I would use the pin change interrupts. If you search you can find a neat hack for making PCINT work to wake up the micro from MySensors sleep loop. That gives you many interrupts to use.

I'm in the 2.0 code. I'll have to play around some more and do some tests over the next few weeks. I like using the intermediary modules to generate a binary alert vs doing the analog reads. Seems faster to calibrate based on the moisture levels I need for different plants. However, the battery drain of those modules is crazy. I'll do some current measements aND report back. If the consumption is too high for the pro mini digital out, I reckon I can use a mosfet to control power to the modules and power it on and wait a little before getting my reads. I think that will be the fastest solution and least path of resistance (no pun intended) :)

I actually do not have anything in the interface for setting the mode. I just use a simple lua command: luup.call_action("urn:upnp-arduino-cc:serviceId:arduino1", "SendCommand", {radioId="11;3", variableId="VAR_1", value=1}, 24)

understood. i just happened to already have these as 'extras', so i figured i'd build a node and give it a whirl. I'll definitely do some more research on @ceech his postings. thx for the insight

So it appears that the saga has been solved. The problem in fact WAS with the FTDI adapter. In all of the testing that I did I am guessing that the FTDI's receive data was working, but the transmit data was the issue. I put my spare FTDI on and Vera was detecting devices left and right. I think I am going to have to redo the inclusion because it said that there were 5 devices found, but nothing was added to Vera, but like I say, the devices did not appear to be presenting at the time. I want to say though that I appreciate all the time that people spent trying to help me get this going. This forum is a GREAT crowd of people.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your idea but if you want a node to receive messages while sleeping... no that is not possible. To receive anything the node has to be powered up. I guess the only idea would be to regularly wake up and wait for messages (which the other side could only send in these timeframes).

@rchamp I'm not familiar with how the Vera works. The gateway doesn't assign node ids, it's the controller that has to do that. I don't know if Vera supports that or not. Someone more versed in Vera should answer this.

Always hard to say - but seeing issues with relay quite often my advice is to look over the power/ground and radio. The radio is very power sensitive and it can help adding/changing caps GND/VCC on the radio. How you wire the ground from the relay can also make a difference. I have had relays jamming when i ran ground trough the arduino and not straight to source. Also the opposite that it didnt work well if I didnt have ground through the arduino. Range, when you send a on-command there is a ack going back which needs to be ok. Follow your serial logs in node and gateway to find out if the radio traffic is ok - or put a repeater in between. Power - I have had Arduinos (mostly Pro Mini) that was a little to weak to trigger the relay... :( It needs 5v but my pin 5 was only giving 4.7V and some tries resulted in a unsuccessful relay switch even if the logs told me so. To test this you can upload a sketch doing nothing else but setting the pin to high and low with a delay in between.