I have been creating a sensor network at a local high school and the mysensors project is basically what makes it possible. I just launched a website on amazon documenting some of what is deployed with live graphs.

http://growing.education/index.php/farm-monitoring-and-automation/garinger-sensor-network/

At this point we are mainly just monitoring and collecting data, so my controller is a very simple node-red installation that saves data locally and transmits data via MQTT to mosquitto runing on an Amazon EC2 instance. Another installation of node-red again saves data to InfluxDB and Grafana displays the data very nicely.

We have three active nodes. One sensebender node running off battery and another solar powered node. A sample of the graphing is below. Check it out. The site is new so I suspect there are many typos and broken links. Thanks again to this community for helping me.

@rickmontana83 I have been anxiously awaiting openHAB2 for several months now. It is supposed to solve most of your issues although still java but optimized for devices like raspberry pi. I believe ReleaseCandidate2 was scheduled in the next week. However that is all marketing at this point.

To me openHAB seems to have the biggest user community and industry support which is why I have been waiting for openHAB2. I completely agree that asking new users to create sitemaps, xml files and download an eclipse app is just too much.

I hope openHAB2 delivers.

I have been playing around with the MQTT Gateway and Node-Red. I started with what user @Heinz did in a different forum topic however I am hoping to use MQTT.

First of all, node-red is a dead simple way to monitor MQTT traffiction. The question I have is about the messages created form the MQTT gateway.

I am only getting messages that "set" data. For example

{ "topic": "MyMQTT/20/0/V_HUM", "payload": "53.5", "qos": 0, "retain": false, "_msgid": "a3f256c8.5c0da8" } 

but I never see any presentation messages or ack messages. I took a look at the MQTT code but I don't know C++. Is there a difference between the serial gateway and the mqtt gateway? Meaning is there more functionality in the serial gateway?

By the way the vis app for node-red, https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-vis
, has some nice functionality. Pretty easy to add switches. I think you need your sensor IDs to be static but I think you could easily create a widget to display sensors that are new.

I can do some testting also. Happy to help.

I noticed the web page on connecting the radio does not match the troubleshooting section. Connecting a Decoupling-Capacitor on the Radio page says 4.7µF but the troubleshooting page says 47µF. Seems a bit confusing.

This site has the best collection I have found: http://www.embeddedworks.net/wsim3951.html

In the US the T-Mobile pre-paid seems to be the best deal. Similar on sparkfun
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13186

Is anybody connecting to the internet via a SIM card? If so what cellular plan are you using? I think I can stay below 1GB a month and I am in the United States (North Carolina). I know there are a few companies offering M2M Data Only plans but I have not been able to organize what is currently available. I also know Twilio is joining with T-Mobile but I have not seen the plan yet. Does anybody have any information?

The arduino should send a "presentation" message when powered up which could be the "on" message. If there is a way to send a "Powering Down" message at the loss of power by using a capacitor, that would be fantastic. In my setup it would have to have enough juice to send the message via the long range radio. I suspect some of the experts on this forum have done something similar to this solution.

I think the issue with the current sensor is the pump would need to be running for it to work and they are looking to know that the pump could run if it needs to.

This page provides a design based on a capacitive voltage detector (like the "pen" you stick in an outlet to see if it has power): http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/94782/capacitive-ac-voltage-detection.

Seems plausible but you could also just power the arduino from the GFCI. I would have the arduino monitor a float switch in the sump pump. You could send a signal indicating the water level every 2 minutes.

• If the pump dies or is blocked or malfunctions but the GFCI is still powering the arduino you would get a signal that the water level has risen and is going to flood the basement.

• If the GFCI trips and your controller does not receive an update from the sensor you could send an email indicating a possible powe failure. This is a tricky alarm and not all controllers can do it. You need to know when the arduino last sent a message to the controller and act accordingly. You also only want to send one email even if the power is out for a long time. And it is nice to send a follow-up email when the arduino comes back online.

I can do some testting also. Happy to help.

I noticed the web page on connecting the radio does not match the troubleshooting section. Connecting a Decoupling-Capacitor on the Radio page says 4.7µF but the troubleshooting page says 47µF. Seems a bit confusing.

Thanks for sharing this! I am hoping to create an all-in-one extension cord plus this meter. I hope this way I can detect when a pump fails or maybe just how much power is being used.

I have read that you when using a CT you must be careful to avoid a voltage build up on the CT output. Is that a concern with this current setup? With a battery powered arduino you are not grounded? In my extension cord project I was thinking I could use the ground from the extension cord.

I am not an electrical engineer so I may be way off here, just trying to be safe.

I think this setup could be very useful. In the high school greenhouse where I have my sensor network there are so many pumps, heaters, air stones, that need to be monitored and an alert sent if they stop working.

I may also try this with the sensebender micro.

And I just noticed the internet has been down at the greenhouse since early Saturday! More reason to have a local install.

@FotoFieber Just the standard serial gateway. There is a nice node-red node for parsing mysensors serial data. I then have some basic code that recognizes the specific data, e.g. node 9 child 10 is the aquaponics water temperature, so that I can store more information in influxd to mak ethe graphs better.

I also have node-red respond to the metric/imperial question. That is basically it.

@Yveaux The install in the greenhouse is basically because the internet connection is costly and not reliable. I have an old linux computer in teh greenhouse for the following reasons:

1. To save the date even if there is no internet
2. To display a nice dashboard on the computer in the greenhouse (looks impressive)
3. To allow students to look at the graphs locally without internet