pimatic-mysensors controller plugin

[karl261]

Hi, I am using the mysensors-pimatic system and it works great. Now, I am using an optocoupler to simulate some buttons being pressend, and at the moment I am using the relay sketch for that. That works great, but it gives me on/off switches in pimatic. However, I only press the button momentarily. So I would need more a momentary button in pimatic. Something that does not switch but I still can press. So three questions:

1. Is there a way to have an "ordinary" button in pimatic (not on/off)? Something I press only? This on/off switch works (everytime I switch on or off it simulates on button pressed on my optocoupler), but it is not really what I am looking for.
2. Is there some code for a momentary button in mysensors? The relay code I am using works great. I adapted in a way that it swtiches the optocoupler on and 50ms later automatically off. Works great, but I was wondering if there was a more elegant way to do it.
3. If there is no code for a momentary button for pimatic, where would I start looking if I'd want to contribute code?

Cheers!

[Oitzu]

Hey karl261,

1.) Yes there is a ordinary button in pimatic. The base-class is called "ButtonsDevice" if i remember correctly.
2.) The MySensors Plugin also seems to implement this.
See: https://github.com/DheerajKhajuria/pimatic-mysensors
Search for: Binary Button
3.) Depends at which point you want to contribute code.
For the mysensors plugin: https://github.com/DheerajKhajuria/pimatic-mysensors
For the Pimatic framework: https://github.com/pimatic/pimatic
Make also sure to read the howto @ www.pimatic.org and visit the forum forum.pimatic.org.

[Dheeraj]

@karl261 using ButtonsDevice as mentioned by Oitzu, you can achieve the point no. 1 . non off/on switch..

{
      "id": "mode",
      "name": "TV Mode",
      "class": "ButtonsDevice",
      "buttons": [
        {
          "id": "PVR",
         "text": "PVR"
        },
        {
          "id": "HTPC",
          "text": "HTPC"
        },
        {
          "id": "Chromecast",
          "text": "Chromecast"
        },
        {
          "id": "testing",
          "text": "RainBowCycle"
        },
      ]
    },

for point no. 2 you can use pimatic IFTTT rules to control (*hidden * relay switch button) moreover you can switch off optocoupler after 50 ms using rules.

3. if you have some special requirement you are welcome to contribute..

[karl261]

Hi guys. Thanks for the replies. This seems to work. I created a button and made a rule "if button XY pressed then toggle AB". So I suppose I leave the relay device as is, just remove it from my pimatic page (out of sight) and move in the button instead. IS that right?

Very cool indeed!

[karl261]

Hi there, I have problem that appears recently. I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

I had my setup running for the past two weeks without any problems. No changes in hardware. Now the following happened:

Suddenly out of nowhere pimatic stop transmitting/receiving. Just like this. No error message. Pimatic frontend working finde. But no data going out to or coming in from the serial gateway.

I checked all logs: Nothing. I re-started pimatic: No success. All logs normal. I restarted the pi2: Nothing. All logs normal. I unplugged/replugged the arduino nano: Nothing. No success.

Then I shutdown the pi2, I pulled the power cable, I put it back in and voila: Everything worked normally. Still nothing in any logs. Unfortunately, now about 24h later, the same issue.

What is happening there? How can I debug that? I also tried resetting the usb:

echo 0 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.5/authorized
echo 1 > /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-1.5/authorized
Nothing.

What can I do? Why was it running perfectly for two weeks?

I changed back to a super simple pimatic config with just one device, but still the same issues.

What to do? Please advice!

[Oitzu]

@karl261 said:

I checked all logs: Nothing. I re-started pimatic: No success. All logs normal. I restarted the pi2: Nothing. All logs normal. I unplugged/replugged the arduino nano: Nothing. No success.

What can I do? Why was it running perfectly for two weeks?

What to do? Please advice!

Hi there! Spontaneously i have no idea what could be going wrong, only chance is to narrow down the problem.
Based on your writing i assume you are using the serial gateway to interface with the mysensors network?
Did you try to enable the debug output in pimatic?
You could try to stop pimatic, detach usb, attach usb and look directly with screen on the serial device what the gateway is doing.

screen <device>

[karl261]

This is the only thing I see in the screen

0;0;3;0;9;gateway started, id=0, parent=0, distance=0
0;0;3;0;14;Gateway startup complete.

Then nothing else. No signal recieved, even if I now my sensors are sending, but also, when I am sending something via pimatic, no send message.

[Oitzu]

@karl261 maybe a defect nrf24 module? The serial connection to the nano seems to work and should normaly show received messages.
Do you have any spare modules laying arround?

[karl261]

@Oitzu that is possible. And also weird. It was working for three weeks without problem. Is there no way to get an error message from the nrf24? Why does it work after unplugging the pi? Why does it not help to reset the sub bus, which should power cycle the nano and the radio module?
I have some nrf24 around, but the installation is in a remote place which I can only access from time to time. That's why I installed mysensors and piratical in the first place. To remote control some things. So three weeks before I can try another radio. I hoped I could reset the system somehow to be able to use my system in the meantime...

[Oitzu]

@karl261 said:

@Oitzu that is possible. And also weird. It was working for three weeks without problem. Is there no way to get an error message from the nrf24? Why does it work after unplugging the pi? Why does it not help to reset the sub bus, which should power cycle the nano and the radio module?
I have some nrf24 around, but the installation is in a remote place which I can only access from time to time. That's why I installed mysensors and piratical in the first place. To remote control some things. So three weeks before I can

Well i can only guess whats the problem or whats the reason to it.
A faulty device can fail at the first day or just after 3 weeks.
The mysensors libs will check at start time the communication with the nrf24 module. If the communication don't work it will give out a "check wires" instead of the "Gateway startup complete.".

Maybe the difference between the full power cycle and the nano power cycle is the duration of the power cycle?
I can guess that the full power cycle left the nrf24 module for a longer time without power?
A longer power down of the nano would result in more time for the caps to discharge?

[karl261]

@Oitzu thanks a lot for your help. I appreciate it.

Some more observations:

• If I reboot the pi, I get

0;0;3;0;9;gateway started, id=0, parent=0, distance=0
0;0;3;0;14;Gateway startup complete.

in the screen session.

• However, if I do

echo '1-1.5' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/unbind
echo '1-1.5' > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/usb/bind

which should power cycle the usb device I do not see anything in the screen session. Which means that the arduino nano was not power cycled.

However I do see that something happened in the log file:

Nov 12 17:31:40 raspberrypi kernel: [  300.831131] ftdi_sio ttyUSB0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
Nov 12 17:31:40 raspberrypi kernel: [  300.839881] ftdi_sio 1-1.5:1.0: device disconnected
Nov 12 17:31:46 raspberrypi kernel: [  306.271337] ftdi_sio 1-1.5:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
Nov 12 17:31:46 raspberrypi kernel: [  306.278553] usb 1-1.5: Detected FT232RL
Nov 12 17:31:46 raspberrypi kernel: [  306.283631] usb 1-1.5: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

So, what does it mean? I don't understand. Maybe there is something wrong with the pi's USB hub? Which is only reset when I pull the plug? But then the wifi should also not work, because it is sitting on the same USB hub.

/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=dwc_otg/1p, 480M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Hub, Driver=hub/5p, 480M
        |__ Port 1: Dev 3, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=smsc95xx, 480M
        |__ Port 4: Dev 4, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=rtl8192cu, 480M
        |__ Port 5: Dev 5, If 0, Class=Vendor Specific Class, Driver=ftdi_sio, 12M

I really don't like that there is no error message nowhere...

Is there any other place I could ask for help?

[karl261]

Ok, so I found a way to reset the usb bus using hub-ctrl.c. There is interesting information here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=93463
https://github.com/codazoda/hub-ctrl.c
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=71044&p=513908
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/27903/usb-power-cycling-problem
So, in my case I can issue the command

./hub-ctrl -h 0 -P 5 -p 0 ; sleep 3; ./hub-ctrl  -h 0 -P 5 -p 1

and it does indeed reset the right port, because if I open now the screen sessoin I get the usual

0;0;3;0;9;gateway started, id=0, parent=0, distance=0
0;0;3;0;14;Gateway startup complete.

BUT: Still the thing is not sending receiving anything. WHY?

[Oitzu]

Tried to extend the sleep between power down and up?

[karl261]

Yes, I also tried with 30 seconds. Longer?

[Oitzu]

Well.. i think you can't lose anything. :D
Will be hard to debug after that without access to the actual hardware.

[karl261]

So, I made some modifications to the Serial Gateway sketch so it includes

radio.printDetails();

I see that it is looping though the loop function, but I actually see NO ouput from this function. What does this mean? That there is actually no radio connected? Wouldn't it say something like "no radio" or so?

[Oitzu]

https://github.com/mysensors/Arduino/blob/f9c8579bbdeaa50a0937287d4f7c14f794460540/libraries/MySensors/drivers/RF24/RF24.cpp#L455
Do you have MY_DEBUG_VERBOSE defined?

[karl261]

Good point. I had not, now I have. But still, there is absolutely 0 output from this. The only message I see is the "Gateway startup complete" stuff.

[edautz]

I use Pimatic for more than a year now and I am using the Mysensors plugin 0.8.21 for more than 4 weeks now.
I use a serial gateway based on a arduino nano and a NRF24 radio.

I have already several sensors running without troubles and it appear to be stable.

What I see from your information is that the serial gateway is communicating, but seems to recieve nothing from your sensors.

If you can see on the PI that your gateway is started up, then the PI is able to recieve the information.

I debugged my serial gateway using the
serial monitor in the Arduino ide. This is also the way to test your sensors. In the serial monitor you can see if they are connecting to the gateway and sending information.

[BastienVH]

Hi,

After using OpenHAB for quite some time, I've made the transition to Pimatic.
I've got a pro mini 3V running on 2 AA batteries with a DS18B20-temp-sensor.
I would like to be able to display the battery level but am having some trouble.
I combined the temp and battery sensor into 1, but the battery status isn't being analyzed properly.
When I restart the node it transmits a value of 12 and shortly after that a value of 0.

Any ideas how to solve this?
Is this related to pimatic and the format in which it receives battery data or is it simply a fault in my code?

Thanks in advance!

This is my code:

/**
 * The MySensors Arduino library handles the wireless radio link and protocol
 * between your home built sensors/actuators and HA controller of choice.
 * The sensors forms a self healing radio network with optional repeaters. Each
 * repeater and gateway builds a routing tables in EEPROM which keeps track of the
 * network topology allowing messages to be routed to nodes.
 *
 * Created by Henrik Ekblad <henrik.ekblad@mysensors.org>
 * Copyright (C) 2013-2015 Sensnology AB
 * Full contributor list: https://github.com/mysensors/Arduino/graphs/contributors
 *
 * Documentation: http://www.mysensors.org
 * Support Forum: http://forum.mysensors.org
 *
 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
 * version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
 *
 *******************************
 *
 * DESCRIPTION
 *
 * Example sketch showing how to send in DS1820B OneWire temperature readings back to the controller
 * http://www.mysensors.org/build/temp
 */

#include <MySensor.h>  
#include <SPI.h>
#include <DallasTemperature.h>
#include <OneWire.h>

#define COMPARE_TEMP 1 // Send temperature only if changed? 1 = Yes 0 = No
#define ONE_WIRE_BUS 3 // Pin where dallase sensor is connected 
#define MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20 16
unsigned long SLEEP_TIME = 30000; // Sleep time between reads (in milliseconds)
OneWire oneWire(ONE_WIRE_BUS); // Setup a oneWire instance to communicate with any OneWire devices (not just Maxim/Dallas temperature ICs)
DallasTemperature sensors(&oneWire); // Pass the oneWire reference to Dallas Temperature. 
MySensor gw;
float lastTemperature[MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20];
int numSensors=0;
int node_id = 12;
int BATTERY_SENSE_PIN = A0;  // select the input pin for the battery sense point
int oldBatteryPcnt = 0;
boolean receivedConfig = false;
boolean metric = true; 
// Initialize temperature message
MyMessage msg(0,V_TEMP);

void setup()  
{ 
  // Startup up the OneWire library
  sensors.begin();
  // requestTemperatures() will not block current thread
  sensors.setWaitForConversion(false);

  // use the 1.1 V internal reference
#if defined(__AVR_ATmega2560__)
   analogReference(INTERNAL1V1);
#else
   analogReference(INTERNAL);
#endif

 // Startup and initialize MySensors library. Set callback for incoming messages. 
  gw.begin(NULL, node_id);

  // Send the sketch version information to the gateway and Controller
  gw.sendSketchInfo("Temperature Sensor met battery", "1.0");

  // Fetch the number of attached temperature sensors  
  numSensors = sensors.getDeviceCount();

  // Present all sensors to controller
  for (int i=0; i<numSensors && i<MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20; i++) {   
     gw.present(i, S_TEMP);
  }
}


void loop()     
{     
   // get the battery Voltage
   int sensorValue = analogRead(BATTERY_SENSE_PIN);
   #ifdef DEBUG
   Serial.println(sensorValue);
   #endif
   
   // 1M, 470K divider across battery and using internal ADC ref of 1.1V
   // Sense point is bypassed with 0.1 uF cap to reduce noise at that point
   // ((1e6+470e3)/470e3)*1.1 = Vmax = 3.44 Volts
   // 3.44/1023 = Volts per bit = 0.003363075
   float batteryV  = sensorValue * 0.003363075;
   int batteryPcnt = sensorValue / 10;

   #ifdef DEBUG
   Serial.print("Battery Voltage: ");
   Serial.print(batteryV);
   Serial.println(" V");

   Serial.print("Battery percent: ");
   Serial.print(batteryPcnt);
   Serial.println(" %");
   #endif

   if (oldBatteryPcnt != batteryPcnt) {
     // Power up radio after sleep
     gw.sendBatteryLevel(batteryPcnt);
     oldBatteryPcnt = batteryPcnt;}
     
  // Process incoming messages (like config from server)
  gw.process(); 

  // Fetch temperatures from Dallas sensors
  sensors.requestTemperatures();

  // query conversion time and sleep until conversion completed
  int16_t conversionTime = sensors.millisToWaitForConversion(sensors.getResolution());
  // sleep() call can be replaced by wait() call if node need to process incoming messages (or if node is repeater)
  gw.sleep(conversionTime);

  // Read temperatures and send them to controller 
  for (int i=0; i<numSensors && i<MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20; i++) {
 
    // Fetch and round temperature to one decimal
    float temperature = static_cast<float>(static_cast<int>((gw.getConfig().isMetric?sensors.getTempCByIndex(i):sensors.getTempFByIndex(i)) * 10.)) / 10.;
 
    // Only send data if temperature has changed and no error
    #if COMPARE_TEMP == 1
    if (lastTemperature[i] != temperature && temperature != -127.00 && temperature != 85.00) {
    #else
    if (temperature != -127.00 && temperature != 85.00) {
    #endif
 
      // Send in the new temperature
      gw.send(msg.setSensor(i).set(temperature,1));
      // Save new temperatures for next compare
      lastTemperature[i]=temperature;
    }
  }
  gw.sleep(SLEEP_TIME);
}