Posts made by rafael.brasilia

@hek I am seeing a lot of st=fail on my nodes. I have added a 4.7uF capacitor between ground and VCC but that did not help. What should I try next? a bigger capacitor? I am using an iphone wall charger as power source.

Thanks!

YES!!! That was it! I got both relays powered from the external power supply now and everything seems to be working fine.
Thank you all very much!

@Nuubi
This is how I have my connections:

Is there anything wrong with it?
Thanks!

Thanks for the heads up. But I tried 9v and 12v and no luck! They only click when powered directly from the Arduino and they stop working after a few hours.

@ServiceXp
What kind of power supply do you use to power the relays? I've tried several different options (iPhone charger, iPad charger, and various other 5v power supplies) but no luck. The LEDs on the relay turn on, but it doesn't click. Would you have a picture of one of your relays so I can see your setup?

I also tried following the advice from @BulldogLowell and powered the relays from the VIN pin instead of the Arduino 5v output, but I had the same problem. The relay worked for a few hours, then stopped working.

FYI: I am using a relay with optocoupler just like the one posted in the link above. Maybe I just got a batch of bad Arduinos from China?

Thanks!

So my problem is definitely that the Arduino is not strong enough to power the relays. When the relays are not powered by the Arduino, my sensor communicates with the gateway just fine. It's been on for more than 24 hours now and still communicating fine.

I found this somewhere else, and I think it's exactly what was happening:
"if you draw too much power from the +5V, the thermal protection circuit on the voltage regulator will trip and the whole Arduino will shut down"

So I just need to find a way to power the relays from an external power source. Has anyone done that?
I've tried several different power sources, and with all of them the relay LEDs turn on but it won't click when turn it on/off. I even tried powering the relay from another Arduino just to make sure the voltage was right, but still no luck.

Thanks!

@sundberg84
Mine says SRD-05VDC-SL-C on top. Im pretty sure this is a 5v because it works fine when powered from the Arduino 5v output. I just wanted to connect it to an external power source because I have two relays connected to my Arduino now and that might bee too much for it to handle.

@BulldogLowell

I tried the ipad charger and still no luck. I also tried another power supply with output 2.5A @5V and it didnt work. Now I'm just curious, if I need a bigger power supply to power the relay, how come the Arduino is able to power it from it's 5V output?

Thanks for the help!

@hek said:

Also try feeding the realys directly from the 5V input from the charger.

I tried doing that, but when I feed the relay with the external 5v supply they wont work. The power light turns on and looks good, but when I click on/off in the UI the relay wont switch. Do I need to do anything special to power the relays directly from the charger?

Thanks!

@BulldogLowell
That is a good idea. But if I do so, can I choose which relay I want to turn on/off from the UI? The water pressure here is not very strong, so I need to turn on only one irrigation channel at a time. But I will give that a try anyways!

Thanks!

So I have two relay sensors that I use to control my sprinklers.

They sit in my garage on the wall right by each other as displayed in the picture. When I restart the sensors they work just fine for about 20 minutes, and then for some reason they stop communicating with the gateway and I cant control them from the Vera UI anymore. I click the ON/OFF buttons and nothing happens.

Has anyone had this problem before? I wonder if the fact that they are sitting right by each other has anything to do with it. Maybe the radio receivers are interfering with each other?

I am using Arduino nano and MySensors Library 1.4. Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

@Paul-Augusto

Thank you for the reply! My Relay does not have the labels you mentioned above, that's why I was confused. But I figured out that if I connect the Hot wire in the middle pin it will switch between the other 2, so that was helpful and is exactly what I needed I guess.

You are correct about not being able to tell the state of the light, I didn't think about this. Maybe if I connect a light sensor to my Arduino I could send back the state to Vera based on what the sensor tells me instead of the state of the relay? I'm just not sure if this would work during the day when the windows are open, the sensor might think the lights are on if there is enough sun light in the room.

Anyways, thanks for the help. I'll keep playing with this and see what I can come up with.

@daulagari

This is what I want. One of the switches bellow is a regular light switch, and the other one would be a relay controlled by my Vera.

So, filling out your truth table:

Manual switch On, Control On ==> Lamp ON
Manual switch On, Control Off ==> Lamp OFF
Manual switch Off, Control On ==> Lamp OFF
Manual switch Off, Control Off ==> Lamp ON

Notice that no matter what the combination is, once you flip one of them, the lights will change the state.

I understand the concept, just don't know how to wire the Relay in this situation.

Thanks!

I would like to use a Relay Switch to turn some lights on and off, but I would like to install them in such a way that the existing light switches would still work to turn the lights on and off manually. I wanted to integrate the Relay as a "3 Way Switch" using a traveler wire, so I can turn the lights manually and turn it off with the relay and vice versa, but wasn't sure if the Relay can do that.

Has anybody here tried something like this? If so how did you integrate the Relay into your system?

I usually only use 2 of the 3 pins available in the relay, and I was wondering what the third pin is for. Is the third one where I would connect the traveler wire?

Thanks!

If you go to Github and download the zip with all the files, you dont need to copy and paste the code and save with the correct extension.
you can use this link to download the zip:

https://github.com/mysensors/Arduino

Have you looked in the debugger to see if your Gateway initialization is successful? I also had problems getting my Vera to recognize my Gateway, and that was because the Arduino I was using was one of those clones from china. When I bought a Genuine Gravitech Nano, it worked right away.

@CaptainZap

I also had problems to get my Vera to recognize these Chinese clones. I ended up buying a genuine Gravitec Arduino Nano to use as a gateway and everything works fine now. The clones work just fine for the sensors though, just not for the Gateway.

I have been using the Vera Mobile UI7 on my iPhone to control my Veralite, but I've been having problems making it work with my Foscam cameras, and also with the Servo Sensor to control my blinds.

I'been thinking about using a different App and was wondering what you guys use out there. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

@ServiceXp

Yeah it was really expensive. But I had tried with 3 different types of clones and none of them worked. You were lucky!

@ServiceXp

Yeah it was really expensive. But I had tried with 3 different types of clones and none of them worked. You were lucky!

PROBLEM SOLVED

So after trying a thousand different things I decided to bite the bulled and bought a Genuine Gravitec Arduino Nano, loaded the Serial Gateway Sketch into it and BOOM! Worked on the first try. My Vera recognized it as soon as I plugged it in.

For all you guys having problems with Serial Gateway I recommend buying a Gravitec Nano to use as a Gateway. The clones work just fine for the sensors, but not for the Gateway.

This is the one I bought:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400306780486?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2648

@soward
I doubled checked all the wires and they look good. If I move them and connect in any other way I get a "Check Wires" error in the debugger when trying to initialize the Gateway.

The way I have it wired right now It initializes fine and I can see the gateway talking with my sensors.

The only thing is, if I connect both the Radio and the Ethernet card to the 3.3V pin in the Arduino directly, I get the "Check Wires" error. It seems like the Arduino doesnt have enough power for both cards, so I have the VCC and Ground pins on my Ethernet card connected to a different 3.3V power source and I was wondering if that maybe could be the problem.

How is your Gateway wired? Do you have both the Radio and the Ethernet cards connected directly?

Thanks for the Help!

@Micke

Yes I did test my Nano with the blink upload and worked fine. I uploaded all the files to Vera with no problem and also uploaded the sketch into my Nano successfully.

I can even see my Gateway communicating with one of my sensors in the debugger, So I think everything is fine.
The only problem is when I connect my Gateway to my Vera and go to Serial Port Configuration, there is nothing there. I tried reloding the Luup Engine several times and restarting my Vera, but still no luck.

Thanks

@Micke What did you do to make you Serial gateway show up in Vera? I have tried everything you can imagine but my Vera wont recognize it.

@soward

So I changed my code as you recommended, and re-uploaded the sketch. Everything looks fine, I can even see my gateway communicating with one of my sensors in the debugger, but my gateway wont communicate with my Vera.

I set the IP Address in the settings for my device in Vera to be the same as in the sketch (192.168.178.66:5003), but when i hit Start it says:

"Cannot Send Command. Communication Error."

When I connect my gateway to my router nothing happens. No lights blinking or anything.
Anything else Im missing?

Thanks!

This is what my uipethernet-conf.h looks like. I commented the UDP section out. Is that correct?

#ifndef UIPETHERNET_CONF_H
#define UIPETHERNET_CONF_H

/* for TCP */
#define UIP_SOCKET_NUMPACKETS 5
#define UIP_CONF_MAX_CONNECTIONS 4

/* for UDP */
//#define UIP_CONF_UDP 1
//#define UIP_CONF_BROADCAST 1
//#define UIP_CONF_UDP_CONNS 4

/* number of attempts on write before returning number of bytes sent so far

• set to -1 to block until connection is closed by timeout */
  #define UIP_ATTEMPTS_ON_WRITE -1

/* timeout after which UIPClient::connect gives up. The timeout is specified in seconds.

• if set to a number <= 0 connect will timeout when uIP does (which might be longer than you expect...) */
  #define UIP_CONNECT_TIMEOUT -1

#endif

@gregl

I assigned the static IP in the sketch. But in my router I need to set up a DHCP reservation to always provide that specific IP to my gateway right?

@Anticimex

HA! I just came here to post what I had found and saw your post. My problem was also the power supply! I connected my Ethernet board to a different 3.3v power supply and BAM! Worked on the first try. Apparently the Arduino doesnt have enough juice to power both the Radio and Ethernet cards.

Now I see Gateway Startup Complete on my debugger, but when I connect the Ethernet cable to my router nothing happens. I have set up the following DHCP Reservation on my router: 192.168.10.20 - DE:AD:BE:EF:FE:ED

Is this the correct MAC Address I should be using? I have already set the IP on my sketch to match the one above.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Thanks!

@hek
Yeah I did noticed that and wired the Radio and Ethernet card according to that table.

@blacey
Thanks for the tip. I did try following the steps you recommended several times and still no luck! Im starting to think my Vera might have a bad USB.

I had the same problem and solved it by replacing the contents of your UIPEthernet library folder with this:
https://github.com/ntruchsess/arduino_uip

So after 3 weeks trying to get my Veralite to recognize my Serial Gateway with no success, I decided to try the Ethernet Gateway.

I bought an ENC28J60 Ethernet adapter, and connected everything as described in the instructions. The Sketch compiles fine and uploads to the arduino, but when I look at the debugger I see this message: 0;0;3;0;9;check wires

I have checked the wires about a thousand times, and have tried different Arduinos and several different RF adapters. At this point I can say I'm sure the cables are plugged in correctly (when I said I checked the wires a thousand times I really meant it).

Is there anything else that I might be doing wrong that would cause this error message?

Any help is appreciated. I really want to get my sensors working with my Vera.

Thanks!

@hek
So I downloaded the latest mySensors library from Github, reloaded the SerialGateway sketch and redid all my wiring to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
But now I keep getting a "Version Mismatch" error in the debugger. I noticed the code was updated 3 days ago and I was wondering if some GIT tag or commit Id got messed up in this latest update. I have also updated the Vera plugin.

By the way, I'm new to the forum and have learned a ton in the last few days reading all of your posts.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and helping so many people!
We appreciate it!

How do you control the RF Receiver connected to your Arduino? Do you use the Veralite Z-Wave controller? I am working on a project like yours but am having a hard time getting the Gateway connected to my Veralite.

I've mounted a little Fubata servo motor to my blinds and it works just fine. I drive it directly from my Arduino so no need to an external power supply. I have a button that opens and closes it. Now Im looking forward to connecting a RF Receiver on my Arduino so I can control it from my Veralite.
I like the servo motor better because it's smaller, cheaper and you can tell it exactly how many degrees it should turn (0 - 180).

I tried the hub but that didnt work either. Actually the Lua Startup Failure Im seeing on my vera has nothing to do with arduino itself right? I downloaded the latest version of the plugin and reinstalled it but it stills fails to start. I dont know what else to try.

@hek I am using a nano and have restarted my Vera a few times and still no luck. The nano Im using is a clone, maybe that could be the problem?

Hi,

I am trying to get my Veralite working with Arduino and nrf24l01+ Rf Transceiver but it doesnt work for some reason.

I have uploaded all the plugin files on my Veralite and added a new device, but my device shows an error mesage saying "Lua Startup Failure". When I click on start it gives me another error message saying "Device Not Ready".

I have my arduino connected to the RF receiver and have uploaded the SerialGateway sketch to it.

On top of my screen it says : "MySensors plugin : Choose the Serial Port", but when I go to choose the serial port my device doesnt appear there. I have reloded several times and reconnected my arduino to my Veralite via usb but no luck.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!!