDie]

Also, this: https://github.com/d00616/ArduinoHwNRF5

[Omemanti]

@neverdie

• removed 2.2.0 => installed 2.2.1 Alpha.
• boards check.

Still:

error: 'struct NRF_UARTE_Type' has no member named 'TASKS_SUSPEND'

   NRF_UARTE0->TASKS_SUSPEND = 1;

               ^

exit status 1
'struct NRF_UARTE_Type' has no member named 'TASKS_SUSPEND'```

[alowhum]

Let's say I've just bought a $2,50 NRF52 board.

Does anyone know a good tutorial for absolute beginners?

For example:

• I have no idea what a softdevice is. Should I know?
• I don't know what hardware I need. A normal serial adapter or an ST-link? Should I hack an STM32 into a black magic probe (whatever that is..), or is that for power users?
• To what pins do I connect to upload a sketch?
• How are you connecting wires onto the package? Just hotglue and very steady hands? Some cheap adapter or board? Any tips and tricks?
• There's something about text files that define how the pins work? But the serial pins are always the same? Where does the text-file go? What flavours are there? Which is the most popular?
• What boards should I enable in the Arduino IDE?
• How do I debug my sketch? Does the serial monitor work?
• Do I still need the development version of MySensors now that we are at V2.2?
• Do I need to set anything in MySensors?
• Are encryption, signing and the simple options to do this supported?
• What can it do? Can I connect a 5v sensor to it? Can it power things in the way that an Arduino can?

[Anticimex]

@alowhum all security functionality currently available for MySensors is supported om nrf52. There is nothing in the security road map that will not be supported on nrf52. The MAY be features that work best with a security peripheral but there will always be software compatible alternatives for released features that can operate on nrf52 unless it is natively supported by the HW peripherals in the chip.

[Nca78]

@alowhum you can start with this:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/6705/mysensors-nrf5-platform/1
and
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7869/start-with-nrf5-is-very-simple/1

But you should also check the NRF5 information on Nordic website.
In short it's 3.3V max (so no 5V peripherals directly), you need to program through the 2 SWD pins (SWDCLK and SWDIO) and you have different options for that, for debugging use a FTDI adapter and connect it to the pins you have assigned as TX/RX.

[Nca78]

Hello,

has someone successfully used VisualMicro with the MySensors NRF5 boards ?
In the board selector dropdown list I can select any board, including NRF5 boards like "Generic NRF51" or "BBC Microbit", except when I select MySensors NRF51 or NRF52 boards, then it's not doing anything and keeping the previous selected board. I have a message in the status bar saying "the first available board has been selected" and that's all, I don't find anything related to VisualMicro with this error message in Google.
I have tried with both 0.1 and 0.3 versions of the boards, and with both "Arduino 1.6/1.9" and "Visual Micro (No IDE)" IDE selections.

[nagelc]

I like VisualMicro and think I got this to work but was mostly using plain Arduino to keep things simple while figuring it out. I haven't worked on an NRF5 board for a few weeks. I will check my setup. Might be a day or two before I can get back to it.

[nagelc]

@nca78
No. I was mistaken. I have the same issue as you. I used the arduino program with the MySensors NRF5. I would like to get this to work also. Please post if you find a solution.

[Nca78]

@nagelc thank you for taking the time to check, I'll go with Arduino for NRF5 at the moment and keep that for a moment when I'll be more keen on fixing technical problems :)

[Shodney]

What are people using for a gateway with these?

I'm currently using this from @NeverDie , which seems to work for the most part, but I'm getting a lot of connection errors:

2018-04-18 18:27:35 ERROR (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Receive from server failed.

2018-04-18 18:27:35 INFO (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Closing socket at ('10.0.50.100', 2323).
2018-04-18 18:27:35 INFO (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Socket closed at ('10.0.50.100', 2323).
2018-04-18 18:27:35 INFO (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Trying to connect to ('10.0.50.100', 2323)
2018-04-18 18:27:35 INFO (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Connected to ('10.0.50.100', 2323)
2018-04-18 18:27:52 INFO (Thread-2) [mysensors.gateway_tcp] Closing socket at ('10.0.50.100', 2323).

They seem to come up about 75% of the time when the gateway receives a message from a node.

I thought it might be a power thing, so I messed around with a few caps and a separate power source for the hat but nothing seems to have made a difference.

Everything seems to work despite this, but I don't really want my log to be filled with these errors if I can help it.

Has anyone attempted to build a wired gateway or anything similar?

[Omemanti]

@shodney i used this one for a couple of tests. I resoldered the caps near the top and connected a new antenna. Works pretty well for testing purposes. I expect some pcb's a week ago😏 for some further testing.