@NeverDie I am happy to report that my batteries arrived yesterday!

@NeverDie
I'm going to dissipate the energy through a 25 ohm resistor. It will take about 24 hours to perform one capacity test. Often times I read that the full capacity won't be available until after a few charge-discharge cycles. 2 resistors, 4 batteries, 3 tests each. Assuming that I stay on top of it, it will take at least a week of testing which won't start until I get my 25 ohm resistors. I'll post a link to my full write up.

OK, I did my battery test. @NeverDie @Nca78 @mfalkvidd
You can find it here

The batteries from Newegg and Fullbattery are good ones.

If you going to buy a large quantity and looking for a low price, then you should buy 1 or two and test them as I have done here. You might have to "kiss a lot of toads" before you find a good vendor, though.

OSD

@eiten said in Saving last known good state, but not in EEPROM:

utility meter in home assistant

This is exactly what I am seeking! Thank you!

PS I truly enjoy reverse translating! It teaches me how to better understand my first language and it gives me alternate words to use in searches. So a second thank you!

"Regelmässiges Zurücksetzen" would be best translated to English in this context as "Periodic Reset". In the English version of Home Assistant it is called "Meter reset cycle" (I remember seeing "keep dry" translated as "do not take in shower with you"

@hubertus I'm not getting the description of you setup. Perhaps a sketch would be good?

Wen I need serial communication, with the Arduino, I use SoftwareSerial on two other I/O lines. That way I can debug real time, SoftwareSerial is slower but you're only doing temperature so 9600BAUD would be fin

Also, don't try to do too much at once. Break the task down into small, manageable sections. You have a lot of different things going on, get one thing going at a time.

OSD

@NeverDie I like your suggestion for solar panels, though my application only requires 1x 5W panel. And I like the idea of dismantling the power packs.

I think we differ in our approaches, though. I seem to enjoy living on the "bleeding edge", that is, I'm more of a risk taker. My first house solar system, 2.8kW, was installed in 2004. When I upgraded to 4.2kW, I took the 14 panels and installed them on my hillside, so now I'm a net energy exporter. The 2.8kW portion is still producing at 85% of nameplate, shows little environmental degradation (sealant, too), and has paid for itself. The reward outweighed the risk.

In taking risks, I learn much. Yes, I have a quite a few scars, actually and metaphorically. I have discovered a philosophy: Everything is an experiment. The point of an experiment is to learn something. So every experiment is a successful, just that sometimes the desired results are not realized. Eg. leaving an Arduino outdoors results in a short useful life. Spraying on a sealant extends the outdoor life.

Good discussion. Thanks for the ideas

OSD

@NeverDie

I'm new-ish to MySensors. I came here because I was looking for a gateway from RF24 to MQTT and I'm well on my way to getting the MySensors version to work.

Why isn't MySensors working? I find two things really frustrating. The documentation is spotty at best. It's taking me days to get as far as I have. When I write up my own procedure for my own documentation, I find it's maybe just 20 steps, but each step needs a detailed explanation. For example, through a lot of trial and error, I found that to turn on the relay in the relay with button example I had to publish a message of 1 to the MQTT topic mysensors-in/13/1/V_LIGHT/0/2. Only later did I find the Serial Protocol 2.x. But it does't show a V_LIGHT nor S_LIGHT. Yes, I figured out that example is out of date, but that's part of the point I'm trying to make. And how did my node ID become 13 and stay 13 when I press reset on the Arduino?

You can see more detail on my frustrations in the MQTT gateway discussion

Which segues into my other frustration. about documentation. Many members offering advice do not provide links to their statements. For example, in the MQTT gateway discussion:

gohangohan MOD 3 Sept 2017, 13:15
(at)Richard-van-der-Plas "Just clone the 2.2 dev instead of the stable, the rest is the same
(emphasis mine)

How does one do that? Particularly in a world where case is important and there are three different quote marks, (excuse me, one is sometimes known as a gravé) all with different meanings.

There are many like you @NeverDie who know MySensors in-and-out. I am an experienced hardware and software engineer, retired (one of the engineers that developed ink jet printing and one of the engineers that developed a navigation system for the 747) It's not like I don't have a fundamental understanding of what's going on here. I have yet to find a way to search the forum other than using google search.

Don't get me wrong, the MySensors concept is great and functions pretty well, but if it's not well documented, then it is useless. Then when someone asks a simple questions only to get an answer with no explanation of the how, the newbie and experienced alike don't bother with the forum because the forum offers no help, either.

We had a poster at HP (when it was a great company) "No job is done until the paperwork is complete" (image of person sitting on the toilet)

@NeverDie It is my understanding, though I can't wrap my head around it, that it is the length of the conductor that makes the antenna tuned to a certain frequency. If this is the case, you could run your antenna around the edge of your circular pcb which would make the effective radius only slightly bigger.

I found that timelib.h uses a tremendous amount of memory. You avoid using it by getting time string from the controller.

I have also found that when you're using that amount of memory that bad things happen, as you noted. I use global variables to avoid the transient nature of function variables.

I'll be looking forward to other comments as, I, too, do not know all the tricks;)

OSD

@DenisJ Are you measuring a USB device? Look at something like this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33019457512.html?gps-id=pcDetail404&scm=1007.16891.96945.0&scm_id=1007.16891.96945.0&scm-url=1007.16891.96945.0&pvid=824c24fa-034b-4801-b51d-50b2ad877945&_t=gps-id:pcDetail404,scm-url:1007.16891.96945.0,pvid:824c24fa-034b-4801-b51d-50b2ad877945,tpp_buckets:668%230%23131923%2330_668%230%23131923%2330_668%23888%233325%239_668%23888%233325%239_668%232846%238110%231995_668%232717%237561%23332__668%233374%2315176%2335_668%232846%238110%231995_668%232717%237561%23332_668%233164%239976%23761_668%233374%2315176%2335

(AliExpress: Cheap prices and one could question the quality, but for the most part they work. Shipping takes about a month. rarely faster)

@Marcin I googled KC868-A12 and came up with only KC868-A128. If this is not your board, please provide a link. Did you mean KC868-A16? AliExpress Note that these are relay driver boards. If you do indeed use relays, you would need a daughter board.

My link states that this can be programmed with the Arduino IDE which implies that the LAN drivers are not going to be a problem.

MySensors REQUIRES a radio. I use nRF24; there are others. It would be tricky, if even possible, to connect a radio to this board because there are only 3 free GPIO pins. Thus, this is not technically a MySensors question.

But you could send and received messages to/from an MQTT broker and have the controller of your choice.

The real question here is the complexity (size) of the program. My recommendation is just try it yourself. I would recommend Tasmota and do your logic in your controller. If you need very fast response times, then consider programming with the Arduino IDE.

Cool project! Let us know how it turns out.

OSD

This is a pretty basic project except that the trick was to get Home Assistant (HA) to store the cumulative water usage and then send it back after an Arduino (re)boot.

Here is a link to my documentation, such as it is.

And a link to the Arduino code. (the HA side is in the previous document)

see also How I delete a node from HA and start over

If you're here, I'm not going to preach to the choir about HA's arcane ways. This works for me

• Stop mysgw
• Using MQTT Explorer, remove from the topics mysensors_out and mysensors_in all vestiges of the node that is to be deleted
• In Home Assistant (HA) delete the device
• • Settings
• • Devices and Services
• • Under MySensor, click on n Devices
• • Click on the device you want to delete.
• • Click DELETE
• • • One can use use Studio Code Server to note that the device has been deleted
• • IMPORTANT! reboot Home Assistant
• While HA is rebooting, make the changes to the code of your device
• When you are satisfied with the changes and after HA has completely rebooted, disconnect your device from power.
• Start mysgw
• Apply power to your device

@TheoL Not only did I put in delays, too, but I put in delays that were based upon the ID (which was stored in NVRAM)! This helped.

caveat: This is probably not accurate be helps to explain the challenges with a large network.

My initial experience with Arduino/nRF24 was using the libraries from TMRh20. Those libraries allowed a node to be a repeater, but only for 6 nodes. The primary node 0, master, only allowed 6 nodes to connect to it. The nodes connected to it also allowed 6 nodes. Subsequent nodes had to go through one of these repeating nodes. But the depth was only 4 deep. The master assigned node IDs if the node didn't already have one; similar to a MAC address.

The master also kept track of the addresses (ARP table?). Addresses were 4 octets (base in the form of D/C/B/A. A node connected directly to the master had an address of 0/0/0/a (where 0/0/0/0 was reserved for the master). A node connected through another node had an address of 0/0/b/a, and so forth.

But what happens is that a parent node has to mange the data from all its child nodes and their child nodes and their child nodes. Thus a node would get so bogged down dealing with this traffic that it din't do its sensor task very well.

It is my belief that MySensors either uses TMRh20's libraries or has developed some aspects based on his initial work. I see that that TMRh20 has a version 2 and I have not experimented with it. I did find that MySensors worked better than version 1.

Thus, my curiosity.

I am also duly impressed at the magnitude of hardware. Currently a nano like device from Aliexperss is US$2-3, nRF24 ~ US$1, power supply ~ US$1.50, power cord ?, case?, sensors!? While the hardware cost is daunting, even with a PCB it's a lot of work building those up. So, yeah, I'm impressed!

-OSD

I, too, am duly impressed that you have so many nodes! Please share more.

I run a "test" and "production" gateways, too. I have a compiler directive in the sensor software that allows me to easily switch from test to production.

At one time I was running about 10 Nano nodes and it appeared to me that they were colliding with one another, symptom being slow response times As I remember, that occurred mostly on power up after power loss. Often I'd get two nodes with the same ID. I have since put my ID in NVRAM and that helped.

So I am very interested seeing what you have done.

--OSD

Thanks for the offer @TheoL ! I have moved on to a differenct project. Also, a lesson that I have learned many times, "If it works, don't fix it!"

-OSD

You highlight a problem, @kiesel. Considering that each board is effectively US$2.50, it will cost about US$2 to send one and will take a week, if not two or three, to get to you. Not to mention the time spent on handling.

I am in the same situation as you, I just ended up wire wrapping and judicious use of double stick tape. Not beautiful, but it works.

Best of luck

OSD

@kiesel
The first thing I would try is to plug the Arduino into a serial port and see if there is output. This would have to be on a different port from the one the HA expects. You can use the Arduino IDE to view the out put. It probably will appear to be gibberish, as the BAUD rate must be right. And it will probably be gibberish anyway because it is probably binary. What you will know, though, is that your Arduino isn't bad.

You may have to reprogram your Arduino.

Good Luck

OSD

Do you do gizmos for open heart surgery, too? I love all the valves!

OSD

@HJ_SK said in 2x BME 280 on 2x arduino nano hangs in HomeAssistant:

BME280

I had a similar situation. First you have to delete all the MySensors devices in HA. This is aggravated by HA wanting the devices to be on line before you delete them. You may have to delete the MySensors data in the HA config directory. You may even have to uninstall MySensors from HA. Then shutdown HA. Next, turn off your gateway. Are you using MQTT for messaging? You'll have delete the MySensors data from there, too. (MQTT Explorer is good for doing this)

Then start HA. Did your MySensors devices come back as zombies? That's the problem. Try deleting them again. Are they data still in MQTT?

OK, now start again.

I had documented how to do all this deleting in HA Forum, HA/Discord and here, but I can't find that documentation now. grrrr

OSD