Happy Birthday MySensors - 2 years ago you came into the world.

(im calling it today)
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16170.msg123378.html#msg123378

Great work @hek – You should be very proud of what you have created and brought to life just 2 years ago.
I see there are now about 1500 users in the MySensors forum and I would think most have gone on to make MySensors a part of their everyday lives. You have introduced many of us to not just Home Automation but also programming , inventing and all the skills associated with electronics and creating many cool projects for all to share..

We’re all now monitoring our homes temperature, humidity, lights,heaters, garage doors, water heaters, shutters,power/water/gas usage. We’re faking that our TV is on, automating our pool, dog water bowls, sprinkler systems, the dust in our air we breath and how much rain has fallen. We can also now control our dumb TV’s with IR from our phone, or seeing what our Rooba vacuum has done.
We can hack our kids moneyboxes requiring a secret knock to access or see when the mailman has left us bills…
We can do it securely with encrypted transmission and we can log the data to the internet to see just how cold the beer fridge was last year in December.
We’re 3d printing special cases for our creations as we’re so proud of them and know they deserve a good home to operate in!

We’re all doing this and more because of your vision to create an open system and to seed and encourage so many ideas and contributors – so thank you and thank everyone who has contributed to mySensors.

I still remember this post in particular….
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16170.msg127403.html#msg127403
I had only just discovered your work and was really concerned reading this post that there was no one interested…I certainly was and didn’t want you to lose interest in sharing your creation! Thankfully you didn't and we now have this wonderful community!

Happy Birthday MySensors!!!

and thank you Hek and everyone here whom has made MySensors awesome!

What are you actually wanting to achieve?

How long your kids are taking a shower for?
If they actually did have a shower vs "Yes dad I did have a shower...I promise"...but really didn't?

I ask as there are other methods to make assumptions that someone is in the shower...

eg: Humidity sensor to detect the steam...
Or temp sensor on the shower rose which heats up when the hot water flows...

You could use a light beam sensor set at waist height. These are easily waterproof and robust and cheap.

Hi John,

When I upgraded I startup a new gateway on a different channel and move each node over one by one..

I also migrated from Vera Mysensors Ethernet gw ( iboard with hardware hack) over to Mysensors 2beta MQTT client gateway ( iboard spi method) and Openhab...
This way nothing was "offline" for more than a few mins and all metrics continued to get logged to Openhab database..so no gaps in data.
It also allowed me to do the upgrade over several weeks.

Really nice board!

I think it would be good to have ( ver 2? ) a space for a voltage reg. Perhaps as an option, just put the pads on the pcb and user can add regulator if they need to.
This way larger batteries such as the 18650 cells could be used.

set the mysensor gw to connect to mosquito, then Openhab to Mosquito

Hey all - the SensorNode v2's arrived yesterday.
I didn't have much time to play with them, but thought id report in to say that they work!

To do quick test with them, i loaded up Heks' BatteryMonitor sketch, and just needed to make 2 changes..

Change the radio pins:
Sensor gw(8,7);

Change the BatteryMonitoring pin:
int BATTERY_SENSE_PIN = A0; to A2

Uploaded it...and worked first go! Nice!

I then hacked in quickly a tempsensor using the onboard MCP9700 and go this uploading to Vera too. - the temp values are incorrect, i think because of the reference voltage, but left it running overnight on batteries of unknown charge level....actually thats not true.. they were reporting to Vera a value of 89/88...

So yeah... seems to work, cheap and nicely made!

I'm not sure what ill use these for. Perhaps 1 as a remote temp sensor...and the other to monitor a sliding door. - two sensors...Is it open, and is the lock activated.

Have a great day!

Looks great guys!...especially your ribs @hek - Wish id been able to make it!

Speaking of cooking....there must have been some crazy ideas cooked up on what to mysensorize next??

(i've already thought of and semi built a mysensor meat thermometer...so anything else? )

ive used these with mysensors for several years now... they work great. Batteries last ages!

i started with Nano connected via serial to Vera lite - worked great when it was working, but vera kept dropping the serial port, so i moved to ethernet ( initalay via a Freetronics Etherten on 1.3) .. actually this is still running perfectly.

Also have been running on iBoard and 1.4 for a while and its now nice and stable.

Imho... Ethernet > serial.

i wrote a post about this board http://imall.iteadstudio.com/im120410001.html
before the forum crash.
I explained how to make minor modifications to it so its ready to go for a MySensors Ethernet gateway.

Is anyone interested if i recreate the post?

Some more info here:
https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516
...but not any power consumption figures....

Hi everyone.
Some chat on these Pete Scargill's site:http://tech.scargill.net/microwave-for-the-weekend/
It uses a different chip (RCWL-0516) to the other cheap radar modules discussed here last year...

Ive ordered two to play with so will report back in a few months if they work for me.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/262783104831

@rvendrame
Stick with it.... My pool controller is the reason I very reason I originally got into Arduino, which led to Home Automation and ultimately MySensors... I've learned a lot in the process and the rewards are great!!

The pH sensor I have is one from IONODE. They do not appear to sell them anymore, but its designed to be installed into a 40mm PVC T-piece and built for constant usage.. Similar to the "Industrial" ones here http://www.cwc.com.au/cat/sensors-probes/ph/
The phidgets site also has a pH sensor which is designed for permanent install http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=36&product_id=3551_0

Not cheap though are they!! I think my ph sensor was about $140 AUD

I made my own temp sensor... I just bought a Stainless steel bolt ( about 30mm long ), put it in a lathe and bored out a 5.5mm hole from the bolt side deep enough to install a ds18b20 sensor and epoxied it in.

The pH probe you have is designed just to dip in the water., take a reading then put back in its box...I have one like it for testing. I guess you could use this type of sensor, by periodically filling a tank with fresh poolwater, take your readings, then drain the water back into the pool... a bunch of solenoid valves to allow the water to flow in/out should do the trick. Or some irrigation poly and some pumps if you don't want to mess with the pool plumbing.

Here are some pics, in one of them you can see the homemade temp sensor and the pH probe installed in the pipework. https://goo.gl/photos/benm5vkpxbZjHEAW7

Hey @Birdy - Jump right in the deep end eh?!! ( pun intended )

I say this as a pool environment is particularly hard on electronics.... and creating a floating sensor, whilst i think is a great idea, will be very tricky to do.

Ive been automating my pool for several years now and i use mySensors to show me metrics ( pool temp, roof temp (solar heated), pH, pump runtimes and the ability to turn it on/off as needed...using Openhab ( and thus my phone ).
There is also a pump to add HCL to the pool periodically as needed
There is some more info and the code here:
https://github.com/mgf909/PoolController_mqtt

Its really quite cool and my friends well impressed

pH is really hard to do...ive never got it working 100% right....Its a PITA to calibrate the probe and you need to allow for temperature fluctuations.
I hope one day to have another crack at this as well as add ORP ( measure chlorine ) and pressure sensor to the filter to advise when to backwash etc.

I love the idea of a floating sensor..I think this would be quite feasable for measuring water temp, but not really for measureing ph/ORP as those sensors are super fragile, and as mentioned above, getting it waterproof is very difficult.
I once made an RGB LED pool light https://goo.gl/photos/AmFdVfunQVpmsbk18 to be submersed in my pool. Even though its encased in casting resin, water still got into it - i think around the cable...it always worked , but when i removed it ( sold the house ) i noticed some corrosion...

PS: I'm in Sydney....and mySensors is perfect for this project and the 200000 others you will get into!

@hek and team - New site looks great! Well done!

COuld you perhaps just use an LDR - i would presume the RED light emitted is at a different level to that of the GREEN light emitted and thus just MAP the range you would expect each to be at.

You would need to handle ( block out ) any ambient light however...and then you wont be able to see the led anymore...

Take a photo of your board and we can help identify.

I would recommend ONLY using static ip's for "servers/gateways" etc on your network. Only use DHCP for 'clients" ( pc's and mobile devices )Did you try assigning a static address?

Also, do you have any other arduino based network devices already running? If so check the MAC address its already using.. DEADBEEFEED is typically used, and MAC address's must be unique on a subnet (as it says in the sketch) - So change the MY_MAC_ADDRESS to something else.. looks like you may have already - but is 0000DEADBE01 valid?

@clippermiami said:

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, will it support two gateways, one old and one new?

Probably not ;-(

Hi John,

When I upgraded I startup a new gateway on a different channel and move each node over one by one..

I also migrated from Vera Mysensors Ethernet gw ( iboard with hardware hack) over to Mysensors 2beta MQTT client gateway ( iboard spi method) and Openhab...
This way nothing was "offline" for more than a few mins and all metrics continued to get logged to Openhab database..so no gaps in data.
It also allowed me to do the upgrade over several weeks.

Hi @Lars65

Now you have finished dressing yourself, why not consider using a IO port expander rather than 3 arduinos?
Something like:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13601