Posts made by sola

I have built 2 nodes with E01-ML01S (the cheapest module) and I have pretty good experience with them so far.

I didn't have to use any capacitors to improve range, they are directly connected to some medium-quality Arduino Nano GND/3.3V.

One of them is a lighting controller node, ~3 meters from the PA/LNA gateway (+ a 30cm wall) on the same level as the gateway.

The other one is a repeter node and is ~10 meters from the gateway (+ a 20cm wall, same level as the gateway). In this case, radio orientation was important to get a good signal.

One of the test modules could communicate with the gateway through 2 walls and a the ceiling (steel-bar reinforced).

All-in-all, I am satisfied with the signal stability of these modules.

It is a bit finicky to solder the wires to the module because the pads are very small.

I always put some solder on the pads first and reheat when I attach the wires.

@mmessiter Great stuff, congrats for the system.

@korttoma Did you give power to the antenna side of the RXB6?

What is the distance between your receiver and the senders?

I have ordered a set of E01-ML01S and intend to test them against my gateway.

@orhanyor: I would definitely expect the E01-ML01S to do better than a couple of meters. That is the range of the shittiest noname nrf24 clones (when they work at all).

@Nca78 I am planning to use a couple of repeater nodes to connect far-placed nodes to the gateway (on 250kbps).
Do you think nrf24 is bad for this?

@monte
Thanks, good to know.
I am considering the E01-ML01SP2 (the little brother) as a workhorse since it is relatively cheap, has both PCB and external antenna and can do 100mW. I would mostly try to use it without the external antenna and would populate the IPEX only in problematic cases.

Hi All,

Being hit by various problems with noname nRF24 radio modules, I have decided that I try to find a more trustworthy source for my radios.

Ebyte (cdebyte) seems to:

• produce relatively affordable modules
• uses original Nordic chips
• has official store on Ebay and Aliexpress
• has a proper English website with product pages, specs and manuals
• Mysensors forums also seems to be positive around their products (from the limited number of forum entries found around their nrf24 products)

However, they have a fair amount of module types and I am unsure which one can be used for what roles in a Mysensors project (so I speculate here and I await your opinion and experience).

Range at 250 kbps data rate, prices from the official ebay/aliexpress store:

E01-ML01S
0.1 km range, PCB antenna, 0dBm, 1 mW power, non-shielded
through hole/SMD
$3.89 / 1pcs
$1.08 / 10pcs
role: node with short distance to gateway/repeater

E01-ML01D (red)
0.1 km range, PCB antenna, 0dBm, 1 mW power, non-shielded
soldered pins/DIP
$3.31
role: node with short distance to gateway/repeater

E01-ML01IPX
0.2 km range, IPEX antenna connector, 0dBm, 1 mW power, non-shielded
through hole/SMD
$3.89
role: node with short distance to gateway/repeater
notes: can have external antenna but still, 0dBm

E01-ML01DP4
1.8 km range, PCB antenna, 20dBm, 100 mW power, non-shielded
soldered pins/DIP
$3.69
role: node with long(er) distance to gateway/repeater

E01-2G4M13S
0.8 km range
PCB antenna, 13dBm, 20mW max power, advertised as PA+LNA, shielded
through-hole/SMD
$4.50
role: node with long distance to gateway/repeater

E01-ML01SP2
1.8 km range
both PCB antenna and IPEX antenna connector, 20dBm, 100mW max power, PA+LNA, non-shielded
through-hole/SMD
$3.9 / 1pcs
$1.97 / 10pcs
role: node with long(er) distance to gateway/repeater
role: gateway/repeater

E01-ML01SP4
2 km range
IPEX antenna connector, 20dBm, 100mW max power, shielded
through-hole/SMD
$3.89 / 1pcs
$1.97 / 10pcs
role: gateway/repeater
role: node with long distance to gateway/repeater

E01-ML01DP5
2.5 km range
SMA-k antenna connector, 20 dBm, 100mW max power, shielded
soldered pins/DIP
$3.89
role: gateway/repeater
role: node with long distance to gateway/repeater

E01-2G4M27D
5 km range
SMA-k antenna connector, 27 dBm, 500mW max power shielded
soldered pins/DIP
$5.89
role: gateway/repeater
role: node with long distance to gateway/repeater

If you have any experience with the above modules in any role in your network, please let me/us know.

UPDATE 2021-JUL-04:
It seems that experiences are very positive with these modules in the community.
The MySensors store now also lists two of these modules as the recommended radios.

@tomwor2
Hit Tomwor

I haven't got anywhere with this projec yet.

According to the local distributor, it is almost sure that this old model has no Modbus support (newer models do).

So signal analisis is the only way to go forward.

I have got my hands on a USB signal analyzer by now but lacking the free time to do anything with it.

@user2684
Thanks for your answer.

I will check out other boards and experiment with disabling debug.

What is the smallest / weakest Arduino model recommended for NodeManager?

I am using Arduino Nano V3-s but I get code-size errors at sketch uploading after activating 3 sensor types (Relay, Light-LDR and Dallas Temp) + some features (Debugging, Configuration, Receive, Conditional Report) with NodeManager 1.7.

Are Arduino Nano and Pro Mini recommended/supported by NodeManager?

In addition to the others, I would like to activate Eeprom, Ota_Configuration and Hooking features.

@gohan
Thanks, I am thinking of buying a logic analyzer even if not needed for this particular task.

@dbemowsk
Thanks, I will investigate the protocol further. Based on Thucar's comment it seems that it actually has an integration protocol only the Hungarian distributor was not aware of it.

@thucar
Thanks, this is very promising.
I will look into the OpenHAB modbus integration and the Villavent docs you linked.

Hi Everyone,

I would like to integrate a SystemAir Villavent VM 400 EV house ventilation unit into my OpenHAB / MySensors based home automation system (to intelligently control the strength of the air-flow for the rooms based on air-quality sensor data).

This model has no integration to any automation system (according to the local distributor) but has a wired remote control panel so I assume it is possible to decipher the commands sent on the wire between the control panel and the ventilation unit (looks like simple telephone cable).

How can I read / debug the commands ?

How can I build an Arduino + sketch to also send a command on the cable ?

Any help / pointers is appreciated !
Andras

@rozpruwacz

Actually, I considered that as the fallback solution but I do not want to increase complexity if there is a robust, simple solution.

I have managed to upload with a home made programmer (my Uno as an AVR ISP) and test the behaviour without the bootloader.

It seems to be very fast now even in the setup(), so I think this solves the problem for me perfectly. I guess it is now below 500ms, maybe even less.

Many thanks for the help.

@mfalkvidd
Thanks for the help.

If I use a programmer (like USBtinyISP) and thus remove the bootloader: How fast will it get? Will it completely eliminate the current boot time.

It seems that the part of the Mysensors radio init which is happening before the before() method is very fast since I have also tried the Nano with a plain Arduino sketch and it is still ~2s before it starts executing.

Hi fellow MySensorists,

I have put together an LED dimming prototype board using the instructions on the relevant Build page and the NodeManager documentation.

Everything seems to be working but I have trouble implementing one crucial feature which is important for my application.

My dimming application is a retrofit for a ceiling LED fixture which has no built-in dimming capability. My plan is to simply add my Mysensors based dimming board between the fixture's built-in 12V power-supply and the LED strips installed in the fixture. Thus, my Arduino would get the power from the fixture's power supply, same as the LED strips.

In this setup, my Arduino powers up every time when the light gets switched on and powers down when the light gets switched off.

I would like to switch the LEDs ON as soon as possible when the user flips the light-switch ON to have a good user experience. A long delay between flipping the switch and getting light is annoying (I also have some LED fixtures with slow PSUs and I hate them).

Currently, I try to restore the brightness in the before() method but this still results in a 2s delay between getting power and the LEDs start emitting in the fixture. This is probably because long bootup time of the Arduino and the initialization of the radio.

How could I get this delay down? (Ideally below 300-500ms)

Is there a method which runs immediately after the Arduino powerup (before any kind of MySensors activity around the radio)?

If the Arduino boot sequence is the main culprit for the slowness, how can I make it faster?

Any insight is appreciated,
Andras

@Igor-Antolić @mfalkvidd

Great answers, thank you both.

Hi All,

The LED dimmer solution listed in the Build section has very little information and I am not very knowledgeable about LED dimming. So, here I ask:

LED Flickering
Is this solution flicker free? What is the PWM frequency? (I don't see any pwm reference in the sketch)
I have read it that lower PWM frequencies are disturbing for people and can have adverse health effect.

LED Lifetime
Do this dimming solution reduce the expected lifetime of the LEDs?

Power consumption
The primary target of my LED dimming project is a fixture which we inadvertently, massively oversized (5000lm) so I would like to run it at 50% brightness, most of the time. (We liked the fixture itself and it looked much dimmer in the store).
At full brightness (as it is without dimming) the fixture is rated for 50W power input. Will the dimming solution lower the power consumption to near ~25W if we run them at 50%? Where will the dimming circuit have a lot of losses (if any)? The Arduino consumes next to nothing. Will the MOSFET consume a lot?

Input power
The drawing notes says this for the power source "12VDC 6-9A input". The 12V converter in my fixture is only capable of ~5A. Is this difference important? I suppose this was written there for the recommended LED strip which consumes more than the LEDs in my fixture.

MOSFET cooling
The description mentions that cooling is needed for the MOSFET but there is nothing relevant in the shopping list.
Would this cooler be suitable?

Any insight is appreciated!
Andras

@reinhold said in Air Quality: CO2 Sensor MH-Z14:

orted the MH-Z19 code (the serial interface, by default connected to digital pins 6 and 7) to NodeManager for use in my own little gas detection node (MH-Z19 and four MQ-... sensors). The MH-Z19 code is included in the 1.6 release of NodeManager, so if you are using NodeManager for your nodes, the MH-Z19 sensor should be really easy t

Many thanks, I will check out NodeManager, looks like some really cool stuff.

@Daniel-Linder Hi Daniel,

I would be quite interested in your Mh-z19 and DHT22 sensor node, I am building a similar one.

Please post the build if you still have it.

Many thanks.

I have built a Dallas Temperature sensor around a Pro Mini 8Mhz.

I am powering it with two li-ion 18650 cells connected in series (~8.4V maximum voltage when fully charged, 5.4V minimum voltage before cutoff) and powering the Pro Mini via the RAW port.

I would like to send the current battery voltage info to the controller. I connected the wiring according to the "Battery Powering" page (1Mohm + 470kohm resistors, the resistor join point also connected to A0). The +V is the RAW port of the arduino (where the battery + is connected)

The sketch works but seems to report wrong voltages.

When there is no actual voltage (battery disconnected and arduino powered by the serial programmer), it reports 0.17V.
When the battery is connected, it should report ~8V (SOC on the li-ion pack) but it reports 3.44V.

Maybe the example sketch was specifically created for two AA batteries in series?

My node sketch:

// Enable debug prints to serial monitor
#define MY_DEBUG 

#define MY_NODE_ID 78

// Enable and select radio type attached
#define MY_RADIO_NRF24
//#define MY_RADIO_RFM69

#include <SPI.h>
#include <MySensors.h>  
#include <DallasTemperature.h>
#include <OneWire.h>

// Define sensor node childs
#define CHILD_ID_BATT 1
#define CHILD_ID_TEMP 0


#define COMPARE_TEMP 0 // Send temperature only if changed? 1 = Yes 0 = No

#define ONE_WIRE_BUS 7 // Pin where dallase sensor is connected 


#define MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20 16
unsigned long SLEEP_TIME = 1000; // Sleep time between reads (in milliseconds)

// Battery related init
int BATTERY_SENSE_PIN = A0;  // select the input pin for the battery sense point
float oldBatteryV = 0;
MyMessage msgBatt(CHILD_ID_BATT, V_VOLTAGE);


// Dallas Temperature related init
OneWire oneWire(ONE_WIRE_BUS); // Setup a oneWire instance to communicate with any OneWire devices (not just Maxim/Dallas temperature ICs)
DallasTemperature sensors(&oneWire); // Pass the oneWire reference to Dallas Temperature. 
float lastTemperature[MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20];
int numSensors=0;
bool receivedConfig = false;
bool metric = true;
MyMessage msgTemp(CHILD_ID_TEMP, V_TEMP);



void before()
{
  // Startup up the OneWire library
  sensors.begin();
}

void setup()  
{ 
  // requestTemperatures() will not block current thread
  sensors.setWaitForConversion(false);


  // needed for battery soc
  // use the 1.1 V internal reference
  #if defined(__AVR_ATmega2560__)
      analogReference(INTERNAL1V1);
  #else
      analogReference(INTERNAL);
  #endif

}

void presentation() {
  // Send the sketch version information to the gateway and Controller
  sendSketchInfo("Temperature Sensor", "1.1");

  // Fetch the number of attached temperature sensors  
  numSensors = sensors.getDeviceCount();

  // Present all sensors to controller
  for (int i=0; i<numSensors && i<MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20; i++) {   
     present(i, S_TEMP);
  }
}

void loop()     
{     

  // get the battery Voltage
  int battSensorValue = analogRead(BATTERY_SENSE_PIN);
  Serial.println(battSensorValue);
  float batteryV  = battSensorValue * 0.003363075;
  Serial.print("Battery Voltage: ");
  Serial.print(batteryV);
  Serial.println(" V");
//  if (oldBatteryV != batteryV) {
    // Power up radio after sleep
    send(msgBatt.set(batteryV, 2));
    oldBatteryV = batteryV;
//  }  

  // Fetch temperatures from Dallas sensors
  sensors.requestTemperatures();

  // query conversion time and sleep until conversion completed
  int16_t conversionTime = sensors.millisToWaitForConversion(sensors.getResolution());
  // sleep() call can be replaced by wait() call if node need to process incoming messages (or if node is repeater)
  sleep(conversionTime);

  // Read temperatures and send them to controller 
  for (int i=0; i<numSensors && i<MAX_ATTACHED_DS18B20; i++) {

    // Fetch and round temperature to one decimal
    float temperature = static_cast<float>(static_cast<int>((getControllerConfig().isMetric?sensors.getTempCByIndex(i):sensors.getTempFByIndex(i)) * 10.)) / 10.;

    // Only send data if temperature has changed and no error
    #if COMPARE_TEMP == 1
    if (lastTemperature[i] != temperature && temperature != -127.00 && temperature != 85.00) {
    #else
    if (temperature != -127.00 && temperature != 85.00) {
    #endif

      // Send in the new temperature
      send(msgTemp.setSensor(i).set(temperature,1));
      // Save new temperatures for next compare
      lastTemperature[i]=temperature;
    }
  }
  sleep(SLEEP_TIME);
}

Any help is appreciated.

@bjacobse
Couldn't agree more.
This might just be the problem I face.

Thanks for the link.

Still not cheap (1.44" for $12) but at least not outrageous like the Adafruit.

Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) are now used in many stores and available at very reasonable prices (5-10$ / unit) . These all seem to use ultra-low power eink display modules that only consume power when the content of the display is being changed.

E.g.: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Wireless-transmission-zero-power-electronic-shelf_60256379521.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.M2nZGP

In stark contrast, I still don't see any affordable e-ink modules available for Arduino projects. The 2.9" Adafruit module is 39$ which sounds ridiculous when you consider that a cheapo $10 ESL module contains more components and is still only quarter of the price.

Hopefully, one day ESL manufacturers will start selling their display modules standalone as well.

Until that happens: Has anyone seen a hack for any of the ESL modules so that one could use the display or the whole ESL as part of an Arduino / mysensors project?

This would give us access to affordable, ultra-low power display modules.

Hi paqor,

I would like to build something similar to your multifunction node.

The URL pointing to the project seems to be broken. Could you correct it or copy the info about your project here?

Great. I added a comment to the GitHub issue to signify its importance.

With a little digging I have found an other forum topic dealing with the same problem: https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/4381/solved-gatewayesp8266mqttclient-recovery-failure-after-gateway-outage

I have experimented with the suggestion found there and - in my case - the 1000ms was still not enough for a full reconnect before the node goes to sleep, so I made it 3000ms. This seems to allow a reconnect all the time (at least in my environment).

I placed the following transport testing/healing code right before the node goes to sleep:

  // @TODO remove after testing gateway outage
  if (!isTransportOK()) {
    #ifdef MY_DEBUG
    Serial.print("Transport ERROR. Waiting for a proper transport reconnect");
    #endif
    wait(3000);
  }

I am unsure why MySensors doesn't have this self-healing element built-in. Maybe it is only a bug, maybe it has some deeper reason.

I have the exact same problem: the node never reconnects to gateway after a gateway outage.

In my case it is an ethernet MQTTClientGateway and a humidity node.

I have experimented with your suggestion and found that 1000ms was still not enough for a full reconnect before the node goes to sleep, so I made it 3000ms. This seems to allow a reconnect all the time (at least in my environment).

  // @TODO remove after testing gateway outage
  if (!isTransportOK()) {
    #ifdef MY_DEBUG
    Serial.print("Transport ERROR. Waiting for a proper transport reconnect");
    #endif
    wait(3000);
  }

  // Sleep for a while to save energy
  sleep(UPDATE_INTERVAL); 

I am unsure why MySensors doesn't have this self-healing element built-in. Maybe it is only a bug, maybe it has some deeper reason.

I have built an MQTT client gateway and a humidity node, both of them working properly in normal circumstances.

Mysensors library: 2.0.0 (downloaded via the Arduino IDE library manager)

When I power down the ethernet gateway for a couple of minutes and switch it back on, the gateway itself starts up properly but the humidity node will not be able to send messages to it.

The serial output of the humidity node looks like this:

TSP:SEND:TNR
Humidity: 60.20
!TSP:SEND:TNR
Humidity: 60.30
!TSP:SEND:TNR
Humidity: 60.20
!TSP:SEND:TNR
Temperature: 27.30
!TSM:FPAR:FAIL
!TSM:FAILURE
TSM:PDT
!TSP:SEND:TNR
Humidity: 60.20

I have waited ~10minutes but no reconnect. The node currently measures / send every 2 seconds.

The humidity node properly reconnects after a manual reset and after that the newly sent values show up in OpenHAB as well.

What do I have to do to make the nodes automatically reconnect in a case like this? Since I plan a large number of nodes and some of my nodes will be placed at problematic locations, it is imperative that auto-reconnect happens properly.

Any help is appreciated.

It works, many thanks.

I used a 4K7 resistor as pull-up and it seems to be enough.

Thanks, I will try it out.

Hi All,

As a MySensors noob, I ordered a standalone DHT22 chip (4 pin) instead of a module (3-pin) - didn't notice the difference.

I found a wiring diagram on the Adafruit site (https://learn.adafruit.com/dht/connecting-to-a-dhtxx-sensor) which seems to use a plain DHT chip like myself.

Is this wiring OK for the Mysensors library? Will it read the sensor the same way as from a module?

Any help is appreciated.