@Smart-Projects-ABC
I'm sorry but I respectfully have to disagree with you on every point.

1. The OP is talking about Home Automation and already has a capable server (HA), so any need to directly control/talk to actuators/sensors is a failure.
2. I would consider IFTTT a last resort and only use it if I want to use something that ONLY supports IFTTT.
3. I agree with using the one that suits you best, but I would call WiFi a last resort. However anything beats going through the cloud.
4. I would advise against messing with the FW unless you need to. That's how you break compatibility (and sometimes hardware).
   I would recommend any sensor/gateway/echosystem that allow local control and that you are in charge of upgrading.
   If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh but since the OP already has a HA setup I feel your suggestions are completely wrong.

@jo34l5 Design you HA setup with internet independency in mind and you'll probably end up with a very stable solution that does what you want, when you want it.
You said you haven't spent to much time on the rules yet, this is where I would recommend you spend the most time.

@Sasquatch said in Suggestions for my setup? Very new here.:

avoid cloud based sensors at all cost for security and future proofing reasons.

and stability, and reactivity/delay, and.. I think this list could be endless

Hello everyone

I'm about to start my second MySensors setup. First one was a few years ago but I put it on hold and decided to focus on getting a stable setup in OpenHAB with some commercial sensors.
Now I'm back looking to expand on the sensor front and I think MySensors is the best option.

But what radio is the best choice today?
I don't have anything left of my old setup so I'm starting fresh.
After digging through the forum I have come up with the following setup and would really appreciate some feedback.

MQTT GW: Amplified nRF52840
Nodes: nRF52840 or nRF52832

The plan is to mostly have battery powered nodes.
Are these good selections or are there any better options that I have missed?

My plan is to initially use a dev kit and a usb dongle to get started and then make custom sensor boards connecting to and powering the nRF52s.

Any and all input is highly appreciated

@NeverDie How about this?
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader
based on nrf5 sdk v11 though, current version is 17.

I had almost given up on mysensors and was considering the nrf52840 with openthread and mqtt-sn since nordic has working examples for that all the way from a mostly sleeping nrf52840 to an mqtt-sn - mqtt bridge.
I really like the nrf52840 and I want OTA since I know I will never leave my nodes alone and stop updating their codes
LoRa is problematic since I want something that is legal in both Sweden and China.

But mbed os shows promise and if the nano ble runs mbed on an nrf52840 then that should open a lot of doors.
Maybe this project will finally push me to adopt an RTOS

This sounds promising.
https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_nrf5_v17.0.0%2Fexamples_bootloader.html&cp=7_1_4_4

@NeverDie Here is a nordic fota over thread example.
https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_tz_v4.1.0%2Fthread_example_dfu.html&cp=7_3_2_10_4_0
They also support using a dongle or DK with a raspberry as a border router.

Nordics documentation is fairly extensive and quite easy to search, I like it
The nrf52840 DK is kind of the standard example hardware for openthread so they have plenty of examples.

@wassfila Your project looks very cool and I considered it earlier. Thanks for sharing
I excluded it because I was concerned that you might stop developing it and that would kill the project.
I want to focus on developing sensor-nodes and using the data in openHAB.
I really think some kind of self-healing mesh solution is the way to go, especially since I want to be able to expand freely and just drop in more nodes at will without disturbing the others.

My current plan was to use MQTT-SN over openthread and then use the homie standard to get everything auto-discovered in openHAB.
But now when you say openthread is somewhat experimental I'm no longer sure.
To me openthread seemed quite well documented and I like that Nordic provide so many examples.
In your experience, is thread unstable?

I want to go for the DIY approach mainly because.

• I want to be able to choose my own sensors and know that I get quality pcbs that last.
• Commercial multi-sensor nodes are generally fairly expensive. Making one custom doesn't pay off, but 30+ does.
• My end-goal is to make energy harvesting nodes, both indoor and outdoor, that once installed will be able to do their job until their components break.

The more I type in this response, while looking at your github and hackaday I feel like maybe I should give nrf52 Mesh a try.
Do you have any OTA working for your setup? I'm not looking for a fancy gui, just a python script on the border router or similar.

@scalz Sorry, I didn't notice you were comparing 69 to 95.

@BearWithBeard Nice drawings! What did you use to draw those?

@scalz said in Second setup, choosing a radio:

@projectMarvin
why can't you use other freq than 433?

I'm currently in China, 915 and 868 are not legal here

• Even if rfm69 is not very new, there are lot of choices on aliexpress for cheap with different variants( freq and footprints). RFM69 works great for longer range vs nrf24/52.

Yes there are some, but even on aliexpress when you look at the sales numbers you will see that basically no one are buying the rfm69w/hw and quite few are selling them.

• RFM69HCW variant is footprint compatible with RFM95W.

Really? How does this work? Do you reprogram them?
Considering they are different size, different number of pins and have the pins in different positions.

• MySensors new driver is RFM69<->RFM95 communication compatible

Does is also work with rfm69 <-> rfm96 & rfm98? (96/98 are 433 MHz )
If so this would be really interesting solution.

• RFM95 is more expensive, a bit more power efficient (especially in RX mode, but so far there is no listenmode in MySensors, so that's not a big detail)

About the sensebender gw, I have one but actually I use my own gw designs (because I can). But I don't think SAMD mcu is "obsolete" for a good gw

Ok cool, might go for one then if I choose nrf24 or rfm69.

Personally I prefer an external gw (Serial or ethernet), than radio module directly connected to rpi.

Yes I agree, I want the gw to be independent preferably over ethernet.

For the moment, afaik, MySensors plan is still the same, and might remain the same for quite a while I think: arduino, nrf24, rfm69/95.
We (me especially) wanted to add others newer soc for subghz (like TI's) but it's not worth the effort, I'm too busy for supporting this.
So it's easier for the team to support what we use.

Ok this makes sense, thank you for your answers

@NeverDie said in Second setup, choosing a radio:

If Expressif were to offer a Wi-Fi 6 chip with WiFi-NOW capabilities, and which could sleep at ultra low power

Then I would immediately buy a wifi6 ap, this would be amazing!
Even though I prefer a standalone solution like mysensors this would be to convenient to ignore

So after spending some time reading on the forum I have kind of shifted toward rfm69 with a sensebender ethernet mqtt gateway.
However this comes with new concerns.
The only rfm69 frequency I can use is 433 MHz, which means huge antennas. Even coiled they are pretty big.
Searching Taobao (chinese aliexpress) the rfm69 modules are quite uncommon and so I'm worried that they are already a bit aged.
Also the majority of the ones listed are the C version with a different pinout than the version used by sensebender.
The sensebender gateway is aging, it 5 years old with the last update 3 years ago.
This is not negative, I'm just wondering if it's still a good gw for a new system or will it soon be considered old and lacking?

I'm not sure what the development plan is for mysensors, will we keep using nrf24 and rfm forever or is there any plan to shift towards something newer?

@rejoe2 Cool thx!
I haven't heard of either.
FHEM looks promising, anything from Germany generally means it's great (according to my experience). However it seems most forum activity is in German.
Yes I agree, any free solution offering extensive options and multiple hardware support will have a quite steep learning curve.
I do however feel like we are getting off topic

@NeverDie said in Second setup, choosing a radio:

@projectMarvin said in Second setup, choosing a radio:

@NeverDie I read something about that Particle discontinued their BLE mesh boards

At least in part. Hackaday says Particle discontinued their Xenons.

https://blog.particle.io/mesh-deprecation/

@NeverDie I read something about that Particle discontinued their BLE mesh boards

@NeverDie Here is a nordic fota over thread example.
https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_tz_v4.1.0%2Fthread_example_dfu.html&cp=7_3_2_10_4_0
They also support using a dongle or DK with a raspberry as a border router.

Nordics documentation is fairly extensive and quite easy to search, I like it
The nrf52840 DK is kind of the standard example hardware for openthread so they have plenty of examples.

@NeverDie How about this?
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader
based on nrf5 sdk v11 though, current version is 17.

I had almost given up on mysensors and was considering the nrf52840 with openthread and mqtt-sn since nordic has working examples for that all the way from a mostly sleeping nrf52840 to an mqtt-sn - mqtt bridge.
I really like the nrf52840 and I want OTA since I know I will never leave my nodes alone and stop updating their codes
LoRa is problematic since I want something that is legal in both Sweden and China.

But mbed os shows promise and if the nano ble runs mbed on an nrf52840 then that should open a lot of doors.
Maybe this project will finally push me to adopt an RTOS

This sounds promising.
https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_nrf5_v17.0.0%2Fexamples_bootloader.html&cp=7_1_4_4

@Sasquatch Cool thanks!

I'm really conflicted about what to choose.
The nRF52s run cortex M4s, which I have worked a lot with.
But I want OTA because I don't want to run around and manually upgrade each node. Then I will try to avoid it and end up running a lot of versions of each node.
The rfm95 is a viable option, slightly more expensive but very good range. But as I understood it they are not very suitable for battery powered actuators, not sure why though.