Hi all,

I've just returned to doing some mysensors work after a long absence. I'm just now trying the 2.0 release of the library (from 1.4 and 1.5 previously) and, since I know dev work can be underappreciated sometimes, I just wanted to pay my compliments to all those who contributed to the 2.0 release!

I just rev'ed my Ethernet gateway and several sensors to 2.0. VERY clean, very quick, and very cool.

If it's not said often enough, very well done guys.

(BTW - since I'm just getting started back again in earnest, I'm sure you'll next see me post some issues and questions/complaints :-), but I wanted to open with appreciation first!).

--Steve

Hey guys,

quick update: got this working, at least on the gateway side -- haven't tried hooking up a node yet, that's next... Once I confirm that works, I'll add SOLVED to the title of this.

For the gateway, I went digging through the new driver code, looking for things to try and adding some debug writes, and found the code in RFM69_Initialise() where, if MY_RFM69_RST_PIN is defined, it will reset the radio. I already had the RST line on the RFM69HCW wired up, and had previously (with the old driver) manually added code to do it, but it didn't help...

But with the new driver from the dev branch (used by #define MY_RFM69_NEW_DRIVER) I just added

#define MY_RFM69_RST_PIN 6

to my sketch and now I get...

0;255;3;0;9;0 MCO:BGN:INIT GW,CP=RPNGA---,VER=2.2.0-beta
0;255;3;0;9;26 TSM:INIT
0;255;3;0;9;28 TSF:WUR:MS=0
0;255;3;0;9;36 TSM:INIT:TSP OK
0;255;3;0;9;39 TSM:INIT:GW MODE
0;255;3;0;9;43 TSM:READY:ID=0,PAR=0,DIS=0
0;255;3;0;9;46 MCO:REG:NOT NEEDED
IP: 192.168.0.215
0;255;3;0;9;1350 MCO:BGN:STP
0;255;3;0;9;1353 MCO:BGN:INIT OK,TSP=1

I had read somewhere that the Adafruit breakout normally pulls RST high and supposedly resets itself at power-on, but I guess that wasn't enough... Explicitly resetting the radio seems to have done the trick and may be required for the Adafruit RFM69HCW breakout.

Going to see if I can get the raspberry pi GW working now, since my curiosity is piqued

Thank you all for the help and input!

--Steve

Ha! yeah - actually there are more than one of us (MSFT employees) here.

I'm not eligible for the competition (never am) because I'm an employee, but definitely encourage the community here to put the best ideas forward. There are some incredibly smart folks here and really cool projects.

Very nice project and thanks for sharing. I have a deer feeder in a corner of my yard, and it's always getting empty without me knowing. I'm planning on this exact same type of project to measure the level of corn in the feeder. Would love to see your final schematic and parts list (as it changed across the thread), but no worry if you don't have it as I'm sure I can figure it out.

Thanks again for sharing.

Thanks all,

@LastSamurai - good catch on bonding the grounds. totally missed that. brain fart on my part. Getting good data in serial mon now.

@martinhjelmare and @mfalkvidd - thanks. I thought it was something like that. While the hang described in the original thread occurs regardless of power source (even powered from PC) and appears to be a separate issue, I did see some different erratic behavior earlier and the batteries measured at 2.91V. So probably getting close to threshold or something. And maybe it gets drug down when the radio transmits or the DHT11 reads or something, resulting in erratic behavior.

Good find. I bet based on some of the projects I've seen discussed here, this community could submit some really cool stuff!!

disclosure #1 - I work for Microsoft (as an IoT specialist)
disclosure #2 - I don't have anything to do with this contest (but I wish I did)...

Hey guys,

Another update... and an admission :-).

After playing with it some more, it looks like I mis-read the details on how the Adafruit breakout treats the reset pin. I hard connected it to ground and it now works without setting the RST_PIN define. Apparently we just need to explicitly pull the RST pin low (which makes sense). Having the 'define' set was doing that in code earlier.

You do have to have the new drivers, but don't have to fool with the reset pin. The GW works in both Arduino and raspberry pi now.

thanks for thinking through this with me.

done! Thanks @mfalkvidd

Good tip! thanks for sharing

I use it and like it a lot (but then again, I'm admittedly biased - work for MSFT :-)).. I use VS Code for a lot of other non-mysensors and non-Arduino (i.e. python, node, etc) development, so it's nice to have that all consolidated in one dev tool.

It's far from a perfect tool, no doubt, but a good start. Mostly I'm just happy to get Intellisense!

Thanks @jlaraujo... Definitely keep us up to date and i'll be happy to order and try it out.

Was able to finish up the soldering, and just playing with the mocksensor sketch... works great! (not sure why my pics are sideways, they are straight on my machine )

Looking at the RSSI data, this sensor seems to be about the same signal strength as my other sensors (maybe even slightly better, probably due to the shorter and more solid connections). So it seems that the performance of the radio is pretty good.

Ah! I see! (said the blind man ).

I had never really paid attention to PCB design, so didn't realize there were often "planes" for some widespread connections (like ground)... makes perfect sense.

Thx again for the quick responses. I'll be soldering up the rest of the connections tomorrow so I'll be able to give it a test.

Thanks for the quick reply. No need for special build for IRQ (although that might be a good addition for a future rev to have that option). I can solder to a pad, it's just trickier as my E.E. training, skills, steadier hands, and better eyesight were 20+ years ago

For the holes, out of curiosity, I see the VCC hole connection trace on the board, but I can't see how the pins are all connected to GND (i.e. can't see any traces). Is it between the layers of the board? Or am I just going blind?

Thanks again for the contribution as this is a very nice project.

Hi,

Neat project. This will really make for much cleaner projects for me.

I ordered a few to play with and I'm trying to understand the connections. I soldered the RFM69 module on, no problem, and the antenna. I'll do the capacitor next.

However, I'm trying to figure out the GND, VCC, and IRQ connections. Are the pads the only option for connection, or do the holes next to them work too (hole a lot easier to solder than pad :-)) ? I don't see any kind of etching connecting the two visible on either the top or the bottom. I assume the intent is to connect a wire to them and then run that wire "underneath" the mini to connect to GND, VSS, and D2 respectively?

Sorry if that's a stupid question, as I don't have tools to via the design files.

--Steve

Probably a stupid question, but thought I'd chime in... Since you don't show it above, are you also #define'ing a MAC address (like below)... Is the MAC address unique on your network? I've seen very odd things happen with duplicate MACs.

// The MAC address can be anything you want but should be unique on your network.
// Newer boards have a MAC address printed on the underside of the PCB, which you can (optionally) use.
// Note that most of the Ardunio examples use  "DEAD BEEF FEED" for the MAC address.
#define MY_MAC_ADDRESS 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED

done! Thanks @mfalkvidd

Ok - apparently I don't know how to mark it as SOLVED