@clippermiami

Re: This posting about merging sensors.

I did exactly as I said in there:

1. Removed the Node and Children from Vera. At this point I have only the MySensors Plugin visible in Vera
2. Cleared EEPROM on the Sensor
3. Uploaded the new sketch to the Sensor
4. Ran Inclusion on Vera

When inclusion ran it found 4 new devices (I assume Node, Temp, Hum, Light)

But Vera does NOT display the new devices even after multiple restarts. The Serial Monitor on the Sensor shows that it is indeed sending data and receiving ACK OK from the Gateway. Subsequent attempts at Inclusion do not find any devices so the GW at least knows they are there.

Looking at the SysLog there is no sensor data being reported since I started this so apparently it isn't getting through.

I'm going to Clear EEPROM again and fallback to the Temp/Hum sensor in case there is a problem with the new sensor code.

Well, that's interesting. After reverting to he 2 sensor node Inclusion found 3 new devices and Vera now displays them. Yet when the 3 sensor code was running the serial monitor showed transmission and ACK for all three sensors. Now I'm confused.

[UPDATE]
I sorted it out, i had several problems.

1. It appears the it is necessary to RESET the Node prior to Inclusion. Vera will then find the devices and display them. Absent the Reset it looks like Vera found them but that was all.
2. When it finally displayed the LIGHT, it was showing as an ON/OFF Switch not a level. In the Setup routine i had
   gw.sendSensorPresentation(CHILD_ID_LIGHT, S_LIGHT);
   rather than
   gw.sendSensorPresentation(CHILD_ID_LIGHT, S_LIGHT_LEVEL);
   and similarly in the sending of the data I had left off the "_LEVEL" not realizing that that told the GW how to display the device. Now I know

Anyway, the three input sensor is working. In the process of making the conversion I changed the Light Level to a floating number for consistency on the display .I've also implemented a simple Keepalive; every "N" times through the loop it resends the last temperature reading. i have this set to 30 times (and I adjusted the basic data cycle from 30 seconds to 60 seconds) so the keep alive occurs every 30 minutes whether the sensor sends any data in that time or not.

Thanks to all. @jribera's power sequence actually makse some sort of obtuse sense in the world of Vera

I ended up by tackling the Ethernet Gateway project I had on hold. Late last week I received the iBoard I ordered to use for the gateway (see http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/224/iboard-cheap-single-board-ethernet-arduino-with-radio ).

I'd planned on working on it sometime in the next few weeks. But since I was already off the air I figured I'd just jump in and get it done. I had it up and running in under an hour.

For those who are interested in such things, you can calibrate the humidity sensor as follows:

1. in a small bottle/jar cap place a teaspoon of ordinary salt.
2. Put enough water on the salt to make it a paste
3. Place the cap in the bottom of a "Ziplock" plastic bag
4. Suspend the humidity sensor element (preferably just the element, not all the other electronics) at the top of the bag and seal it
5. Wait about 12 hours, the humidity in the bag will reach 75% and your sensor should report accordingly

I did this with the "vanilla" humidity/temperature element, the DH11, and found that it reported within about 2%. I only had the one DH11 so this might not be true of all of them.

@Damme
After your discussion of the antenna It occurred to me that the one thing I had not changed was the GW radio. I had one spare NRF24L01+PA+SMA so I swapped it in the GW. That appears to be the fix --- I can now see the sensor module all the way out in the yard at the far end of the house, through outside walls and a half dozen interior walls. I doubt i'll get the ~450 meters you describe but its a LOT better than the 10 feet I was getting

I've found a NRF24L01 without the PA but with a SMA antenna so I think i'll see about adopting that for the sensors, especially the battery sensors. No amplifier but it is a 2-3 dBi antenna and every little dBi helps

Previously I reported that I was working on developing a PCB for battery operated sensors to meet the following criteria:

• Powered by CR123 3v Lithium Battery
• 0.8v > 3.3v converter/regulator for max battery life
• Support for 2@ Digital, 2@ Analog, 1@ L2C interface
• Screw terminal blocks for sensor attachment

The v1.0 PCB came back from OSHPark yesterday and I've installed all the parts and loaded a known working Temp/Humidity/Light sketch with the addition of the battery level reporting as described on My Sensors.

I'm pleased to report that it installed and operated the first time and my VeraLite located and included it without a problem. I do have a problem with the battery voltage information and suspect I swapped the 1M Ohm and 470K Ohm resistors the voltage divider.

It's a very spacious board ... for my first attempt at Eagle and PCB design and creation I chose not to try to conserve real estate but rather give myself plenty of room to work. I also have a minor component placement problem with the space allocated for the voltage divider resistors.

I'm considering a version 2.0 board to correct the few errors and to include some other functions to make the board more general purpose battery or external power:

• 2.1mm barrel connector and 7805 regulator for external power
• 1v > 5v converter to allow 5v sensors on the battery version
• 5 pin screw terminal blocks to support both 3.3 and 5 v sensors on any version

I will make the current v 1.0 version available on OSHPark if anyone is interested.

I have attached some photos of the board, components and the assembly. Everything is in sockets for this test but in production I'd probably solder the subassemblies directly to the board

I think I've discovered the most frustrating thing about this whole MySensor effort ... finding boxes to put the things in Just when I think I've solved it, i find the box is too tall or too short or too narrow

Absent a 3D printer ...

I'm considering how to solve a problem designing a Outdoor Fence Gate Access Control to interface to my Vera HA. None of the current ZWave Lock products appear to be suitable for several reasons so I think I'm going to have to create my own solution using Arduino. But before I do I wanted to see in anyone on the forum had already tackled this

@gregl

Thanks, I suspected that might be the case. I hadn't thought of the idea of using a second gateway. Obviously I have to update the Vera drivers, week it support two gateways, one old and one new?

I suspect I know the answer but I thought I'd ask anyway. I want to move my system to MySensor 2.0 so I'm thinking about converting the Ethernet Gateway first since it looks like its an easy move on the iBoard.

I'm guessing that at that point none of my sensors will work and I'll have to run like mad to change them over too. Correct?

Thanks

Several years ago I built my Ethernet Gateway using this iBoard and the MySensors 1.2 firmware. I made the wiring changes on the board to use the "vanilla" Ethernet Gateway software and the NRF24L01 Radio. I am still using it but I'm ready to make the move to MySensors 2.0 so I'm pleased to see the board works with the new library.

Did you make physical wiring changes on your hardware to suit the radio or just make the changes in changes in the Config. I have two of the iBoards, one with modified traces and one out of the box so I can go either way

@pbcstudios said:

m

I did something for this for my wife. I have a motion sensor in the study so the lights go on when someone comes in. But the timeout is never right, sometimes the room will be occupied for minutes, other times for hours. My wife got particularly irritated at the lights going out while she was on the PC. She 's very small and the motion sensor couldn't pick her up properly. So she had to get up and wave her arms to get the lights back on. Interesting to watch, as long as you don't laugh out loud :), but irritating for her.

So I rigged a Door/Window sensor to seat bottom of the desk chair. Now when anyone is sitting in the chair the sensor is tripped suppressing the timer and the lights stay on until they leave.

But it would be nice to have some sort of passive occupancy detector, not just for this situation but for any room in the house. Right now in the Family Room i have an override schedule that prevents the lights from going off between 7PM and midnight but if someone is there watching TV or reading in the afternoon and doesn't move enough to trigger the PIR then the lights go out. Again, depending on the size of the person and their location they may nor may not be able to get the PIR to trigger with just a wave of the arm.

I don't know what kind of technology would solve the passive room occupancy problem, and if it exists is it affordable.

I've been off on other activities so I haven't looked at the Vera Plug In for a while so this may already be in by now. But in the 1.3 version where my sensors are still running it was not. I'd like to see some sort of "adjustment" or "trim" option for reported values. The inexpensive sensors we get for these projects have variations from the true values. When I first set mine up i made the adjustments in the individual sensor code to trim the reported values closer to the actual (as determined by external measurements) This requires a number of iterations of change/reload/change/reload ... I think it would be useful if there were some sort of adjustment possible in the Vera device.

For example, I have an outside temperature/humidity/barometric pressure sensor running. The value of the humidity is about 6% low and the temperature about 3 degrees high, so I make these adjustments in the ImperiHome display where you can modify the reported values easily. But you have to do it on each instance of ImperiHome and of course it only changes that instance.

I'm curious if anyone has done any work on a Arduino-based Solar Panel Sun Tracker Controller especially one that could report its operation back to Vera.

I'm working on a solar powered battery system for several remote Wi-Fi video cameras that are not easily accessible for mains power or data. The battery system will be charged from a solar panel and I'm considering how to track the sun so that the panel gets optimum exposure during the day.

Thanks, from the discussion then it appears to be a fairly "messy" problem so I'm guessing this is not the platform on which it will be solved

I don't see this referenced anywhere so I toss this out there as a thought provoker. Actually doing it is probably beyond my pay grade but I know many of you guys are way, way beyond me in this area.

Vera does not support ZigBee devices but there are some with no ZWave corollary and some cases where there are comparable devices the ZigBee version is often a lot less expensive that their ZWave counterparts.

There are ZigBee interfaces for Arduino boards so does it seem likely that a ZigBee interface for Vera could be assembled using Arduino at a reasonable cost and effort.

Discuss among yourselves