Best posts made by heinzv

This board supports 3 different radios (beside the onboard WiFi, ESPnow of the ESP32): RFM69, RFM95, CC1101, so it can be used as mySensors gateway, mysensors node, Homematic etc. and it has a mySX connector.

@mfalkvidd Today, I have tested the repository from tekka007: https://github.com/tekka007/MySensors/tree/ESP32HW and build a GatewayESP32MQTTClient with a dummy sensor node MockMySensors. For both I used a Heltec ESP32 board with a Lora RFM95 chip. I looks to me as it works perfect. I can connect to my remote MQTT Mosquitto broker and it receives dummy sensor data from the sensor node using 868MHz. See serial monitor log extract.
It would be great if this pull request would make it into the master branch in the next upcomming version.
Excellent work tekka007! I got ESP32 and the Lora RFM95 / SX1276.

598 GWT:TPC:IP=10.0.0.34
3602 MCO:BGN:STP
3604 MCO:BGN:INIT OK,TSP=1
3606 GWT:TPC:IP=10.0.0.34
3608 GWT:RMQ:MQTT RECONNECT
3639 GWT:RMQ:MQTT CONNECTED
3641 GWT:TPS:TOPIC=GWO1/0/255/0/0/18,MSG SENT
22668 TSF:MSG:READ,254-254-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0:
22673 TSF:MSG:BC
22675 TSF:MSG:FPAR REQ,ID=254
22678 TSF:PNG:SEND,TO=0
22680 TSF:CKU:OK
22681 TSF:MSG:GWL OK
22931 TSF:MSG:SEND,0-0-254-254,s=255,c=3,t=8,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,ft=0,st=OK:0
24727 TSF:MSG:READ,254-254-255,s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0:
24732 TSF:MSG:BC

@gohan I will use this barebone ESP32S module without LED, USW, Voltage Regulator etc.
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/ESP32-ESP32S-WIFI-Bluetooth-Module-240MHz-Dual-Core-CPU-MCU-Wireless-Network-Board-ESP-WROOM-32/32817688406.html?spm=a2g0x.search0104.3.1.3bc34eb5tSg79z&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_5_10152_10151_10065_10344_10068_5722815_10342_10547_10343_10340_5722915_10548_10341_5722615_10696_10084_10083_10618_10304_10307_10820_10821_10302_5722715_10059_100031_10103_10624_10623_10622_5722515_10621_10620,searchweb201603_2,ppcSwitch_3&algo_expid=499485e8-6df0-40d6-8033-c5497748adb9-0&algo_pvid=499485e8-6df0-40d6-8033-c5497748adb9&transAbTest=ae803_1&priceBeautifyAB=0

@scalz: Once the PCB's are available, I'll order some here (as you mentioned you might earn a bit). I have once ESp32 RFM95/LoRa GW already which works, but I'll switch to your HALO GW once you provide the PCB's, the code and the 3D Print files.

@dbemowsk said in Regulators needed:

LP2950

I will use the AP2112K 3v3
https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AP2112.pdf

it has overall very good values, 600mA output current, high effciency. I would not use the AMS1117 for battery usage.
It is also used by the excellent Adafruit Feather:
https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/adafruit-feather-m0-wifi-atsamd21-atwinc1500?lang=en

Output Voltage Accuracy: ±1.5%
Output Current: 600mA (Min.)
Foldback Short Current Protection: 50mA
Enable Function to Turn ON/OFF VOUT
Low Dropout Voltage (3.3V): 250mV (Typ.) IOUT = 600mA
Excellent Load Regulation: 0.2%/A (Typ.)
Excellent Line Regulation: 0.02%/V (Typ.)
Low Quiescent Current: 55μA (Typ.)
Low Standby Current: 0.01μA (Typ.)

@mfalkvidd hi, thanks for your reply and as far as I have understood, there have been two enhancements done, ESP32 and RFM95 support! That is all I need (RFM95 is the LoRa chip I mentioned). I'm new to the github test/review process and I'm willing to test this pull request 865, How can I download this build to do some testing? I'm sorry to hear, that people don't show enough interest in ESP32 boards with the RFM95 onboard. I like them very much.

@neverdie said in Everything nRF52840:

nRF52840XE

If BLE5 alone works sufficient, that would be great. Worst case, I will use the nRF52 with RFM95 for the battery devices and an ESP32 + RFM95 for the gateway.
The new PCB's we plan with ranseyer will cover all possible combination and provides the mySX connector.

@neverdie I have ordered 10x nRF52832 and 2x nRF52840 from EBYTE (E73-xxxB/C). I will join you once I got them (they are on they way since 2 weeks). I'll also work together with ransyer to get new PCB's (the last we maybe together are for the ESP32).
I'm curious what distance I can get indoor with the BLE 4.2/5.0 (no extra radio) and if required, I will combine it with a LoRA RFM95 (that is also what our PCB's is made for RFM69/95 and CC1101).
I'm still working on the sensor with the 1,54" ePaper (where the ATMEGA328p is lost with its 32kB flash and even worse with the 2k RAM)

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/CDEBYTE-E73-2G4M04S-BLE-4-2-5-0-long-distance-100m-2-4GHz-SMD-ARM-Core/32820692238.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.60a94c4dZdIUhQ

this one will be tricky to solder (I'm trying to get something better to solder)
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/NRF52840-Bluetooth-5-0-240-mhz-RF-Transceiver-CDSENET-E73-2G4M08S1C-8dbm-Keramik-Antenne-BLE-4/32906661666.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.1d174c4dKW9mAo

@mfalkvidd great guys, excellent work! I'll do more testing in the upcomming days with more features and will give you certainly feedback.

Here is what I want to build and what additional features might be nice, but I can try to implement also parts by myself:

I'm trying to build some temp/humitity/pressure sensor with e-paper display (I have a couple of 1.54 to 2.9" e-papers) in a small enclosure with a Litium battery. Each sensor with e-paper in each room connected to the MQTT Gateway to an OpenHAB based home automation. This will control some IR heating panels.
On my reseach, I found the SHT31 from Sensirion as very accurate temp/humidity (better than others like the DHT22) with an additional Bosch BME280 both are supported by MySensors (very nice).

I also have seen that there is a feature to get the system time from the Gateway/Controller so that the e-paper display of the sensor nodes can show the date/time/weekday (the ESP32 has a build in RTC even during deep sleep).
Battery sensor support is also there to show the battery state on the e-paper. So I hope I can that working with the build in ADC's.

So what might is probaly missing is a standard e-paper support. That would be nice (most brands are compatible, I use the ones from Waveshare) to build sensors with display where the battery last for a year+.

Another thing - not sure if it fit's to the MySensors scope would be to control remote smart power plugs with energy monitor (868MHz or WiFi). Would that be possible?
THere are nice ones available for 15-20€ WiFi which have an energy monitor built in. Such as Gosund SP1 or Homecube SP1 etc. which use an ESP8266EX (most use the same HW).
https://www.amazon.com/Monitoring-Compatible-Asistant-Required-Anywhere/dp/B076VMNNRZ/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1522098551&sr=1-2-fkmr0&keywords=gosund+sp1 I use the EU plug version from Amazon.de.

To your comment what advantage the ESP board has: I have tried to explain: It has the ESP32, the RFM95 and the LiPo switch/Charger all on one board without any soldering required and thus very small for 3 required features, For the Gateway, also the on baord OLED can be used. In total, it's not more expensive than all three parts extra and need less space no soldering etc.

So that is all for today. I hope I get some positive feedback and thanks again for the good work.

Heinz

@neverdie take a look at platform.io, it supports al known SOC's. INstall it then from the Visual Studio Code IDE. Both together are a very professional IoT dev environment (also Web and other development).
I was doing very complex development like ESPurna project build you would not like to do in the Arduino IDE.
Let me know if you need further hints.
VSC and Platform.IO includes not only all SOC HW families but also all kind of libraries you know from Arduino and it can also import Arduino project (*.INO Files).
Give it a try and you will be suprrised once you get familar.
It does also the flashing (upload), includes GIT nativly, has a command window, debugging etc etc.

https://code.visualstudio.com/
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=platformio.platformio-ide
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/search?term=platform.io&target=VSCode&category=All categories&sortBy=Relevance

Platforms: Atmel AVR, Atmel SAM, Espressif 32, Espressif 8266, Freescale Kinetis, Infineon XMC, Intel ARC32, Intel MCS-51 (8051), Lattice iCE40, Maxim 32, Microchip PIC32, Nordic nRF51, Nordic nRF52, NXP LPC, RISC-V, Samsung ARTIK, Silicon Labs EFM32, ST STM32, Teensy, TI MSP430, TI Tiva, WIZNet W7500

Frameworks: Arduino, ARTIK SDK, CMSIS, Energia, ESP-IDF, libOpenCM3, mbed, Pumbaa, Simba, SPL, STM32Cube, WiringPi

I have now tried to build an indoor sensor with Homematic protocol and an e-paper display using Pa-Pa's AsksinPP and GxEPD libs. Now I'm far beyond the Atmegas328p Flash and RAM and close to the limit of an STM32 maple. So I will go for the little ESP32 barebone boards and a RFM69 (LoRa or ESPNow). I'm very happy, that ESP32 and RFM95 are now supported thanks to tekka!

@NeverDie have you also checked this from my previous 3 posts agao
https://github.com/lpercifield/arduino-nRF5/tree/nrf52840

this is a fork from sandeeps Arduino-NRF5 project which explicitly adds nRF52840 (that was the reason for the fork) where people have been waiting for (and probably sandeep has not announced a support soon).
See also sandeeps respons to lpercifield's work
https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-nRF5/issues/70

Softdevice in this project is at S132 and Nordic newest is S140 (full BLE5 stack). Don't know why is was not yet worked into and why there is not realy a big progress since 2 years.

At least there is a project with nRF52 and LoRa (SX1276/RFM95)
https://github.com/gluedig/nrf52-lora

I'm on the way to implement something similar with e-paper (without touch at the moment) to save battery.
However I will use an additional SPI port and require a lot more flash/RAM as ATmegas provide. Also with the STM32 I'm comming to a limit.
Thus I'm switching to an ESP32 barebone module for 3,63€ (4,20$) and habe 4 SPI ports, many I2C ports etc.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ESP32-ESP32S-WIFI-Bluetooth-Module-240MHz-Dual-Core-CPU-MCU-Wireless-Network-Board-ESP-WROOM-32/32817688406.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.xvTLd7

The nice thing with the ESP32 is, that it has 10 touch panel ports on-chip and is very engergy efficient (if used with battery). We had this discussion already and if the bare module is used is has on one hand suffient MCU power as wel as very low engery in sleep/deep sleep. IT has WiFi, BlueTooth, no limits with Flash/RAM etc.

Think about it.

The best thing: There is a brach or event a planned PR which supports ESP32.
See here:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/9167/esp32-support-to-enable-the-powerful-esp32-rfm95-lora-lipo-battery-boards

@neverdie thanks for the info, I appreciate your effort and investigations. I'll use my gateway and the sensor nodes at least in 1,5m height from the ground.
Today I got my nrF52832 and also the nRF52840. The E73..C modules are tiny (around 11x16mm). I can't use it without a breakout board. CDBYTE promised me to send me at least reference PCB design which I can then order from any PCB company.

The Skylab moduls are promising, but I see some deficiencies: No pinout, less pins (don't know what was skiped), no 32kHz low power quart for sleep timer ... I have ordered some other modules ... lets see, so far I can't test a lot without the carrier PCB's.
Then I join you with testing (range/transmisson test, sensor readout, battery measurement, ePaper ...)

@scalz "Full Zigbee Stack": Maybe my phrasing was not ideal, I wanted to say: if we use not only the IEEE802.15.4 Standard but also the complete stack with ZigBee.

I know that mySensors is done by (most likely a few) people in their spare time and adding a new HW stack is extra work which is not just initial work but also remaining maintenance effort. On the other hand, isn't that also the intention of a community project to discussing new possibilities and significant improvement potentials and having experts and enganged people providing pros, cons, inpust (thus also your inputs are important

@NeverDie I also own a Galaxy S8 and interested in that study.
I especially like the idea to have a very energy efficient MCU which contains already a very energy efficient radio. That saves a lot of energy in total, soldering, wiring, complexity of multi chip handling (sleep, wake, sync) and saves also space (makes PCB's and devices smaller).
If the range is sufficent and we get the development environment satisfying established, what else are we missing?
Price and MCU performance is also ok, Flash and RAM is ok. Availability of internal peripheral and sleep/wakeup behaviour is ok. The only small drawback I've seen is that there is no internal EEPROM.
Once I have my dongles and or breakout PCB's (for the "inconvinient" 1.1mm pinouts and soldering pads below the module), I'll start with the sensor communication, radio transmission and ePaper display. If the range is satisfying with BLE then I also need to decide how I integrate with my controller OpenHAB (a mySensors binding if we get that added, ZigBee, MQTT which a MQTT gateway ...). Would be interested what your plans for integration are (which is also releated to the comment from @scalz)

@neverdie I read an article regarding BLE 5.0, ANdroid and the Samsung Galaxy S8 HW (the used SoC from Qualcom/Snapdragon or from Samsung varying on the model/region).
The article is in German but it says: BLE 5.0 was introduced with Android 8.0 but the S8 HW does only support the 2x data rate (2MBps) but not the 4x range. So it seem that it is a HW limitation similar to the nRF52832 in comparison to the nRF52840. Only the 840 support both, the 832 only the higher data rate. Strange, that this is so bound to the HW and thus so limiting and unflexible.

@neverdie I have not found any hint on BLE Rx Tx sensitivity (Rx) or signal strength (Tx), but I assume that it's not that high as after a few meters the device connections are lost (SmatGear S3), Headphone etc. I would say less than 10m.

My TI CC1352P1 is ordered and I guess it will arrive by end of the week. Meanwhile the Nordic USB dongles are also on the way, so I'll start with the nRF52840 latest at the next weekend and I assume I will have the first experience with the Nordic MCU's.

Regarding the TI MCU: Although in the advertisment video it was explained why you would have two radios at the same time on the same chip, but I rather see it as a possibility to use one or the other best fitting the usage it is built for without attaching another modul. But I'll wait for the first set of real live tests under different conditions (for both nRF52 and TI CC1352). And also how convinient the IDE's and libraries can be used.

Looking at the TI homepage, the CC1352(p) is not even yet available but announved for Q3/2018 which should be now or soon. Thene I hope we can get first modules. I wonder where @scalz will get the MCU's (even the raw chip's)?

@scalz and @NeverDie today I got my nRF52840 dongles (6 pieces) as well as the TI CC1352P1 launchpad. Now the fun will begin (latest at the weekend)
See the picture below (the dongle in blue and the launchpad in red).
If you have already some more code to share for testing (send/receive, I2C sensor read etc.) please post it (some code was postetd by NeverDie) other wise I'm looking at the Nordic pages, they provide a lot of examples (I will probably use/try Segger).
For the TI part, I only have one launchpad, so I have to verify, if I can use BLE 5.0 to communicate with my mobile or between TI CC1352 and nRF52 ...
Not sure if the TI can also communicate with the CC1101 at 868MHz (using the Sub 1GHz capabilities) using the same modem settings. So a lot to find out.

@nagelc So everything works now with the BMP using the MyBoardNRF5. At least it supports the nRF52832 (if I'm lucky also the nRF52840) but I started with my barebone 832 modules.
So it upload the sketch and it does also reset and start.
I could also do the connection to the second serial port now with Terra Term and get the Serial.println. Cool.
The secret was, that I created another BMP for my blackpills (I did a couple of tweaks) and connect now the HW serial of the nRF52 to the BMP serial (UART2) and it forwards it via the USB of the BMP to the COM port.

The output looks now like yours when I do an upload:
WARNING: Spurious .ci folder in 'MySensors' library
WARNING: Spurious .mystools folder in 'MySensors' library
Build options changed, rebuilding all
Sketch uses 3720 bytes (0%) of program storage space. Maximum is 524288 bytes.
Remote debugging using \.\COM58
Target voltage: unknown
Available Targets:
No. Att Driver
1 Nordic nRF52
2 Nordic nRF52 Access Port
Attaching to Remote target
0x00000ae0 in ?? ()
Reading symbols from nRF52832_Blink.ino.elf...done.
Loading section .text, size 0xe88 lma 0x0
Loading section .ARM.exidx, size 0x8 lma 0xe88
Loading section .data, size 0x74 lma 0xe90
Start address 0x5f8, load size 3844
Transfer rate: 27 KB/sec, 640 bytes/write.
Temporary breakpoint 1 at 0xbc4: file D:\mcdev\arduino\portable\packages\sandeepmistry\hardware\nRF5\0.6.0\cores\nRF5\main.cpp, line 28.
Starting program: C:\Users\internet\AppData\Local\Temp\arduino_build_913185\nRF52832_Blink.ino.elf
Note: automatically using hardware breakpoints for read-only addresses.

Temporary breakpoint 1, main ()
at D:\mcdev\arduino\portable\packages\sandeepmistry\hardware\nRF5\0.6.0\cores\nRF5\main.cpp:28
28 {

Program complete!

Here is the picture of my BMP and the nRF module:

@wormhole I took a quick look at this HomeSmartMesh project and it's certainly interesting.
However, the MySensors project is more mature, has a large community, supports more MCU's and sensors and many HW projects are using/supporting it. It also supports nRF51 and nRF52 MCU's already to a certain extent (I guess using the internal nRF24 radio protocol and external RF chips like RFM69/95).
Beside that, it supports also a couple of home automations suite like FEHM, OpenHAB etc.
I'm currently on OpenHAB 2.3 using the MySensors Gateway for OpenHAB.
I think it would be rather a good idea, that we get the new nRF52840 features and RF protocols supported by MySensors (such as the BLE 5.0 with the long range feature).
We had already the discussions on IEEE 802.15.4 / Thread / Zigbee which are also great for home automation. The question was also, if we can/should include it in MySensors or are these competing technology stacks to MySensors.
I personally like the MySensors project, because it project a good development infrastructure with a lot of supported/preconfigures sensors which makes it quite easy to creates sensor nodes..
Now we are exploring how to best integrate and use the nRF52840 boards. NeverDie seem to be quite ahead of us and exploring also micropython option (not sure how far that fits into the MySensors concept

anybody seen this new Nordic IoT MCU:
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wireless/nRF5340

So far only a DK board for 49$ is available. Has BLE 5.1 (incl. long range).
I guess it will take some time till it is supported by Arduiono, Platformio etc.

I'm still striggling with the nRF52840 and the low power sleep. So far I'm far away from the 1.5 to 5uA in sleep mode. Maybe someone has a good example for a sleep, internal timer wake-up.
The mysensors project I'm using has 1,5mA in sleep and 15mA during sensor read and send. That is not usable for battery mode.