@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

@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

@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

@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 would be interested, too. I found just the sensor on Amazon and it looks like the meter is just timing the pulses per second. With a constant, one can determine the LPM You may be able to tap off of the sensor input, then through a resistor voltage divider make the output of the sensor compatible with your micro controller (Arduino). Using Processing on your computer you can capture the data from the Arduino.

Have fun!

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

@prawnpie This does not surprise me. I was losing data doing multiple sends in a row (node has multiple sensors). Putting a 500mS wait after each send() allowed the data to get through.

Also, 5mA for 1mS is not a significant draw on any battery (5mA * 1mS = 0.000002 mAh).

You could experiment with shorter wait times with

for (unsigned n = 1000;n>0;n--);

then keep lowering n until you find the threshold

And finally, assuming that the radio does have a flag to indicate that it is not ready to be put to sleep, it would be a real effort to put that into the libraries of all radios and the sleep command.

Waiting a milliSecond is actually the best solution and I am duly impressed you found it!

OSD

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 ;)

I am curious to know if my heat pump is actually saving energy. To know this, I would need an energy meter. So I designed and built one. You can see my projoect and I believe it is sufficiently documented for you to build your own. See Energy Meter

My nephew has done the same and is as curious as I. But he knows nothing of MySensors, and how to get the data presented in a reasonable way. I explained to him it is a small matter. This turns out to be not so. Beyond the aforementioned energy meter, it involves an Arduino MySensors Gateway (hardware and software), Home Assistant (software), Virtual Box (Software), and an i86 computer (hardware) which is running linux (software). Just writing that makes the project sound intimidating. It is not, if you break it down to its constituent parts.

The Arduino Serial Gateway (GatewaySerial) can be found as an example in the Arduino IDE, once the Arduino library is loaded. This probrammed Arduino will be connected to the target computer vie the same USB cable used to program the arduino. For my environment, I have some modifications. The wiring of the radio to the Arduino Nano is slightly different. CE is wired to D10 and CS is wired to D9. Also, I am using radio channel 86. These changes are reflected in the following three lines which are added after the line #define MY_RADIO_RF24

#define MY_RF24_CS_PIN 9    // for compatibility with RF-Nano
#define MY_RF24_CE_PIN 10   // for compatibility with RF-Nano
#define MY_RF24_CHANNEL 86  // 86 is the development channel 121 is the production channel

Acquiring an adequate computer for the task can be as simple ordering one from Amazon for around UD$85. Discarded laptops can be found for as little $10 sans battery and power supply. The only important requirement is more than 2GB RAM.

See information about SSH below

Installing Ubuntu on the computer is tedious but easily done. These instructions are for the server version of the operating system (OS). This version has no graphical user interface (GUI). You will need a monitor and a keyboard. If network manager is not installed (nmcli d doesn’t work) or nmcli d doesn’t indicate a wireless network, the internet port will have to be used. If there is only WiFi, a network client device, which connects to the internet port, will have to be used. Official instructions

Installing Virtual Box is also a tedious task. By this time you’re pretty used to using the command line.

Finally, installing Home Assistant will be the training session for working with Home Assistant.

Information about SSH
SSH is programs running on your usual desktop computer and the target computer. When you installed the operating system on the target computer, you entered a username and and password. Once the target computer is up and running, and you’ve found it’s IP address (ip address) you can “ssh” from your usual desktop with “ssh username@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (the IP address you just found) You will be prompted for the password.

This is just like being at the keyboard and monitor of your target computer. EXCEPT, you can now copy and paste from your usual desktop computer into the window of the target computer. That is, you don’t have to fret about typing in all those commands.

Challenge yourself! :) It's all do-able and you can do it!

OSD

The answer to your first question is, "Yes, you can do it!"

@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

light travels at about 30cm/nS. The Uno can capture +/- 1μS at best, so, at best, your accuracy will be +/- 30m.

In the nRF24 library I'm using, there timeouts, meaning that you will never know exactly how many μS a network.read() will take, adding multiples of 30m to the best case.

+/-2m is not possible using an Uno and any radio.

Try two GPS's, one on each module with each Nano and take the difference between the two. I'm pretty sure that would meet your spec. (Amazon) Yes, one GPS is rather inaccurate, but the inaccuracy is the same on two relatively close (google "differential GPS") That would be a cool project! And! you could log the track! You can find less expensive modules on AliExpress (caveat emptor and 20-90 days delivery)

One little project and you're hooked! You know you're going to want another sensor in the yard, so consider a gateway running MQTT (called a broker). Once you have that, it's really easy to add more sensors.

But if you're really strong willed an will only be using two devices ever, you might look at https://nrf24.github.io/RF24/index.html. You can get an Arduino Nano and an nRF24 radio for about $3.50 from Aliexpress (downside: delivery takes ~2 months, so get 10 each.)

MySensors Library can do this, too, but I find it a little bloated.

Personal note: I'm 70, retired engineer, and have only four projects going right now.

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

:)

OSD

@mfalkvidd @Bramz @electrik

When I saw 2.6.2 I was thinking the MySensors Library (2.3.2)! It never occurred to me it was the board manager.

So, yes! it works for me. :)

I just checked to see if Domoticz has an MQTT interface and it appears that it does. @Bramz, look into that. Once you have that, then it may be easy to connect other devices, like Tasmota devices, to Domoticz. MQTT requires an always-on computer connected to your network.

I have a headless (needs dummy monitor plug or 3x 75Ω resistors to boot), refurbished computer on which I run Linux OS, then both MQTT and Home Assistant running in Virtual Box.

Thanks everyone!

OSD