I discovered the source!

When I execute

crontab -e

I am editing the user cron table.

sudo crontab -e

edits the root cron table. That was where the restart at midnight was.

When I was accessing the gateway (via ssh) I was user. I am running headless, which is running as root and a user instance only runs when I ssh into it, which means that editing the user cron table does not do anything (unless a user instance is running).

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

Hi there.

I've been using MySensors for many years now. Before I discovered MySensors I was using Arduinos and the nNF24 radio using TMRh20's library.

I think MySensors is still relevant. It serves as a simple gateway for very low level sensors and actuators. For example, I have a water lift system that takes water from a seep and pumps it up 9 meters to blue barrels. The logic to do it is simple, but communication between the various levels makes running wire not practical nor reliable in an active garden, particularly one on a hillside. Yes, power is needed, but only in a few places.

So a few relays to turn on pumps and twice as many float sensors to know when the barrels are full and empty. "Start the pump when it is full and the next level is not full. Stop the pump when empty or the next level is full" The MySensors environment is ideal for this.

ESP devices have the WiFi radio. Two downsides, the ESP devices are not as robust as Arduinos (I have a lot of dead ESP devices and very few Arduinos) and too many overwhelm the WiFi network.

Zigbee, I can't make it work reliably and like Z-Wave, it doesn't have the flexibility. Insteon falls in this category, too.

And the radio range is about the same for all systems.

Cost for Arduino or ESP is negligible compared to others.

But, again, figure out how to get the sensor data and drop into MySensors.

So help me out here, be a MySensors advocate. When appropriate, I link to MySensors in the Home Assistant forum.

-OSD

@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

My guess is that the the leakage power captured can only supply that amount of current (at the specified voltage)

@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" ;)

@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

@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

I think it's pretty cool. I can hear my spousal unit asking, "What are you doing with all that data?" ;)

-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.

@Homer I suspect the lack of interest is because there isn't much in the way of support anymore. Worse yet, I just (12h56PDT, 8 Aug 25) tried to go to the home page and it was not available. @mfalkvidd is very knowledgeable and, like me, shows up from time to time.

I think MySensors is the best "frugal tech". You can build a plethora of sensors for under USD$5 (plus housing).

I like tasmotized ESP8266, too, but that uses WiFi. These are automatically configured by Home Assistant (with the Tasmota integration). Most home routers max out on WiFi connections at 20-25, though. ESP devices can be programmed with c++ using the Arduino IDE. When configured, they can be OTA (Over-The-Air) reprogrammable.

I am under the impression that an ESP device can be a gateway. This would require the device to have a radio (nRF24?) so that MySensors sensors can connect through it.

But, the process to configure the gateway is on the homepage of MySensors. I hope it comes back :o

I tend to agree with @sindrome73 in that MySensors is pretty awesome as it is. Recently in the Home Assistant forum there was a discussion on adding an Arduino to an ESP device to get more I/O. Convoluted, arcane scripts were presented for various classes of sensors. I noted that once the MySensors environment is set up, adding a new sensor is very simple: read sensor, send data

But there are new and more capable devices than the Arduino and nRF24 radio. Development should be seriously considered into incorporating more of these devices.

Also, I see a trend that people new to DiY/IoT expect everything to work out-of-the-box. The corporate interests have seized upon this trend, offering devices that are easy to connect but have the ulterior motive of collecting data on the consumer, which is way more profitable than just selling the product.

It really comes down to us, the grass roots people, to support any and all comers to MySensors. Personally, I am not an expert, and not being one, I try to research challenges and present possible solutions from that research. I learn a lot doing thins. The more people we have coming here, the better it will be. Maybe we can pique the interest of some very clever, inspired innovator to join us.

Like Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

-OSD

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

@mfalkvidd

Thanks, I didn't see that!

OSD

@ben999

Check out Serial Protocol

I have four Arduinos. Each has a different MY_NODE_IDs (I use 130, 131, 132, 133). Each has four sensors: moisture, humidity, temperature, and voltage each of which has a CHILD_ID: CHILD_ID_MOISTURE is 0 , CHILD_ID_HUMIDITY is 1, CHILD_ID_TEMPERATURE is 2, CHILD_ID_VOLTAGE is 3.

When an Arduino makes a measurement, it sends that measurement to a unique MQTT topic. In the case of the Arduino with MY_NODE_ID of 130 that is sending the moisture measurement, that MQTT topic is mysensors_out/130/0/1/0/35 and the message is [something like] 760 (35 is the value type)

Similarly, when a controller sends a command to a device (Arduino), the topic is unique.

If you have two actuators with the same MY_NODE_ID and CHILD_ID (MQTT topic) there would be confusion as to what you want each actuator to do. Likewise, if two sensors had the same MQTT topic, how would the controller know how to handle the data.

I, too, am a "gray hair" (if I had hair). I despise cloud dependent devices. The reasons are many. ISPs, despite what they say, are not reliable. ISPs are so close to be monopolies, that they act like them. Your ISP can, and will, prevent access to the cloud if they have a competing product.

The manufacturers of cloud dependent devices, sell your information and statistics on how you use the devices. This is how they make money. When one of these manufacturers goes out of business, the company that buys up the IP continues to sell that information and ceases the little support that one did get.

I might be getting a little paranoid here, but I'm pretty sure there is unrelated-to-function software (spyware) incorporated into many products. (In the late 90's, the company for which I worked resisted the temptation to do so, despite heavy pressure from marketing.) I call it "ET phone home" Maybe the software is innocuous enough, but it can be hijacked by bad actors.

There is another problem plaguing home automation and that is poorly designed and poorly documented (which leads to pathetically supported) hardware and software. More so the latter. FAQs and forums are afterthoughts of the slothful, but now it's all we have.

I agree with ProfRob and I would add "better documentation".

As a note, when I pull on my pants, I sit on my bed, start my pants onto my feet, roll back and pull both legs up at once ;)

@Oumuamua When you set

--my-controller-ip-address=127.0.0.1

you are saying your MQTT broker is on the same machine as your gateway. If, on your RPi you installed your broker with (what I do)

sudo apt install mosquitto

you will have to add the lines to /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf

allow_anonymous true
listener 1883 0.0.0.0

After that, reboot.

Alas, this may not fix your problem. I see you're looping on connecting/connected/sent. I make the assumption that the debug message aren't quite accurate because ... well ... sometimes they aren't.

Let us know if this works :)

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