Final update - no local stores carry a non-illuminated doorbell button. Argh. So I ended up taking the button apart on mine, yanking the incandescent bulb out, and putting it back together. Since it's held together with just some bent over tabs, they broke off and I had to glue it back together. Once I did, everything worked perfectly. The sketch I posted above is working great - doorbell rings and the ring appears in my Home Assistant like it should.
It's definitely the illuminated button. I pulled it out and connecting the wires rings the bell correctly. I hadn't thought about swapping the wires... It is pretty new but I wasn't considering the possibility of it being led. I'll give that a try. Worst case, replace it with a non lit button. Just glad to have finally figured it out!
edit: actually, I'm betting it's not a LED. These buttons are typically on a 16VAC system, so a LED wouldn't work without more components. Whereas a simple incandescent bulb works fine on AC. So I think I probably just need a new button.
Ok, finally worked this again today. Here's the status. I modified the sketch to update it to 2.0, giving me this:
/*
* The MySensors Arduino library handles the wireless radio link and protocol
* between your home built sensors/actuators and HA controller of choice.
* The sensors forms a self healing radio network with optional repeaters. Each
* repeater and gateway builds a routing tables in EEPROM which keeps track of the
* network topology allowing messages to be routed to nodes.
*
* Created by Henrik Ekblad <henrik.ekblad@mysensors.org>
* Copyright (C) 2013-2015 Sensnology AB
* Full contributor list: https://github.com/mysensors/Arduino/graphs/contributors
*
* Documentation: http://www.mysensors.org
* Support Forum: http://forum.mysensors.org
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
* version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
*
*******************************
*
* REVISION HISTORY
* Version 1.0 - PeteWill
* Version 2.0 - timropp, updating for MySensors 2.0
*
* DESCRIPTION
* This sketch is used to control a doorbell ring with a relay as well as send an
* alert when the buttons is pressed. Connect the button to ground and digital
* pin 3. The relay controlling the doorbell is conntected to pin 4.
*
* Watch the How To video here: https://youtu.be/nMIcalwpstc
*/
#define MY_RADIO_NRF24
#define MY_REPEATER_FEATURE
#include <MySensors.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <Bounce2.h>
#define NODE_ID AUTO // or set to AUTO if you want gw to assign a NODE_ID for you.
#define DOORBELL_PIN A0 // Arduino Digital I/O pin number for the doorbell button
#define RELAY_PIN 4 // Arduino Digital I/O pin number for the relay
#define DOORBELL_CHILD_ID 0 //ID of the doorbell
#define SWITCH_CHILD_ID 1 // Id of the switch that will control doorbell sound
#define RELAY_ON 1
#define RELAY_OFF 0
Bounce debouncer = Bounce();
MyMessage switchMsg(SWITCH_CHILD_ID, V_LIGHT);
MyMessage doorbellMsg(DOORBELL_CHILD_ID, V_TRIPPED);
unsigned int doorbellDelay = 1000; // interval at which to keep the doorbell button sensor triggered (milliseconds). This is used to stop people (kids) from pressing it too often
unsigned int ringTime = 400; //How long the doorbell relay is on (in milliseconds)
unsigned long doorbellMillis; //Used to keep track of the last doorbell button press
unsigned long doorbellTimer; //Used to keep track of doorbell ring time
byte doorbellPreviousVal; //Used to keep track of doorbell button pressed state
boolean ringDoorbell; //Used to initiate the ring doorbell if statement
boolean doorbellSound; //Used to keep track if the doorbell should sound or be silent. Value recieved from doorbell on/off switch
boolean doorbellOff = true; //Used to keep track of doorbell ring state
void setup()
{
// Setup the button and activate internal pull-up
pinMode(DOORBELL_PIN, INPUT_PULLUP);
// After setting up the button, setup debouncer
debouncer.attach(DOORBELL_PIN);
debouncer.interval(5);
// Make sure relays are off when starting up
digitalWrite(RELAY_PIN, RELAY_OFF);
// Then set relay pins in output mode
pinMode(RELAY_PIN, OUTPUT);
// Set doorbellSound to last known state (using eeprom storage)
doorbellSound = loadState(SWITCH_CHILD_ID);
}
void loop()
{
unsigned long currentMillis = millis();
//Check to see if doorbell button was pushed.
if (currentMillis - doorbellMillis > doorbellDelay) //used to stop doorbell from being pressed too frequently
{
debouncer.update();
// Read doorbell button value
byte doorbellDetect = !debouncer.read();//read, then reverse the value so it will send correct trigger state to controller
if (doorbellDetect != doorbellPreviousVal)
{
//Serial.print("doorbellDetect Value: ");
//Serial.println(doorbellDetect);
send(doorbellMsg.set(doorbellDetect));
if (doorbellDetect == 1)
{
ringDoorbell = true;
doorbellTimer = currentMillis;
}
doorbellMillis = currentMillis;
doorbellPreviousVal = doorbellDetect;
}
}
if (ringDoorbell)
{
if (doorbellSound)
{
if (doorbellOff)
{
digitalWrite(RELAY_PIN, RELAY_ON);
//Serial.println("Doorbell sounded.");
doorbellOff = false;
}
else
{
if (currentMillis - doorbellTimer > ringTime)
{
ringDoorbell = false;
digitalWrite(RELAY_PIN, RELAY_OFF);
//Serial.println("Doorbell off.");
doorbellOff = true;
}
}
}
}
}
void receive(const MyMessage &message) {
// We only expect one type of message from controller. But we better check anyway.
if (message.isAck()) {
Serial.println("This is an ack from gateway");
}
if (message.type == V_LIGHT) {
// Change relay state
doorbellSound = message.getBool();
// Store state in eeprom
saveState(SWITCH_CHILD_ID, doorbellSound);
// Write some debug info
Serial.print("Incoming change for sensor:");
Serial.print(message.sensor);
Serial.print(", New status: ");
Serial.println(message.getBool());
}
}
void presentation()
{
// Send the sketch version information to the gateway and Controller
sendSketchInfo("Doorbell Monitor", "1.0");
// Register all sensors to gw (they will be created as child devices)
present(SWITCH_CHILD_ID, S_LIGHT);
present(DOORBELL_CHILD_ID, S_MOTION);
}
Sitting on my desk, it works fine. It appears in Home Assistant, clicks the relay when A0 is shorted to ground, and that appears in HASS as a motion event. Seems good, so I installed it in the doorbell. Doesn't work there. I get one ring when I hook up power, and then nothing. I checked again the leads from the physical doorbell button with a multimeter - I get a good continuity buzz when I press the button and silence when not pressed. Then I discovered something - if I physically unhook the wire going to A0 and reconnect it, the doorbell rings and I get that notification in Hass. If I unhook and reconnect the wire again, same thing. So that makes it appear that the A0 is being constantly grounded - is that possible? It acts like my physical doorbell button is stuck in the pressed position, but the multimeter indicates it's fine.
Further testing - If I connect the board to the doorbell system but leave the physical doorbell button disconnected, then attach a spare piece of wire to A0 and ground it, the system works perfectly. So it's definitely something related to the physical button.
On thing I've realized - I THINK the outdoor button is an illuminated one, which isn't illuminated with this system. Could that light be the cause? If so, why doesn't the continuity test show it as continuous? I think I'll go buy a basic non-illuminated button and install it and see if that works. Or just pull the button out of the wall, disconnect the wires, and then short them together. Duh, that'd be easier and cheaper. I'll try that this afternoon - have a wedding to get to first.
Yep, both those are on my to do list fo tonight. Thanks for your help troubleshooting!
Nope, didn't find the problem. Must be some solder that shorted the batteries out but I don't see it. Oh well... main problem is that was my only 2AA holder on hand, and it melted right through the end of it, so now I have to wait on more before I can try again. Bummer 
Well that didn't go well... assembling my first micro. Soldered on some pins for the FTDI connection, added power (2xAA holder), and soldered on the radio with cap. Then I put in batteries and brought up my domoticz page to see if it showed up. Started to smell something, looked down, and there's smoke coming from the battery holder. Grabbed the whole thing and yanked the wire free then dropped it in the sink. Not sure where I screwed up, but I sure shorted something!
It's an ethernet gateway.
I don't think it's really a Mysensors issue though as I think about it - the doorbell should ring when you press the button whether you have the gateway running or not. And I'm not even getting that. In fact, I AM getting the signal to the gateway, but it's not activating the relay.
Is it possible that the doorbell on/off switch isn't working right in the code? I never used that before. I think I'll try tomorrow (kids in bed now, so can't really play around with a doorbell!) removing that switch for now and have it always set to on.
I looked through comparing the sketch I'm using now (the one drock1985 made that's for domoticz) and the original. The only change is moving the gw.send command and changing it slightly. But again, that shouldn't impact the bell physically working. So there's something else going on.
Is there a way to check if the code uploaded to the arduino correctly? I'm using the rboard and a FTDI to upload. I'm wondering if something isn't going weird there and it's not uploading correctly and that's why I'm getting different issues every time I try something...
Tried that sketch (with just changing pin assignments and flipping the relay high/low settings). As soon as I powered it up, the relay started clicking every 4 seconds and it never appeared in Domoticz. I think it's because after the pin is set to input, there's " digitalWrite(FRONT_DOOR_BUTTON, HIGH);" command that's like someone holding the button down.
Went back to the original sketch I used. I changed from an auto NODE_ID to a fixed setting in the defines and re-uploaded it. The device appeared in Domoticz correctly! I've got a "doorbell sketch 1.0" with 3 devices - repeater, the doorbell button as a S_Motion, and the doorbell on/off as a S_Lights.
However, it still doesn't work. My wiring is shown above and it worked great under Vera. Now, I cannot get the doorbell to actually chime. Nor does the outdoor button do anything. I've verified the wiring, but shorting the A0 pin to the ground input doesn't do anything like it should. However, there's ANOTHER ground next to the A0 (under the wireless card), and if I short the A0 to that ground pin, the switch shows on in Domoticz. I can change the wiring since for some reason which ground I use is making a difference.
No matter what, still no relay action though. I tried turning the doorbell on/off switch both ways and it made no difference. In either setting, shorting the two pins turns the switch in Domoticz on.
I was comparing the two sketches (the one I'm using, and the dual-bell one). The single bell sketch sets the button pin with pinmode(Doorbell_pin, input_pullup) where the dual uses input without the pullup. Which should be right?
Thanks, I'll give that a try. I don't have any need for the dual bell functionality, but we can see if it works and if so, then comment out the back bell part to simplify things.
I had my doorbell working fine on Vera for months, but now I'm switching over to Domoticz. I used the updated domoticz version of the code above (by drock1985) but it's still not working right. My only changes were the pin assignments to match my wiring and setting the repeater to true since it's powered.
My domoticz is version v3.4834. Mysensors ethernet gateway is working fine. When I powered up the doorbell, I got an unknown node with sketch "unknown" show up under mysensors. It has 2 children - a repeater with childID 255, and an unknown with childID 0 and a V_Tripped value.
Any idea what I need to do to make it work?
Duh! THANK YOU for such a fast answer. Just restarted a couple of my nodes and they're now appearing. Was banging my head on this for an hour last night because I didn't think of something so obvious.
Trying to move from Vera to Domoticz on a Pi3... Have a working Ethernet gateway that's been running for months on my Vera. Now I've got the Pi running and I add the Mysensors Ethernet to it. It shows up, and after a few seconds, the entry on the "hardware" page updates to show that it's a version 1.5 gateway. However, I never get any of the devices to appear.
In the log, it shows:
2016-05-21 07:14:38.673 MySensors: Gateway Ready...
2016-05-21 07:14:38.673 MySensors: Gateway Version: 1.5
2016-05-21 07:14:39.673 MySensors: Gateway Version: 1.5
periodically, especially whenever I hit the update button on the hardware page. But no devices are showing from the Mysensors.
I'm planning to migrate from my current Vera-based system to Domoticz (never really liked Vera, and seems limiting in what logic can be set up unless you get plugins and stuff). I currently have a handful of ZWave devices (motion sensors, door sensors, light switches), one wireless IP camera, and a couple mysensors devices on an ethernet gateway.
Thoughts on whether to set up my Domoticz system on a dedicated Raspberry Pi 2 (or 3) vs adding it to my Windows Home Server 2011 system? The WHS is our file server for the house, storing all our media and doing nightly backups, plus running usenet downloads and Blue Iris for the camera.
I like the Pi idea to have it on a dedicated device to reduce troubleshooting and keep things separate. But I like the WHS idea to have more horsepower for things like using cameras for motion detection and stuff like that down the road.
Vera 3 is definitely discontinued. The Edge probably will be soon - Vera forums say there's a new model coming soon.
I'm using a vera edge with an ethernet gateway and it works fine. Took a little fiddling to get it working initially, but I now have my doorbell, several doors, and an LED strip all connected via mysensors and interacting with my zwave devices. For example, I have it set so that when the doorbell is rung, the LED strip (mounted above the door in our office) flashes a rainbow of colors since we can't always hear the doorbell. That's a mysensors node detecting the doorbell, telling the Vera that it's been tripped, and then the Vera triggers a scene that makes the mysensors LED strip flash.
I've got 3 coming, can't wait to figure out what I'm going to use them for
My wiring:
I discovered that they ran 4 conductor wire from the transformer in the basement to this location. So I plugged a phone charger in near the transformer, cut the end off a USB cable, and connected the 5V and gnd wires from that USB cable to the spare 2 wires in the cable. So then there's 6 wires coming into the doorbell as shown here: 2 for 16VAC from the transformer, 2 for 5VDC from the phone charger, and 2 from the doorbell button. I then connected the 5V pair to the top pair of screw terminals in the photo on the rboard. They're the blue and green wires. The white wire in the top terminal is one side of the button, connecting to ground there. The second side of the button is the red wire going into the grey wire nut. The brown wire coming out of the nut connects to the A0 pin on the board. Finally, the 2 16VAC wires are red and white. The red goes over to the right terminal on the plunger mechanism. The white goes to the common terminal on the rboard's relay connections. Finally, a black wire connects the NO from the relay to the other side of the plunger.
Hopefully that was all clear for anyone wanting to wire up their own!
So got my doorbell up and working. Here's the details: I used the mini RBoard and it's working out great.
I soldered the cap directly onto the nrf board. Unfortunately, that board overhangs the A0 connections on the rboard (there's 2 pins there, one is the A0 pin and one is a ground). Thankfully, it only ACTUALLY covered the ground, so it was easy to work around. The brown wire in the photo is the wire I have connected to the A0 pin. The green wire is a temp wire I was connecting to the ground in the serial connections.
In the doorbell, I cut away one of the panels over one of the resonant chambers since I saw that the module would fit in there perfectly. I then wired it up and tucked it away. I did lose a little volume since the chamber is filled rather than resonating, but it's worth it to have the doorbell notifying my Vera system. That can flash lights and so forth to notify us other ways - we couldn't usually hear the doorbell when downstairs anyway.
Code wise, I used the original code above with just a couple minor changes. I set the doorbell_pin to A0, the relay_pin to 4, and the node_ID to auto. I also set it to act as a repeater since it's hardwired to power. Now that I have it working, I wish I'd changed the ringTime to a lower value since 7/10 of a second is way longer than the doorbell normally takes between the two notes, but it's not a big deal. Not worth pulling the board out, disconnecting it, reprogramming it, and reinstalling everything
I did take a look at my doorbell last night. I have a transformer down in the basement that's outputting 16VAC. Then the doorbell upstairs, with no convenient place to get power from. The wires from both the doorbell button and the transformer come to the doorbell "box" on the wall.
At first I was looking for a way to convert the 16VAC to 5VDC. Then as I was looking at the space in the doorbell to mount the board, I saw two more wires not connected to anything. They ran 4 conductor wire from the transformer to the bell! Sweet! So now I'll put a 5V source (probably phone charger to USB cable with the end cut off) in the basement, connect that to the other unused pair of wires, and have my power where I need it.
Is there any issue with running the 5V DC power and the 16VAC power alongside each other? It's not like either is carrying data, so I don't think there would be...
My mini RBoard just arrived yesterday to do this... too bad I won't have any time to mess with it till probably next weekend. I'll definitely share some pics and results once I get it installed!
Thanks for that - I haven't had time to mess with my system but want to, so I'll check out your sample code. Is that what you're running that worked, or have you made changes? And how do you send the V_VAR values from Vera? Seems like a simple enough way to have a whole bunch of pre-made sequences built into the RGB sketch and have Vera just send the proper number. V_Var1=0 for all off, =1 for red/blue strobe, =2 for blinking red, etc.
Thanks, this is exactly the sort of help I was looking for. I so far am using the example RGBW sketch, which implements the colors as a trio of dimmers rather than a single V_RGB device. I'll have to test out that device and see how it works.
As for the mode variable, how do I do that? I see that there's V_VARx variables that I assume you could use with a switch for that purpose, but I don't see anything on how to implement those, on either the mysensors node or the Vera side. Got a reference or example I can use?
I have a vera edge (UI7) and an ethernet mysensors gateway. I also have a Mysensors node running on an Uno and controlling an analog RGB LED strip (one of the standard 5050 strips, with a protoboard with external 12V power and some mosfets to handle the PWM to the strip.)
So in my Vera it shows up as 3 dimmers, for the red green and blue channels. Works fine, as far as that goes. However, I'd like to do some interesting things with this (the purpose of this strip is as a visual notification, not normal illumination).
I made some manually-triggered scenes such as "red flash" which does red on, off, on, off, on, off at 1 second intervals. But it's hard-coded like that - 3 flashes, 1 second intervals. I tried making a "yellow flash" doing the same but turning both red and green on and off. Again, it works, but since the vera is sending separate red on and green on commands, you can see a split-second of red before green comes on, and then a split-second of green after the red turns off.
Is there a better way to do this? Any way to have the vera send specific colors as a single command?
Another thing I'd like to do is continuous flashing when a certain door sensor is open. How best to do that from Vera? I know the logic I'd use if I was coding something would be along the lines of
while (door=open)
{
color on();
wait 1 second;
color off();
wait 1 second;
}
but how to implement that on the Vera? Would I be better moving some of the logic over to the arduino? Basically make a bunch of "switches" that each have code in the mysensors sketch, and then just turn those switches on and off via the vera? That'd clutter the vera with devices, but might be simpler in the long run...
Yep, the cycle does work. I just wasn't patient enough I 'd assumed it was a faster swirl (didn't look at the code, just assumed).
Now just gotta actually run my LED strips in place and then it'll all be great! Thanks again for the help.
I got 5 devices - the 3 R, G, B dimmers, a repeater, and the swirl on/off. However, for some reason my swirl doesn't work. Haven't spent any time messing with it, but clicking that button on Vera just turns on one channel of lights and clicking that button off does nothing. I had to use the matching dimmer to turn it off.
Not sure why, didn't spend any time tracking that down - for now I just needed the dimmers and they work great so I didn't dig
Nope, just standard squiggle-antenna radios for me so far.
Solved!
It was a hardware problem - I didn't put caps on the radio on the gateway or RGB node originally. I added them and the node added perfectly. I guess I got lucky originally that even the 2 devices appeared on the first try.
Solved!
It was a hardware problem - I didn't put caps on the radio on the gateway or RGB node originally. I added them and the node added perfectly. I guess I got lucky originally that even the 2 devices appeared on the first try.
Setting: I have a VeraEdge (UI7) and an ethernet gateway. Gateway is working fine as far as I know, Vera sees it.
I built a RGB LED node to control some analog LED strips. When I first started it up using the stock sketch from the Mysensors library, Vera found 2 devices, a repeater and a dimmer. But there should be 3 dimmers. Repeated includes didn't fix it.
I added a 1 sec delay between the gw.present commands in the RGB sketch and changed the gw.begin from a fixed node number of 31 to auto. I then deleted the two devices from Vera, rebooted Vera and the ethernet gateway, and then tried to re-include the node. I'm getting nothing on the Vera.
Since I've got the RGB node connected to my computer still, I pulled up the serial console and see every line with a st=fail status. What am I doing wrong? Is there some way I need to exclude the node beyond just deleting it from the Vera dashboard? The node does seem to still be trying to use ID 31.
I even found a clear eeprom sketch on here in the debug section, did that, and still not working.
Sample log:
send: 31-31-0-0 s=255,c=0,t=18,pt=0,l=3,sg=0,st=fail:1.5
send: 31-31-0-0 s=255,c=3,t=6,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:0
repeater started, id=31, parent=0, distance=1
send: 31-31-0-0 s=255,c=3,t=11,pt=0,l=16,sg=0,st=fail:RGB Led strip 3D
send: 31-31-0-0 s=255,c=3,t=12,pt=0,l=2,sg=0,st=fail:v1
send: 31-31-0-0 s=6,c=0,t=4,pt=0,l=17,sg=0,st=fail:present RED light
send: 31-31-0-0 s=5,c=0,t=4,pt=0,l=19,sg=0,st=fail:present GREEN light
find parent
send: 31-31-255-255 s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,st=bc:
send: 31-31-0-0 s=3,c=0,t=4,pt=0,l=18,sg=0,st=fail:present BLUE light
send: 31-31-0-0 s=0,c=0,t=3,pt=0,l=19,sg=0,st=fail:present Show button
Load from eeprom RED: 0%
Load from eeprom GREEN: 0%
Load from eeprom BLUE: 0%
Send eeprom value to controler
send: 31-31-0-0 s=6,c=1,t=3,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:0
send: 31-31-0-0 s=5,c=1,t=3,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:0
send: 31-31-0-0 s=3,c=1,t=3,pt=1,l=1,sg=0,st=fail:0
send: 31-31-0-0 s=0,c=1,t=2,pt=2,l=2,sg=0,st=fail:0
find parent
send: 31-31-255-255 s=255,c=3,t=7,pt=0,l=0,sg=0,st=bc:
Ready to receive messages...
Thanks - found out the same thing googling after I posted the question.
Thanks all for your off-topic help! Can't wait to get home and get this thing working.
Thanks - I do have OTG cables. Can you connect that way via USB while the arduino is getting power via Vin (12V from the LEDs)? I thought you can't use Vin and USB at the same time.
The RGB node isn't connected to a pc, so how do you check the console on it? The way I have it wired, it's getting power from the LED strip, so I'd have to disconnect the lights to connect it over USB.
Oh wait, I have to do that anyway to update the sketch, so I can check it then... but is there a way to see the console wirelessly?
Thanks, I'll give that a try when I get home. I did include twice I think, with nothing adding the second time. So I'll try a couple more and then adjust the RGB sketch if needed.
New to MySensors - built an ethernet gateway and connected it to my VeraEdge running UI7. Works fine as far as I can tell
Then I built an analog RGB LED strip controller, using an Uno clone and a protoshield to wire it up. The strip works fine with a simple RGB test sketch, so the hardware is working. Then I loaded the RGB-3D sensor sketch from the latest 1.5 update. I hit the include button in the Vera interface (I didn't build a hardware one on my gateway) and rebooted the RGB node. Vera showed 2 devices detected and in my dashboard, a repeater and a red dimmer channel (an on/off button and a dimmer slider, both of which control one color on the node) appeared. That one channel is working great - however, I'd sorta like to control all 3 colors!
How do I get the other 2 channels to appear?