There is a collection of techniques that can reduce energy consumption of the Nano. (eg, remove power applied LED) I've read about µA's during sleep periods.

The ESP-12F clearly achieves this and can be a MySensors by adding a radio. Note that if WiFi is not disabled, savings are probably lost because the WiFi is energy hungry. This would have me leaning towards MySensors rather than ESPHome.

My experience tells me that the Nano is more durable than the ESP.

Another tip: If you're going to put your sensor in a harsh environment, after you have assembled it, "paint" it with electrical lacquer.

@mfalkvidd After giving this some thought, wouldn't that imply that at sufficiently low flow rates, the the meter would not detect any flow. A leaky faucet? While I'm pretty sure that my pump can't pump that slow, the pressure would drop, eventually triggering the pump to start. A leak could be detected by periods of pumping that are very short? An experiment could be run to see how much water must be released to trigger the pump to start. The time between pumpings could then be used to determine this flow rate.

And after reading this, I see I have to much time on my hands which could be used to address more pressing issues.

I have a gravity fed irrigation system and I'm measuring how much water I pump to the top of the hill, which is effectively how much water is used in irrigation. I also have a well and measure the water pumped from the well.

The former is a 3/4" pipe and the the pulses-per-liter calculation is a constant. The other is a 1" pipe which is a constant with an offset. Which doesn't make sense to me. I'm ignoring the offset which will probably result in an error in the exact amount of water I'm pumping. Not really a big deal.

More information showing the versatility of your journey

From my perspective, the choice between ESPHome and MySensors comes down to what kind of coder you are. If you are comfortable with python, you should go with ESPHome. If you're comfortable with compiled programs, like c++, go with MySensors with the Arduino IDE. The learning curve for one or the other depends on from which background you come.

ESP devices use WiFi to connect. I have found that typical home routers (my experience is with Asus) have a problems when you get to about 25 devices WiFi connected devices. The symptoms are devices have problems connecting or disconnect intermittently.

MySensors is not well supported in that there are only a few people that check in regularly. That said, the documentation is very good and answers can be found on this forum. In a sense, self supported. It provides a pretty rock-solid protocol/API. It is your hands-on, bit-banging, low-level code that you do to make your sensor/actuator go.

ESP devices have the ability to be updated OTA (over the air) and are supported in MySensors

I find that ESPHome blends the protocol/API with the actual function which can make it difficult to debug. Natively, it is lacking some capability. This lack can be covered with JSON and Jinja, which steepens the learning curve. But, again, a python background is helpful.

Tasmota is another way to go when using ESP devices in Home Assistant. It is a state-machine (which works well for simple devices). The protocol/API is rock-solid. It has templates for a lot of devices and it just works. After initially programmed, updates are OTA. I have even updated a Tasmota programmed device with Arduino IDE OTA code and vice-versa.

With HA as your controller, none of the technologies are mutually exclusive!

You have three ways to for the gateway to communicate to Home Assistant (HA), serial, ethernet, and MQTT.

It comes to this: A serial gateway will be in very close proximity to the HA Green. It is very simple to set up. ethernet or MQTT can be anywhere there is ethernet or WiFi, but not so simple to set up.

The latter two require ethernet connectivity hardware added. This makes the configuration much more complicated and, if going this way, I'd recommend the RPi zero 2W with your radio of choice running Raspberry Pi OS as your gateway. The gateway software runs in the OS (I run this set up).

The serial gateway is a wired connection to your HA Green and the HA Green would power it. The location of your HA Green/serial gateway probably take some experimentation.

The downside is the range of your radio. Fortunately, with repeater nodes or nodes that also act as repeaters, too, this isn't too bad. I find the range, line-of-sight, no obstructions about 10m. Or, 3m through 1 wall.

I am unfamiliar with Sensebender. Googling it I find one from Itead one from OpenHardware. I'm not finding much in the way of documentation. :(

I am familiar with the RF-Nano (Arduino Nano compatible with nRF24 built in) and would offer much the same capabilities as the Sensbender. The range on the RF-Nano is a bit less than that of the stand-alone nRF24.

The Nano is powered from the computer, though from what I can glean from the docs, the Sensebender would also require a serial-to-USB adapter (use 3V3 pin on adapter for power). This is amazingly simple hardware.

The Nano gateway can also have sensors. This is very cool for me because I run HA in a virtual box under Ubuntu on a refurb PC. The serial gateway is a Nano compatible and I use it to "push" buttons on a remote. I'm not using a radio at all. Essentially the Nano and MySensors gateway software gives me I/O ports for my pc.

Let us know how your project goes.

First, my sympathies and empathies. Remember, this, too, shall pass. Perhaps you will become a grandparent and get your revenge by spoiling the grandkids rotten.

Cool project! I use the same flow meter and have found it very reliable. I, too, think the idea of realtime feedback is much better than the shut-off valve which would also double the cost of the project.

And, if you do become a grandparent, you can offer to remove and install it in your offspring's abode. ;)

-OSD

nice! I'm happy that there is another radio to use

As we all know, the nRF24 works pretty well, but there is a lot of device-to-device variation. This would be a nice thing to have when debugging the network.

@juliefen will you be creating a github project with schematic, board layout, code, construction tips, theory of operation, calibration and operating manual, examples, etc.?

I had turned off debug on my MQTT gateway (RPi zero 2 w) and I had a similar experience. I didn't even consider the problem was on the radio.

I did this because messages weren't being received by the MQTT broker. Taking out DEBUG made it worse. subsequently, I put wait (not delay) statements after each send. It's all working well for me.

For those that don't know, delay is blocking, that is, nothing gets processed during the delay. wait, (a MySensors library function?) is non-blocking. That is, MySensors will continue to process outgoing and incoming messages while waiting.

I have learned the hard way, many times, "If it's not broken, don't fix it". MySensors fills a niche, very low power, very low cost, sensors (albeit, DIY). The range is about the same as Bluetooth. The data is usually a boolean or an integer.

So let us not say, abanddoned but at a development plateau. A mature technology that still has legs.

This is really not a MySensors topic!

Just by the way present you request indicates that you are way over your head. I have a degree in electrical engineering, the study of electrical energy generation, transmission, distribution, etc. and substation design would take me years of study to be competent.

Any discussion about electrical energy delivery start with safety. Fuses and breakers, basically, but these have to be able to break 1000's of amps ... not a trivial task. The trick is to bring down the circuit without damaging other equipment on the circuit. Just detecting a fault is a doctoral candidate dissertation.

Basic components: transformers, breakers, switches and a lot of instrumentation.

Voltage levels are pretty much already defined because the equipment available is already set for those levels. Transformer basic rating is KVA, input and output voltage. There's a lot more to it ... a lot more.

As far as books for beginners ... I can't imagine that there are any. There are probably books for people who have been in the industry for more than a few years.

I have no experience with Jeedom, but I was curious. See if the comments here help you. (Je ne lis pas bien le français, alors j'utilise Google Traduction.)

It's great when a project can be brought to life after 8 years!

Glad you clarified the scope of your project. Small scale solar projects are much easier. One of my projects is a "battery powered soil moisture sensor, battery recharged by a solar panel" I use a tp4056 board to charge the battery from a 1W solar panel My Arduino Nano wakes up every hour to sample the moisture report the current moisture level. Corrosion is problematic.

My house battery project is really outside the scope of MySensors, I'll send that in a chat

I am curious about your project. What is it that you're doing?

After several years of procrastinating, I realized that I wasn't going to build my own battery storage.

I ended up having an Enphase battery installed. Enphase, because they had a combiner (solar, battery, grid, and generator) that made sense and a "collar" (a switch that goes between the meter and panel). They system can go off-grid easily.

The downside is that I have to go through the Enphase servers to get my data.

I just couldn't get into ESPHome. It seems like a good idea. IMHO, though, MySensors and/or Tasmota pretty much covers everything I do.

I have a solution for you. I call it the Wireless Serial Cable

It is a ESP device (eg. ESP-12F) flashed with the SBBridge version of Tasmota. Connected to it serially is an Arduino nano that is programmed as a serial bridge. The MySensors Home Assistant integration handles the other end.

All for about US$10.

Let me know if this works for you. I hope it does.

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

The Serial Gateway on an Arduino is probably the easiest gateway to employ. The problem is that it has to be connected to the computer that is hosting the controller. In my case, the host computer is in a place that blocks radio signals. The communication will be degraded with a long cable.

Using an ESP8266 gateway is an obvious choice when the radio (eg nRF24) needs to be in a different location. Wire the radio to the ESP board. If your using and ESP-12(E/F) you'll have some more wiring as described the the document Installing Gateway Software

I find that using C++ programs for the ESP devices can get pretty convoluted. I prefer to use Tasmota for ESP devices. The Tasmota firmware can be updated Over the Air (OtA). Yes, you can add OTA to C++ programs, but my experience is that the mDNS is finicky. With Tasmota, configuration is done through the device's web page. And coding is much more simple; for this example, the configuration takes two lines.

The downside of the ESP-12F is that 5V always causes magic smoke to escape. Arduinos are much more tolerant and have more ADC ports.

Thus I ventured into creating a Wireless Serial Cable. I use Home Assistant to which I will be referring as HA. This will probably work with other controllers. I had a lot of help from the HA forum and detail the how to create the Wireless Serial Cable there.

Here I would like to share the Wireless Serial Gateway.

If you're using an ESP-12F, you'll need 3.3V power supply. The Arduino Nano needs a 5V supply, not the USB connector because the USB serial will conflict with the serial going to the ESP device

The ESP device has Tasmota ZBBridge installed (ZBBridge32 for ESP32)
configuration is:
Set module to Generic
Set GPIO15 to TCP TX and GPIO 13 to TCP RX (17 and16 for ESP32
From the ESP device command line

Rule1  on system#boot do tcpstart 8888 end on
rule1 on

then restart with

restart1 1

On the HA side install the TCP gateway (not the serial gateway)
using the IP address of the ESP device and the port as 8888

The Arduino may need to be reset to send over the initial gateway information.

@Eliza-Collins Thank you for a more knowledgeable explanation! When I wrote:

said in Imitating a LoRaWAN(R) with ESP8266/ESP32 and MySensors:

with a number of compromises

You filled in some of my nebulus's with:

@Eliza-Collins said in Imitating a LoRaWAN(R) with ESP8266/ESP32 and MySensors:

ADR, security, scalability, and multi-gateway roaming are among the issues that LoRaWAN resolves.

Thanks for pointing these out