Posts made by joshmosh

@Nicklas-Starkel
Strange ...
But since I am not missing / using any of the advanced features offered by V 2.0, I don't see a problem (at least for now) to stick with V 1.5.4
In any case it is amazing what you can do with low power battery poweroperated sensors.

Just to give a feedback on power consumption: I have switched back to mysensors V 1.5.4. This was roughly one month ago. I take meadurements every two hours. Battery voltage hasn't changed a bit since then. So my guess is, that - for whatever reason - mysensors V 2.0 seems to produce a more power hungry code.
Whatever ...
I am happy now and will stick with V 1.5.4
I am

@Nicklas-Starkel
After some reading and thinking, I came to a very similar conclusion. There are tons of parameter which will influence the mesurement.
I am planning to use four or five moisture probes distributed at various places in my garden for irrigation automatisation. I guess my lawn will not suffer if I start watering at a reading of 41 % instead of 44 %
During the upcoming winter months there is enough time to gather empirical data about the behaviour of my probes.
Anyway, it's a fun project ...

@korttoma
OK, after some fiddling I was able to exchange mysensors V2.0 with V1.5.4 and to compile mfalkvidd's sketch. I will adapt it now to my hardware (removing references to LED etc) and give it a twirl. Please be patient, since I need to run it at least a coupl eof days to see if there is a difference in power consumption.
Very interesting stuff

@korttoma
OK, thanks for the hint. I will try if I can get this version work with the Arduino version I am using.

@mfalkvidd
I think that in a previous post you mentioned that you are using mysensors V1.6, right ? Where did you get it from ? On the mysensors pages I only found references and links to V1.4 and V1,5, not V1.6. I would like to try to remove V2.0 from my system and switch to V1.6 - no idea if this will work ...
I would like to use a setup as close as possible to yours to track down the problem. Your very low power consumption is really amazing and I would like to come as close as possibe to int in my case. I have a 'clone' of your hardware setup described in openhardware.io - minus the LED. So in my case, power consumption should be even lower than yours

@mfalkvidd, @Nicklas-Starkel
similar problem here. I have a bare ATMega 328P, running @ 8 MHz internal oszillator. no LED, bod disabled, (if enabled, the ADC is running also during sleep, so this means additional power consumption), nothing else connected that could draw additional power.
I use mfalkvidd's sketch (BTW, thanks a lot for it !), but converted to mysensors 2.0. I see a voltage drop way higher than mfalkvidd, although I don't use a china clone ;-).
So it seems, that the higher power consumption may be due to mysensors V2 ? I cannot imagine a reason for that, because why should relatively low level functions like power save routines be different in 2.0 ?
Perhaps hek can comment ?

@hek said:

@joshmosh said:

Would

gw.begin(incomingMsg, MY_NODEID, true)
turn this node into a working repeater ?

Yes, this enables the repeater feature.
OK,thank you. This will save me an additional node..
Cheers
Josh

Hi,
I have a similar problem and would like to use an already existing node as a repeater. It does not run from battery, so no problem here.

But I have incoming messages which this node needs to react on. In the code, I check if the incoming message has a child id known by this node. If not, nothing happens. In addition, I am using static node IDs.

So, instead of

gw.begin(NULL,  AUTO, true)

my current initialisation is

gw.begin(incomingMsg, MY_NODEID, false)

because it currently does not act as a repeater.

Would

gw.begin(incomingMsg, MY_NODEID, true)

turn this node into a working repeater ?

Most of the time this node is idle. Every five minutes it reads temperature and humidity and sends it off to the controller. A few times per day it turns some switch on or off. My guess is that the additional workload for repeating messages would not be too high.

Thank you very much for your input.
Cheers
Josh

@Yveaux said:

@joshmosh You cannot have multiple gateways in a single MySensors network. The node-ID of the gateway is always hardcoded to 0.
If you want to run multiple networks, each should have a unique RF24_CHANNEL & RF24_BASE_RADIO_ID combination. For best results make sure to have a separate RF24_CHANNEL for each network, and don't use directly adjacent channels.

@Yveaux
Thank you for this piece of information - I was not aware of this fact.
My idea was to reduce cost and parts count for sensors by using ESPs instead of nRF plus Arduino. Since I have Domoticz as controller, there is pehaps no need for an additional gateway, because Domoticz can handle TCP-attached sensors. Of course this would require to use WiFi instead of nRF24 as underlying transport for MySensors. My interpretation of some of hek's contributions is that he is working on it for realisation in version 1.6.

@hek
Good morning. I had wired up my nodemcu a nRF24L01+, loaded the gateway sketch and bingo ! Zero problems, works like charm. Thanks a lot !!!

I am using Domoticz as controller, with a serial USB gateway to connect my various sensors. In the serial console of the ESP8266 gateway I see that the messages of my sensors show up, but since I have not yet announced the gateway to Domoticz, there seems to be no interference. If I connect the ESP8266 gateway to a controller (in my case Domoticz), I guess that it will be required that the nodes need to choose the respective gateway (by using the parentNodeId) with which they like to communicate ? Currently, I am using parentNodeId = AUTO in all my nodes.
I will do some testing to get an idea of the reach of my WiFi compared to the reach of my serial USB gateway (I have a nRF24L01+ with external antanna and booster in my gateway, so I am able to "see" a portable node even outside my house and 50 m away.

Again, thank you for this very useful extension of MySensors. I think I have not yet an estimate of the full potential of it

Cheers
Josh

@hek
that's good news, thank you ! Now the most expensive part will be the power supply

Cheers
Josh

This is a bit off topic, but hopefully not too off
What about a port of the MySensors library /API to ESP8266 ? Instead of two "boards" (Arduino nano plus nRF24L01+) only one would be required. For simple sensors an ESP-01 would be sufficient - about the size of a nRF24, but with much more muscle than an Arduino. Of course, running off a battery probably would not work because of the high power consumption of the ESP.

Or am I asking for something which is already possible ?

Josh

After some thinking (yes, I am able to ), this is the conclusion I came to.
Put yourself in the shoes of a controller . You have a node which tells you it has just one sensor (DHT22) attached. Wether it sends you a V_TEMP and a V_HUM with the same child ID or with two different child IDs makes no difference to you. Since there is only one temperature sensor, the controller has no problem to see that V_HUM and V_TEMP belong to the same sensor and correlate them (to calculate a dew point for example).
Now imagine that there are three DHTs (of course at three diferent locations) connected to the same node. Now the node sends six different child IDs (three pairs V_HUM / V_TEMP) to the controller. How can the poor controller find out, which two child IDs belong to the same sensor ? No way to find that out !
So, my conclusion is, that it seems to be strongly advisable to use the same child ID for all values which are produced by a sensor. Makes life for a poor controller much easier .

Or is there a mistake in my thinking, which I have not seen yet ?
Cheers
Josh

@hek said:

You can find a table with the most common variables used for each sensor type here (see under presentation):

http://www.mysensors.org/download/serial_api_15

There isn't any law against using other variables/sensor-type but the controllers will most probably not support it.

My confusion is not related to sensor types but to the assignment of child IDs. In the sketch example for DHT22, different child IDs are assigned to the temp value and the hum value of the same sensor (DHT22). In the example for the pulse energy meter, only a single child ID is assigned to the watt value and the kWh value.
Somewhere in the general description it says that a child ID identifies (on a node with several sensors) a sensor. In my understanding that means that sensors providing more than one measurement values get assigned the same child ID for each value (example watts and kWh) they provide. The energy meter sketch reflect this view. What confuses me is the DHT22 sketch. There, two child ID are used, although it is the same sensor (DHT22).
Both methods seem to work ? Are both methods (one child id vs. two) equivalent or is one of the methods "better" ?

Thank you for a clarification
Josh

I am confused about how to use child ids for sensors which deliver more than one values. Example: DHT22 (gives humidity and temperature) or power meter (gives watts and kWhs).
In the examples I have seen: a different child id for each value (child id 1 for temp, child id 2 for hum) as well as the same child id for both values (child id 1 for watts and for kWhs as well). Are both methods ok ? Or is there a recommended way to assign child ids ? Or is one method not advisable ?
Please enlighten me
Thank you very much in advance
Josh

It seems to me, that from time to time a data packet sent from a node is not recognised by my controller. Is there a built-in handshake in communication between node and controller or have I to implement it myself (by requesting ack messages) ?

Thank you for your help
Josh

Thank you very much for this very useful answer ! This is exactly what I was looking for but did not find.
I will try it in my system.
Thanks a lot again.
Cheers, Josh

Since my nodes are all mains powered, they are not sleeping. My question in particular is how a request from node A would show up in node B. Obviously as an incoming message, but in which way would it be coded ? I haven't seen any examples or a description here.
Any hints would be highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance
Josh

@fot said:

Hi!

I ask my gateway about it's version (0;0;3;0;2;). It will responde with the library version number (1.4.1 in my case).

It tells me that the gateway software is up and running. But it will not give me any clue about if the (NRF)network is working.
That's a problem, right.

I only ask the gateway if no other packages are received in $timeout seconds.

/Magnus
Of course ! Thank you for pushing my nose on it. Sometimes you don't see the most obvious
Since my gateway is relatively close to the controller (Domoticz on a Raspi), I can do a hard reset of the gateway (via Raspi GPIO), which should resolve the issue.
Cheers
Josh

Hi,
I have implemented a serial gateway to Domoticz on a pro mini. Just used the code given in the example. Works well so far, but recently I noticed that the gateway seemed to got stuck. It did not react to messages from sensor nodes. A reset of the gateway was all to fix it.
Would be nice to have a means to get a notification in case that a gateway does not react anymore.
Any ideas how that could be accomplished ?
Josh

Of course ! I should have thought of it myself. Thank you for putting me on track

Cheers
Josh

Hi,
would it be possible to run a sensor node in parallel to a serial gateway on one Arduino ? A gateway does not consume a huge amount of code, so there would be room for some sensor code.

If it is possible: anything to take care of or can I use the example code for a serial gateway and just simply add code for sensors ?

Cheers
Josh

@hek: Ah, ok, thanks a lot ! That gives some clarification and will hopefully help to catch the bugs.

Thank you !
Josh

@rvendrame
Thank you very much for your reply. I know that part of the documentation quite well, since I have written a serial gateway emulator to send sensor data, which is collected locally on the Raspberry Pi to the controller (Domoticz). My question relates to the other stuff, which looks like 0-0-255-255 pt=7 c=3 etc. My guess is that this is the debug information, whereas the other stuff (0;0;3;9; as an example) is the serial gateway protocol. I would like to know the meaning of the debug messages, because I think these may be useful to help me in debugging my code.

Thanks a lot again
Josh

Hello,
I am relatively new to MySensors and now trying to get my first sensor up. My serial gateway runs on an Arduino Uno, which is connected to a Raspbery Pi 2. So far, so good.
I am now trying to prototype a temperature/humidity sensor with a DYPTH01.
I get a bunch of debug output from the gateway and from the sensor (also on a Uno) , with quite a few of "fail", so I guess that something is wrong. Now I am trying to find out what is wrong ...K
I have searched quite a bit, but I was not successful to find any documention on how to interpret the debug output. May I ask a kind soul to please point me to a description ? Or have I really browse through the source code of MySensors ?
Any help is highly welcome. Thanks a bunch in advance.
Cheers,
Josh