Posts made by feanor-anglin

Ok, I've made some digging on Home Assistant GH and found out it's not a bug but a feature, but they just haven't put any info about the change to their documentation:

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/62703

Long story short, to use the notation “[Sketch name] [Node id] [Child id]”, there should be no sensor description in presentation().

This is supposed to work with “[Child description]” notation:
present(NOTIFY_SENSOR_ID, S_INFO, "Child description");

And this with “[Sketch name] [Node id] [Child id]” notation:
present(NOTIFY_SENSOR_ID, S_INFO);

Hi there! Recently I've been working on a new feature for my GoWired project, which is about configuring modules with text messages using notify.mysensors Home Assistant service. The whole idea seems pretty powerful to me, but I encountered problems with the notify service.

Home Assistant documentation states 2 notations for setting the notification target:

• “[Child description]”
• “[Sketch name] [Node id] [Child id]”

I started with the second one, because it gives an opportunity to precisely specify the target: node ID + child ID, while the first one leads to sending the notification to all nodes with a given child sensor description. But despite many attempts and trying many notation variants I only managed to make the first notation work. The second seems not to send anything at all. Is there anyone here who's encountered this issue?

I've asked, because I cannot test it right now and thought maybe someone has done it before. In this case I will test it myself next week. Right now I have some code that compiles, so maybe it will also work

Referring to multimessage feature, I don't see any application yet (maybe I need to understand it better). More important to me is auto ID assignment for RS485 which seems to be also finally merged. Great!

As far as I understand it, there is 10 different set functions for all kinds of payload:

Source: https://www.mysensors.org/apidocs/classMyMessage.html

And now, the set (const void *payload, const size_t length) seems to me as a variant of set function which should give me an ability to create any kind of payload. I see it like this:

send(message.setType(messageType).setSensor(sensorID).set(payload, length));

So, do I understand it correctly? And if yes, then how to use set (const void *payload, const size_t length) to create any payload, from binary to float?

Just a quick question: any hints/examples on how to use it? I haven't found anything while I'm afraid it can be helpful to me.

Nice idea @gieemek, I will definitely implement something similar. But what about the gateway? I often experience problems when sending messages to multiple nodes at a time through Home Assistant.

@Alan-Sales it seems the project is abandoned. But I have it, so please use this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b0qls8a251ol4tc/MYSController.zip?dl=0

@tekka maybe you could share the code somewhere? Maybe someone else could make a use of it or develop it further?

Very important feature, actually I can't understand how it is still missing in MySensors. Ultimately there should be just one more percentage value with a proper name added to the same device ID. Separate ID is not a good idea, because of the reason you presented. As you say, it seems quite difficult this way, but nonetheless this should be a goal here. Using VAR1 is a good and fully functional workaround though. I'm looking forward to see your code.

Do I understand correctly, that you are planning to port MySensors to Zephyr OS?

@NeverDie I perfectly understand how it works and that it is impossible to reach everyone with a post. I've wrote about it here.

Let's dig out this thread a little. I am a person who's started my own MySensors based hardware project (GetWired, I wrote about it somewhere on this forum), so I probably can be described as an involved user. Somehow it happened that I haven't become an active user on this forum, on one hand I didn't have to write here, because all problems I've encountered were described earlier. On the other hand, I didn't receive much interest after publishing anything (openhardware designs, project related posts).

In my opinion, MySensors with nRF24 has very strong competition, especially taking into consideration the low reliability of this radio. It's easier and better to buy cheap Shelly or other Sonoff. Using nRF52 would help a lot, but it is much more complicated, at least in my opinion.

Second thing is the development of MySensors has slowed down a lot (last commit March 20th). If so, there is not much to discuss here.

Third thing is connected to the development of my own project. Me and my colleague managed to put it on a successful crowdfunding and build a community elsewhere. All this with no support from this community and especially from the MySensors "authorities". I don't want to complain, I just think such initiatives could meet with higher interest from everyone involved in the development of MySensors, because it would be mutually beneficial.

Few topics before I posted about our wired home automation project based on MySensors:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/10921/getwired-rs485-mysensors-home-automation-modules

Please have a look In case of any questions, please feel free to ask me.

Actually I have to disagree with @rejoe2 about:

Will my network work without controller (only gateway + nodes)?

With an Ethernet gateway it is entirely possible.

One more thing. If you are interested in building RS485 network, maybe you should have a look at my project. Earlier today I created a post about it on this forum. Here it is

Hello Everyone!
As some of you may know, me and my friend @slawkiwala are working on a project of a wired home automation system based on RS485 and MySensors. From the beginning we were quite serious about it and now we managed to launch a crowdfunding campaign.

Though probably the majority of you here are interested more in wireless hardware than in wired, maybe our project will be useful for at least some of the members of this community. If so, then please support and share our campaign!

More info can be found on the campaign page

PS First revisions of the designs, which are now taking part in the campaign, were published on openhardware.io.

PS2 Important information about shipping: Crowd Supply pre-clears customs and pre-pais VAT for packages shipped to all EU countries, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada. This means backers from these countries will not have to pay anything more than the pledge level cost + the international surcharge and also will not have to pass any customs control.

@kimot No, it is an obvious mistake, I am very sorry. Maybe it is becouse the code in master branch is very old, the newest is not yet on github, but the developement branch is quite new. I am going to fix this soon.

Hi all,
We are still working hard on our project of MySensors&RS485 based, wired home automation system. Right now we are preparing a crowdfunding campaign aimed to deliver some of our designs to backers. We’ve received some official MySensors community support and our RS845 Ethernet Gateway project is now featured.

If anyone is interested in supporting our effort, please subscribe for campaign updates. Telling about us to others would be even better. We need a lot of support to succeed.

I will happily answer any questions. Link to the campaign pre-launch page:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/domatic/getwired

I have similar problem. Some time ago I even wrote a nice piece of code to update roller shutter position if changed from buttons. But domoticz just does not seem to understand values the sensor sends. So I confirm, blinds percentage is buggy.

Star topology is not recommended to use with RS485, but it is not that it certainly won't work. You have to test it.

When it comes to experience, I have one with much more than 5 modules. It works pretty good, even if the modules are badly designed. To achieve top reliability though, you have to use well designed modules.

If you are thinking about RS485 system, have a look at my hardware:
https://www.openhardware.io/user/2098#view=projects

If you like it, please feel free to contact me. We've made some significant progress, which is not published yet.

This project is impressive, I really like it. Pity it is so silent about it. After all this work, are you not willing to finish it?

Hello,
This module is finally available to buy assembled. Now our project is complete, you can run the whole RS485 system after some shopping here, on openhardware.io. See details on the project pages.

Cheers,
feanor-anglin

@kimot in theory you might be right, but in practice... it just works. The propability of collisions is extremely low and this is, as far as I know, the only problem you can worry about. After all, it was not my idea to use MySensors with RS485:
https://www.mysensors.org/build/rs485

@tiana thank you for your interest. Reffering to your questions:

1. Technically 32 with SP485EE. Soon we will try to check out different transceiver, e.g. ST485ECDR. According to the datasheet, it allows 256 devices.
2. You mean by the manufacturer? No. To use FOTW updates you have to use Sensebender micro bootloader.
3. We are still working on this feature, we have no tutorial yet, but we plan to write one. For now, the only instruction how to do it is here:
   https://www.mysensors.org/about/fota

Hello rozpruwacz,
Thank you for your comment. This idea seems quite interesting for me and certainly I will look into it in the future. But for now you need to know the best way to power up this modules is by using one PSU for the whole bus. It is very important to have common GND on every module on the bus. To do this you will need 4 wires though.