Oh wow, it has been a while since i was last here, and i truly apologize for this but it has been a very, very, very busy year for me.
New job, writing a technical book, attending conferences, etc.. etc... it does not mean the project was at a standstill but has been progressing slower then anticipated. We have been expanding our team with a real UX and UI designer and will provide the PiDome backend engine to be used in a charity program.
We have also been upgrading our support system to Jira and we have started to follow a more agile approach in the continuous development. The web interface has been cleaned up, our android app is finally in the play store (as alpha so you must be a tester), next to the android app there is an embedded (raspi), magic mirror and photo frame app in development. And not to forget, we also started with IOS.

A while ago I gave the community time to come up with feature requests in a couple weeks period. I'm currently in process of implementing all these features and mature existing functionalities (like proper http2 support and move to secure only connections).

With all the above i wanted to let the mysensors community know that you have not been forgotten. A big portion from the PiDome user base was/is coming originated from the mysensors community whom should not be let down as the dedication which is being put into it is awesome! I will soon start working towards supporting mysensors 2.0. I have to be honest, it will not be immediately, but it will happen ASAP.

Cheers,
John.

I should have paid better attention because i would have definitely joined!

But to possible make it up a little bit, I will be present at the Eindhoven mini maker fair this weekend (10th and 11th) in case some want to shake hands.

Cheers,
John.

Yes, but this is mainly visuals, the routines all stay the same.

Cheers!

Sorry for the late response, have you tried to change the datatype to string with the codes as the values?

@bjornhallberg Thanks for the change!

P.S. i recently also added support for local /dev/tty* serial ports which weans that also the GPIO gateway solution is available (http://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2389/added-support-for-local-mysensors-rpi-direct-radio-connection). I know changes are a bit scattered but also is my implementation schedule, sorry ;).

Cheers!

All though this topic is related to the development branch, has the topic structure been fixed (except for prefix)?

In my opinion this would be fritzing http://fritzing.org/home/

Maybe handy to post a schematic of your wiring.

Recently i added support for custom created serial ports. This also means support for the local MySensors RPI<->NRF connection using the RPI GPIO pins is supported. I have just tested it and can confirm it working, follow the screenshots below as a small howto for the connection.

First, get the nrf working on the Raspberry Pi and make sure it talks to nodes.

1. Add the custom port
   As PiDome works with libudev and is triggered an hardware added/disconnected signalling it also means that if you add a custom port (for example with /dev/ttyMySensorsGateway) which does not trigger hardware added signalling, the port is not recognized.
   So an option is added to PiDome to add a custom serial port.
   Go to Management > Peripherals
   

2. Click on the "Add custom port" button
   The server will traverse the /dev/ directory and look for /dev/tty* ports and show them in the drop down menu. Here you can select the MySensors local serial port and give it a name. It's like naming your own hardware :)
   

3. Click create Hardware (Future naming will be Create port link)
   The port reference is now created, it will get a yellow label with the text "Attentions/Settings" Which is normal as you need to supply connection settings. If /dev/ttyMySensorsGateway would be triggered automatically you step 1 and 2 where not needed but you would also get the yellow label.
   

4. Set your connection settings
   Click on the newly added MySensors port you have created with the yellow label, a popup with connection settings will appear. Set the connection settings as shown in the screenshot with of course the created port. And yes select the USB driver as it is compatible.
   

5. Press Set and start
   If all goes well you will see the same as below with a green success label.
   

6. Check the settings
   Not really an added step but handy to know you can check the connect settings by clicking on added mysensors driver. You will see something like shown below. P.S. This window is also used to disconnect the hardware. Just in case you had some wrong settings you can click disconnect and reconnect later on.
   

7. Check stuff works
   Got to Management > Drivers and click on the MySensors driver. When you see "Gateway Startup complete" You have made a successful connection. If not check your wiring and/or connection settings.
   

I have tested it with the PingPong sketch and the screenshot below conforms it working

There are two things:

1. It is possible you will be seeing that the server load is 100% as a message in the web interface. This is due to the /dev/mysensorsgateway. When you connect the server with serial settings the load will lower.
2. PiDome only works with the gateway when the gateway works. So if there is any issue, first check the gateway unless you have seen gateway started.

Cheers!

P.S. PiDome will remember the custom added port and the configuration is written to config/hardconf/cust_serial/. Normally the server would remove these links from it's configuration of they are non-existing. So when you reboot your PI the port reference still exists.

If you want it all to go automatically after reboot make sure the pigateway is started before PiDome is started. Otherwise you have to set the connection settings manually again.

Hi @bjornhallberg,

We have been updating our website from wordpress to a self hosted platform on http://pidome.org, This means the url pidome.wordpress.com will be obsoleted and http://pidome.org is the new location.

Could you update the url?

Thanks in advance and cheers,
John.

Now that the website is done for 90% (except from the mentioned above)

I will be focusing on techniques and the other parts of the software again. zwave will be added soon. I will update the features technologies page

The last couple of weeks have been a bit quiet from my side. And the reason is that I was busy with a somewhat updated version of the PiDome website.

Today i'm proud to announce the new website has launched!

I have left the http://pidome.wordpress.com blog styled web pages and the website is now running with a self designed framework. A lot of changes have been made with the most important ones the manual and the API pages.

The new URL for the website is now also simple http://pidome.org which is more recognizable.

This is the first version of the website release and i have some extra plans for in the future which consists of the following:

• A Working login,
• One login for forum, articles posts and an user dashboard,
• An user dashboard where an user can track his own to the community published device setups.

The Dashboard can certainly be interesting for MySensors users as you then will be able to share your custom created MySensor node to the PiDome community. Meaning that you post your MySensors code in the MySensors forum and when you have created this device structure on The PiDome server you will able to share this device structure from the server's web interface.

I Hope the new website will make it easier to find the MySensors support page (which needs an update, but will do this after the weekend)

URL's:
The PiDome website: http://pidome.org
Finally meet the team behind PiDome: http://pidome.org/pidome-team/

The New website announcement page: http://pidome.org/info/blog-news/2015/11/5/welcome-to-our-brand-new-pidome.org.html

And last but least, the most important page
The MySensors manual page: http://pidome.org/support/manual/devices/supported-devices/mysensors-devices.html

Cheers,
John.

@blacey No problem! As long it is possible to have all the IR codes be able to store on the server i'm very interested ;) Take all the time you need to get it to your requirements

Yep, that's correct, to make sure the correct interface is loaded (serial/hid/etc..). If you would get it to trigger udev with a serial description it should catch it.

Nonetheless in about a week or two, three i think the fixed udev triggered mechanism will be supplemented with an user selectable list of available ports as i'm quite interested in this mockup.

This looks really cool! What is PiDome's role in this picture?

I think this was meant for @John-Connolly ? ;)

@hek @awi
The only thing i can think of at the moment is to have a message amount + sequence. When sequence is out of order throw away the message. and disregard the following message

Or start + termination bytes implemented. This byte could identify being a multi message or a single message. A single message has the termination byte set. A multi message starts with a start byte and the last with the termination byte. Problem is lost messages creates strange texts missing pieces.

Both methods will be able to determine new message because of the "start" byte. But the second proposal would be more error prone because if a message with a start bit is missed it would keep concatenating.

The first proposal seems to be the most logical one. All though it should be limited so it does not cause the node to go oom. And limit it to the V_TEXT type seems logical

I wish i had more time so i could help with it, but then i would pick up the MQTT gateway first (for example for battery level reporting) But we are in the middle of about 20 projects... Honored to be be invited, but time does not permit it.

Or a maybe bit hacky, but i think do-able is instead of putting these start-end bits in the header (to keep it small), sneaky inject them in the V_TEXT. It makes the content payload smaller, but it is multi message which then in the end makes the payload "bigger". All though it would then be possible that the last message only contains a termination byte.

I have been personally been thinking of sending multi text messages with a start and end character to be able to send longer IR codes around.

Will the V_TEXT be able to concatenate text over multiple messages together?

With PiDome you are able to add options to device skeletons you create (so you can re-use devices). When you add a device to the server you can set these options.

Example: You have 5 temperature nodes, you create a skeleton once with your temperature node setup, you add the option poll time with a drop down choosing between 1, 5, 10 minutes (you can also use input fields off course).

When you add these devices to the server you then can set the polling time per device. By using the mysensors functionality to do a data request you will be able to get the option's value (See "Requesting data" on the API page: http://www.mysensors.org/download/sensor_api_15).

But. The above does not work yet for PiDome as this is not implemented in the mysensors plugin. Too be honest i did not even have thought about it. I have created a feature request for the mysensors plugin to have this implemented at: https://bitbucket.org/pidome/pidome-mysensors/issues/4/be-able-to-create-options-for-devices-in So if you are going to use PiDome or not, this will be implemented (so other users will also be able to use it when it becomes available).

I can not yet give an estimate on when this is implemented as the Custom devices editor is on the optimization list, and currently i'm extremely busy with the raspberry pi client to have it compatible on multiple display resolutions (starting from 240*320). You have the possibility to vote for the option so it can go up on the prio list (It is the three of PiDome deciding which option is next to pick up).

Regarding of booting all the sensors at the same time. The server does not care. It is capable of handling bulk messages from the gateway. So you need @hek to answer this one.