I have a refrigerator that has been acting funny lately. I have been watching it display non-normal temperatures for the last couple of weeks. I suspected that the thermostat in the refrigerator is going out. Thanks to mysensors, I am able to monitor the performance of several refrigerators and saw the problem early. I ordered the part I thought was at fault, moved all the vital items out of the refer, and waited (just for fun) for it to fail.

It went out Friday night. I replaced the thermostat tonight. Thanks again to Mysensors for saving 400+ dollars in meat I had in there.

Here is my take on a case for the Sensebender Micro. I left space at the top so it could be adapted for a proxy sensor, etc. These are for my refrigerator and freezer so they don't need to hang.

They still need a little sanding...

Here is my attic sensor w/ a hanging tab:

Here is my gateway enclosure. I know the solders are terrible but it works awesome.

@stefaanv

First off, excellent design. Great job!

I have had one of these running for a while. I did not want mine to react to light levels because I did not want it to close during a thunderstorm, etc. and lock the chickens out. That being said, I have mine close 20 minutes after sunset and open 20 minutes after sunrise. The first couple of nights some of the chickens were locked out because they came home to late. I had to manually let them in. After a couple of days they learned quickly (despite not being very smart creatures) and they head to the house early before the door closes. After that, my camera alerts me to any movement in the house. I have only had one false alarm in a couple of months.

I have a pretty strong outdoor pen and I have still had multiple black snakes, one raccoon, and one possum get in. The raccoon ate a chicken and one snake bit one. After installing the door I have not had one injured chicken.

Mine is pretty low tech. I used a single push button and mysensored a relay board that turns a dc motor with a 3d printed gear that raises/lowers the door. I have had zero problems with it since installed. Thanks Hek!

The one big thing I learned, Transient Voltage Suppressor. I used a larger dc motor due to the weight of my door and every time the door opened it scrambled the Arduino with electric interference. Took me forever to figure out what the problem was and how to fix it.

Now if I can just figure out how to mysensor it to let me know when a chicken lays an egg.....

Sounds like your problem is a little different than mine but Itead offered to send me an invoice and pay directly with Paypal without using their site. I'm sure they will do the same for you. To my knowledge, there are no other suppliers.

Thank you.

Here is the enclosure on thingiverse:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1410018

I have another version for non-shielded radios as well. I have not uploaded it to thingiverse yet though.

The logo is for open-source hardware. I didn't want to violate any copyrights by putting on the MySensors logo and uploading to thingiverse. Plus, the MySensors logo is hard to 3d print. :wink:

@Dwalt

Sure. Here it is on thingiverse:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1410004

@mfalkvidd

The battery holder is a single holder with two AA batteries. The batteries are ran in series. To be honest, I can't remember where I bought the holders but I like them because they clip on like a 9 volt so you can easily disconnect the battery holder from your project.

@TheoL Absolutely you can use it in a presentation. It might be useful (or not) to know that node 105 is a refrigerator/freezer combo, node 102 and 103 are in the same refrigerator/freezer, and node 100 is a chest freezer I have an external thermostat on and I use it as a refrigerator.

@Oitzu

It is the shielded nrf24l01+lna/pa. I do not have any scientific test for how well they work.

My real world test is that I was having trouble transmitting directly from my gateway to two out buildings near my house (~150m). In theory, the non-shielded should have worked but it is through several brick walls and they would only communicate about every fifth transmit. After switching the gateway and outbuildings to shielded radios, they receive every transmission.

I had to change the transmit power to low because they do indeed interfere with themselves.

Per our previous discussion, I believe you are correct and they are not completely shielded correctly. At some point this year, I want to be able to transmit from my home to my well house (~150m - brick structure) and then to my front gate (~800m). It is not LOS because of hills and trees.

Part of the design of this enclosure was the idea that you could wrap the interior of it with aluminum foil to shield the radio. Then you mentioned the shielded radios so I thought I would give them a try. Overall, I think the results between the two would be similar.

To most it would seem unimportant for radios to communicate directly with the gateway due to the mash network. The problem I have is, there are mission critical items in my network I want to work. For example, if power goes out: My gateway is running on battery backup as well as my router, modem, etc. If I have a battery operated sensor monitoring the temperature of my baby chicks, it will continue to monitor them. If I rely on a mesh network, and one of the relay sensors goes out, I could loose the sensor monitoring the chicks.

@Dan-S.

Crazy but there was a space after my city name that was preventing it from working. I would have never thought it was that picky. Ordered 5 and I cannot wait to see how well they work!

My experience is that it will work if you change myconfig.h to low power setting for the radio.

However, for best results I would suggest using a different power source and a LE33 or other regulator to provide significant power for the antenna. The nano only outputs 40mA.

There are a lot of threads that address this question if you dig. I am fairly new here but I use a 5 volt 2 amp power supply when I use the nano with the NRF24L01+PA+LNA. I wire the nano directly off the power supply and use a regular between the power supply and the radio.

I'm not sure the difference in those two but check out the store page:

https://www.mysensors.org/store/#regulators

The LE33 does work with the NRF24L01+PA+LNA but I think the XC6206P332MR would be even better. The LE33 has a maximum output of 100 mA and the XC6206P332MR has a maximum output of 250mA.

@Boots33 said:

NRF24L01+PA+LNA

Boots33, I completely agree. I have recently decided to rebuild my gateway and I am very pleased this thread came up so I can use the AMS1117. Any idea what the NRF24L01+PA+LNA has the potential to draw? I have looked through the data sheets but I have not came up with a definitive answer.

Although my mysensors network works very well, I am always looking for a way to improve it. I learn something new almost every day from this forum so thanks for your input.