I am in Electrical Engineering industry for 4 years, in fact, I love to mess with electronic components, theory and applications of EE. For me, it is the queen of all Engineering branches, what you say?
@andriej
Hi, I had problem using the main branch mysensors/Raspberry, that because of the bit-field struct (header_s) in Sensor.h They will get packed in different order on the arduino compared to the RPi (at least with my compiler, gcc). In order to fix this I created the 1.4dev branch. It uses full bytes instead of the bit-fields, but you need (of cause) to compile both the sensors (arduino) and the gateway (RPi) using the 1.4dev branch.
We need to fix this in the main branch later on (and use the same files as in mysensors/Arduino/libraries/MySensors)
@OldSurferDude My old 2.0 setup is with nRF24L01 radios. This is a link to the thread on some light switches that I designed and built.
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/7376/us-decora-wall-switch-continued/2
I am aware that you cannot have two MQTT gatways. When I designed my old setup I was not that familiar with MQTT so I never ended up implementing it. On the home assistant server that I have set up though, I have installed the MQTT broker on there so I should be able to comunicate with any MySensors stuff over MQTT in the future devices I make/set up. As I mentioned, I do have a Home Assistant box that I have started about 4 months ago and eventually want to migrate my Vera equipment to the HA box.
As for the YAML and Python, I'll muddle my way through. used to program in PHP and have done enough on Arduino that I'm sure it won't hurt my brain too much.
Some humidity sensors are known to lose accuracy with age. For instance, the Si7021 is known to have this problem. If that matters to you, then the best choice is to pick sensors that have datasheets and which have specs as to their expected longevity or accuracy over time. Then buy from mouser/digikey to be certain you're getting the real thing rather than factory rejects or counterfeits.
For extra insurance, I avoid electrolytic capacitors entirely whenever possible. I buy only 7XR rated ceramic capacitors that are overspec'd. The difference in price is small compared to a failure down the road.
Of possible interest: Here's a guy who is building an inexpensive open source ethernet controller for stepper motors:
What happend to Ethersweep? Project Update! – 12:36— Neumi
If you listen to the end, it's revealed that there is now generous funding available which allows people to do this kind of open-source development as a full time job, which is what he is now doing. For that reason, I think there's a good chance he will complete his project within the allowed 6 months., and so by the deadline it will likely be nicely polished.
It has been a long time but I’ve learned a few things that I wanted to share.
This library of information (Thank you NeverDie and others) has been so helpful in my hobby developments.
Software Defined Radios for signal analysis. With the help of Andreas Spiess explanation of IQ transformations, I learned about Software Defined Radios and I bought one (RTL-SDR). Using this I can clearly discriminate between effective 433 MHz transmitters and bad ones. Not only is the signal density displayed on the software (SDR#) but so is the frequency.
Power Profiler Kit II has been indispensable in watching power usage and seeing into the details of the radio transmission. In effect this thing has saved me from buying an oscilloscope for my simple little bench.
Tonight, I saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9nycymUd-I It describes common PCB errors. It is too advanced for me, but I did pick-up a few ideas about ground planes (tip #6 from the video).
I hope this is of some value for folks.
