Posts made by chisight

@tbowmo Agreed, creating a Slack when there has been an IRC channel since Mar 18 2014 was probably not a great idea.

@wergeld Odd, I went to the raw file, hit select all in Firefox and right click copy, then went to Node Red and did the import from clipboard, no edits. Maybe it's something related to Windows, I did mine through Debian.
Still, good to know that some paths need the single/double quotes repaired so thank you.

MySensors does support previously undefined data fields, if your controller does. Fields like S_CUSTOM, V_VAR1, ... V_VAR5 are options for sending counters and other variables that were not explicitly defined.

@wergeld said in Node-Red as Controller:

A little clean up in notepad++ and I have a working flow!

You need to import the raw file, not the "formatted" one that github presents. You can also download the .zip or git clone it.

This is all @FotoFieber, I did nothing but request they post it for us.

Thank you for the notes on the updates that you did.

FotoFieber has been kind enough to post his Node-Red controller on GitHub at: https://github.com/FotoFieber/MySensorsNodeRedController

The direct link to the code to import is: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FotoFieber/MySensorsNodeRedController/master/README.md

Thank you very much @FotoFieber !

Once I complete a few of the pieces added from his code, I'll post mine as well but it will be a few weeks as I'm traveling now.

@lis610 said in Insulated Whole House Fan:

RCWL-0516

https://www.rogerclark.net/investigating-a-rcwl-9196-rcwl-0516-radar-motion-detector-modules/ shows some possible ways to read something other than a digital output of motion at 5 to 7 meters.

It doesn't look like there is a simple way to just make it less sensitive.

Looks great @lis610 !

@FotoFieber
I like your approach to a Node Red implementation of a home automation controller for MySensors. I understand that the code has grown to the point where it will no longer fit in a post. Could you please upload your code to your GitHub so that the whole program is visible?
I understand that your code may not be up to date for the latest version but what I've seen of your code has already helped to improve my MySensors 2.3.0 compatible version.

Thank you.

@skywatch If it's acceptable for the relay to not react immediately on request from your controller, then you could queue the request at the server end and wait for the relay node to wake up and check in. For example, a system opening the blinds when the sun comes up wouldn't care if it was exactly at a given moment. If a delay of up to 10 minutes is acceptable, this could be quite a bit of battery savings but even 1 minute would probably save some battery.

You could also just keep transmitting until there is an ack (be sure to comply with your local version of the FCC for transmission time limits.)

Unfortunately, holding most relays closed takes a whole lot of power and toggle type relays are quite expensive. An SSR might significantly reduce this but would still require some power to hold the SSR and some circuitry to latch it while the node is sleeping.

All of this might take a bit of a smarter home automation controller or some separate glue code between the controller and MySensors. (I use Node Red which could do this easily.)

My Node Red controller is closer to what FotoFieber did a couple years back but it's for 2.3.0 and MQTT. His project is at https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/700/node-red-as-controller/28 as well as various updates over time. It was good to see @FotoFieber's code as it showed me a few holes in what I've done so far.

@akya the number of times you can read a DHT11 in a given time period isn't limited. You can read as fast as you want. The limit widely mentioned (at various rates of around once every 2 seconds) has to do with the heating effect of turning on current to the temperature sensitive resistor to take a reading. Someone tested and noticed that reading at high speed caused a slightly elevated temperature reading.

You can test for yourself and see at what read rate you notice an increase, or just limit to once every 2 seconds or less.

@lis610 you can't just leave us hanging and say "it's working", tell us what the problem was. Was it wiring, was it the 8mhz, was it a wrong library setting, was it a bad sensor? What did you do to make it work? The next person will want to know because they could have the same issue and it teaches the rest of us which troubleshooting tips are working.

@tbowmo I had seen that thread. After importing your https://github.com/tbowmo/nodered-mysensors-flow, I think this is probably quite different from my approach, I've kept it all as flows without writing any new node types or adding dependencies beyond what is installed in Raspbian by default. At some point I'll get around to documenting and posting what I've done in NodeRed too, it's a pretty simple but surprisingly powerful tool.

@lis610 DHT22 being a "one wire" protocol, are timing dependent. Make sure that you have defined #define F_CPU 8000000L or have selected the 8mhz option in the newer versions of the IDE. If #define F_CPU gives you an error, you have to do it in the IDE.
Are you using the Adafruit DHT library? Which version? To double check that your CPU frequency is correct, create a new sketch with the following:

void setup() {
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(13,HIGH);
  delay(10000);
  digitalWrite(13,LOW);
  delay(10000);
}

Then time the speed of the blinks. it should be 10 seconds on and 10 seconds off. if you're getting 20 seconds on and 20 seconds off, your F_CPU is wrong.

@tbowmo I've also been using MQTT and NodeRed as the routing solution for my home automation. I found that there was no default handling of ID_REQUEST messages which made configuring new nodes a manual process but eventually added that to my flows and now new nodes don't have to be configured at the Arduino end.
It would be nice to see more about your setup, more specifically about the dependencies in nodered-mysensors-flow/package.json on your github.

@mfalkvidd Unfortunately, the "Enable In-Topic Searching" feature is what generates the start of "in:topic-4803 soft_hmac_key" and nothing else. It does find the first occurrence but doesn't have a way to search after the first. I learned that I can just prefix "in:topic-####" to my search and then I don't have to make the forum grab the <ctrl> f key in my browser.

@the person who edited the "Posts per Page" restriction of 20, a huge giant Thank You!! 100 posts per page is a great improvement over 20. I was about to request this but saw it was done when I went to get the exact wording. This giant topic being 10 pages is bearable. (and probably doesn't use a ton of javascript which was blocking local caching so probably saves a ton of bandwidth for your servers...)

P.S. my original problem is solved too, the forum is so useful!

How do I search for all occurrences of "soft_hmac_key" in topic 4803?

Infinite scroll blocks me from seeing the whole topic so that the browser can search it. Searching in:topic-4803 soft_hmac_key only finds the first occurrence. Advanced Search doesn't let me restrict a search to a single topic. Even loading the google cache copy of the topic doesn't show the whole thread.

Better yet, how do I turn off the infinite scroll without breaking the topic into literally 47 pages? Is there a version of the site for dummies like me who don't want all this javascript stuff like alerts and thread tracking and infinite scroll? Using noScript just moves me to the version where the topic is broken into the 47 tiny pages.

As usual, I found exactly the post I was looking for in topic 4803 and while trying to get context, I scrolled a lot and lost the post i needed.

@nerukam 10 moisture sensors only requires two analog ports. You don't want the sensors on all the time or they will corrode away quickly, so you always turn them on and off with a transistor anyway.

One end of the sensor goes to Vcc.
The other end of the sensor goes to the an analog input.
The sensor/analog input is also connected to a resistor.
The other end of the resistor goes to the transistor's collector.
The transistor's emitter goes to ground.
A digital output goes through a resistor to the transistor's base.
A second sensor goes in parallel to the first with it's own resistor and goes to it's own analog port.

The exact values of the resistors isn't critical but 4.7K should be a good value for all of them in a 5V system.

To read sensor X1 and X2, turn digital output X on, read the two analog inputs and when done, turn it off.

Repeat this 5 times and you have 10 sensors using 2 analog and 5 digital pins.

For even better sensor lifespan, use an H bridge and switch the direction of the current on each read. (design left as an exercise for the reader.)

You can actually connect up to 8 sensors to each digital output for a total of up to 48 soil moisture sensors on a single Pro Mini + NRF24 and more if you want to resort to port expanders. (As stated before, port expanders are not really realistic due to them costing about the same as a whole Pro-Mini.) Not all Pro Minis expose all 8 analog pins, choose one that does if you want the most possible sensors.