My basement flooding alarm was put in place because this year we have seen extreme rain on a few occasions, which in one case actually flooded the street, and as a result also my basement.

With the electrical cabinet and utility connections in the basement, that could have been very bad, if waterlevels had reached the cabinet itself, so I needed a way to measure waterlevels and have an automatic start of a sump pump when not at home (now my neighbours called me at work to tell me what was happening in the street).

As the house this alarm was built for, is not always occupied, we needed notifications via internet.

In the house I set up a MySensors network with a few nodes and a Raspberry which integrates the Controller (Domoticz) and Gateway functions (nrf24l01+ directly connected via interface board to raspi).

The basement is now being watched by a node which measures the distance to the floor using a cheap ultrasonic sensor. It will switch a relay if the "floor" rises a certain amount (10cm) and will switch off the relay when the "floor" is back within 2 cm from initial position.

The node resets itself to a start position on startup. This means that during startup a first distance measurement is done. This is the "zero" level. Any deviation from that first measured distance is "the change".

Here are some pictures of the node while not yet in the box:

And when mounted in the box:

I then installed this in the basement next to the electrical cabinet:

The node sends new distance measures to the controller only when they change. As I wanted to be able to remotely switch the relay at my discretion, the node itself is not battery based, but always on. I'm using a PCB I designed which you can find on Openhardware.io:
https://www.openhardware.io/view/11/ACDCBatteries-capable-atmega328p-board

You can use any relay module which can be controlled by a digital pin.

I use the PA+LPA version of the nrf24l01+ radio, since the basement is covered by a slab of metal re-inforced concrete. A normal radio did not reach the gateway.

I have added the sketch below:

0_1472292343284_BasementAlarmUltrasonic.ino

One of three ongoing projects:

lasercut box
atmega1284p based
DS3231 rtc (very accurate and 2 alarms!)
LDR
20 by 4 LCD, two sizes of numbers, menu driven setup
buzzer
leds for moodlighting
doppler for proximity detection
encoder for scrolling through values (for setting time)
buttons with LED feedback for interactivity
mp3 player
most interface objects MySensorised

This entry is to boost my energy, because we are still a long way from home (pcb is still not made, focus is now on prototype and software).

Still testing this PCB, but so far everything is working. I now have a board which I can use in different power configurations.
Upper left is powered by 220V AC directly, an HLK-PM01 takes care of bringing that down to 5V. The radio gets power from an AMS1117-3V3 mounted on the bottom side of the board.
Top right is a board powered by 12VDC, with conversion (a 3A DC-DC step-down module) to 4V for the SIM800L (GSM module) and this is dropped to 3.5V by passing a rectifier diode, for the radio. Both are running repeater code in combination with some sensor code.
In the middle the version based with two AAA batteries, which I still need to assemble. It will be interesting to see if this also has a sleep current consumption of 1.45 uA like it's little brother (my GSRedboard)

I will do a writeup later, as I have a few improvements in mind, and I prefer to test everything first.

Just to show that using the Mysensors library allows me freedom to make stuff I (think) I need :-).

Here is the corner I share with my wife. Each has a desk, but since I was first to start this and need both a mental (my Mac) and physical workspace , my desk is a little wider

Never mind the distortion, it's a badly made panorama, but gives a good idea of where I spend my free time.

@Samuel235

I do indulge in "suikerwafel" to keep my brain happy. My wife keeps me young. Running on occasion also helps. Never tried protein, does Rochefort 10 count ?

I have a Weller EC-2002 soldering station with a narrow point soldering iron (I also have the standard one, but never use it, too big for delicate work).

Stereo binoculars (20x magnification) with lamp to see those fine traces.

My trusted Fluke 87 mark 4

A large breadboard (and a few smaller ones):

My power supply is a repurposed old PC power supple (gives a fixed 12V and 5V).

Some tweezers and cutters.

A magnifying lamp when the micro is overkill, it's also my desk lamp.

I use an iMac with a 27 inch screen and 4GHz cpu for most of my software. Sometimes it is necessary to use Windows, which I do within a Virtual Box (e.g. to compile boot loaders with WinAVR2010).

And even with this supercomputer on my desk, I still use my trusted HP-41CX with the Advantage module (since 1985, I had an overclocked HP-41 with magnetic card reader from '82 to '84 but it was stolen from me) for most of my electrical calculations. I lost count how many times I changed the batteries, but it is about every 10 months on average I think.

Still on my wish list:

• a dual power supply with voltage and current setting/indicators (not decided on the model yet)
• a logic analyser (Saleae Logic 8 Pro, or 16 Pro if the donor is generous, in red !)
• a second high res screen (5K at least ), no options available yet

I moved my desk to a new spot in the house and reoriented the desk. Still a mess, but that is how my mind seems to work these days: lots of stuff in parallel ...

@AWI No problem, this board is making its way to me via the mail now (was shipped from OSH Park last wednesday).

I'm hoping to test it coming week.

This board one is a one-trick pony. It is based on @m26872's concept of a very narrow board, but in my case I just need it to handle 2 magnetic switches. So pull-up resistors and connection for two contacts (normally closed) is provided (on the pins that allow hardware wake up from power down), and nothing else. No crystal, just minimal power decoupling and a led. No FTDI adapter or ISP. And of course only connection for the SMD version of the NRF24.

While that was being made at OSH Park I prepared a second design, but this one is still in movement (not ordered yet), measurements are in mm:

It is certainly not a Sensebender, as it lacks ATSHA204A, SI7021 and SPIFlash, but it does have FTDI interface and optional pull-ups on D2 and D3. It is my first try at SMD, with 0805 size components (I need to be able to hand solder them).

The objective is to make a working sensor board as flat as possible. At the moment is is even smaller then the CR2032 batteryholder I was planning to use. A possibility is that I go for a two board approach using this "flat node" and a second board to hold a CR1632 (a holder for this smaller battery is in the image above, Keystone Technologies model 3013).

To be continued ...

Just to let all know that I'm quite happy with my current setup: Domoticz as controller and a gateway running on a Raspberry Pi 2.

The serial gateway I use is made of a small board sitting on the GPIO pins of the same Raspberry.
The PCB for this gateway is public (https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/aXLXBO3f), the code to run is available from the Mysensors raspberry implementation. This creates a serial port which then needs to be represented via a symbolic link with a short name, so that Domoticz can see it.

This allowed me to eliminate a physical gateway, since the raspberry runs as a gateway and a controller at the same time.

Many thank to the MySensors team for the sensor software (same shoutout to the Domoticz designers)

I thought it would be useful to compile a list of flash memory compatible with DualOptiboot and other OTA capable bootloaders.

So the plan is to pin this message and add SPI based Flashmemory typenumbers/brands and how they are connected to the relevant OTA bootloader.

I know most bootloaders require SPI based flash memory. I have found 1 article describing a bootloader which allows the use of I2C EEPROM (http://www.rotwang.co.uk/projects/bootloader.html). But this is outside scope of MySensors for the moment.

So for following OTA' BL's:

DualOptiboot:

Allows a maximum sketch size of 64Kbytes. People with atmega1284p and 130KByte sketches are out of luck.
From the designnotes of DualOptiboot:

Limited to 31K sketches for atmega328p and 64K sketches for atmega1284P

DualOptiboot is based on Optiboot 5.0

Brand, modelnumber, connectiontype, capacity, voltage-range

Adesto Technologies, AT25DF512C-SSHN-B, SPI, 65Kbyte (512Kbit), VCC = 1.65V - 3.6V
Bondwell, partnumber_unknown, SPI, 64KBytes
etc ....

MYSBootloader:
...

As you answer I will add this info to this first message.

Maybe more details need to be compiled if they are necessary for compatibility with the bootloaders specified. Feel free to comment on this as well

@Raj-Kiran you can use any 3mm LED. So the best is to choose the cheapest 3mm you can find on ALIEXPRESS.

@mfalkvidd It's been a while since I checked the forums and site, and I'm happy to see the changes, great job ! Work took over for some time, but the Corona period has given some free time, so I was able to finish my clock.

@mfalkvidd It would be good if DXF files are supported, because box outlines made in autocad or (as in my case in Eagle and exported to DXF) other programs can be used as input on lasercutter software. Most lasercutter sites accept DXF directly.

@mfalkvidd indeed, and yes I did, but dropping a DXF file gave an error saying it was a wrong file format. Did I miss something ?

I was wondering how I should load a DXF file, so that I can provide the basis of a lasercutter file.
Any tips ?

@vladimir

you could use this under the bed:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-5-Pieces-RCWL-0516-Microwave-Radar-Sensor-Module-Human-Body-Induction-Switch-Module/32773310756.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dQaNm0K

It works like an infrared sensor (same three pins), but it does not need a line of sight. It just reacts to movement as this results in a disturbance in the emitted radio signal. Works very well on my clock

The "high" value when movement is detected is not a full 5V, so I test the Out pin as an analog pin. Anything above 2.5V is an activation due to movement.

@mfalkvidd I set it to 1000ms, but the jumps are sometimes 3 - 4 seconds. I was hoping that shutdownTransport() would do the trick. But that does not seem to help. It looks like I need to define a hardware_shutdown button or something.

I'm building a MySensors aware clock. However, I need to provide for the situation that the netwerk is down (gateway without power, or not installed). Or there could be a problem with the radio. In all cases I want the clock to still start up and run without apparent slowdown.
What I found was, that when I do not install a radio, the MySensors library is aware of this (a FALSE result from isTransportReady() ), but the MySensors code seems to take it's time and hog the processor by trying to reconnect.
This is visible on my clock, because the time on the display seems to "freeze" for some seconds. As I use a real RTC, this not really a big problem, but it is visible none the less. And being a perfectionist, I do not want a clock which seems to jump a few seconds now and then.
So the question is how to skip these processor intensive parts if the user accepts that the clock should work without MySensors integration.
Any suggestion is fine

Is there a way to completely shutdown all MySensors code via code (not via compile defines, but a decision made in code) ?

@neverdie that is a nice pattern. I found that these things need time to draw. If anyone has a DXF file, I would love to try it.