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    TRS-80

    @TRS-80

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    Best posts made by TRS-80

    • Finally, progress! (evidence based radio testing method) (and capacitors)

      Like many, I struggled for a long time to get things working reliably. Finally some progress the last couple days. The biggest leap forward for me was learning about the PingPong sketch, and using it to implement evidence based testing. Along with a couple other small tricks.

      If you are having radio trouble (or reliability trouble in general), I highly recommend starting out with the PingPong sketch, aka GettingStarted.ino example in the RF24 library. In fact, I think I will be flashing this first on all new radio nodes, to test my soldering / assembly, as well as positioning of the node initially, etc.

      As an aside, I also started using PlatformIO recently, I personally find it much less confusing than the official Arduino IDE (and now I can use a real editor! 😁 ). I only mention it because that is the serial monitor command you will see below.

      I am also on GNU/Linux, so I collected my data with a simple tee command on the output of pio device monitor, like so:
      $ platformio device monitor -b 115200 -p /dev/ttyUSB<X> | tee test<Y>

      I then make a copy of the file and call it test<Y>-trimmed, which I then edit by hand to remove header lines at top and also the lines like "*** CHANGING TO TRANSMIT ROLE -- PRESS 'R' TO SWITCH BACK
      ", etc. So we end up with only result lines like the following:

      Now sending 92111...ok...Got response 92111, round-trip delay: 28
      Now sending 93139...ok...Got response 93139, round-trip delay: 29
      Now sending 94170...ok...Got response 94170, round-trip delay: 34
      Now sending 95205...ok...Failed, response timed out.
      Now sending 96408...ok...Got response 96408, round-trip delay: 23
      Now sending 97432...ok...Got response 97432, round-trip delay: 23
      

      Now that I have a "trimmed" file containing only lines of results, I wrote a small bash script to calculate some things from there a little more easily:

      #!/bin/bash
      
      lines_total=$(cat "$1" | wc -l)
      lines_response=$(grep 'Got response' "$1" | wc -l)
      percent=$(echo "100 * $lines_response / $lines_total" | bc -l)
      artd=$(grep 'round-trip delay: ' "$1" | rev | cut -c -2 | rev | awk '{ sum+=$1 } END { print sum/NR }' )
      
      printf 'Lines of Response: %s\n' "$lines_response"
      printf 'Lines Total: %s\n' "$lines_total"
      printf 'Response %%: %.2f\n' "$percent"
      printf 'Average Round Trip Delay (ARTD): %.2f\n' "$artd"
      

      I save it as calculate, make it executable ($ chmod +x calculate) and then execute it with the name of the filename to process like $ ./calculate test1-trimmed which would return something like:

      Lines of Response: 801
      Lines Total: 1016
      Response %: 78.84
      Average Round Trip Delay (ARTD): 25.75
      

      I then plug these results into a table in Orgmode in Emacs, carefully accounting for each variable I thought might be relevant:

      |----+----+----+-------+----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------+--------+-------+---|
      | TN | SL | RL | STC   | SC | SCL | RTC | RC | RCL |   LR |   LT |    R % |  ARTD | N |
      |----+----+----+-------+----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------+--------+-------+---|
      |  1 | 1  |  1 | 1,3,4 | 1  | 12  | 2   | 1  | 21  |  878 |  906 |  96.91 | 28.16 |   |
      |  2 | "  |  2 | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |      |      |        |       |   |
      |  3 | "  |  " | "     | 2  | "   | "   | 2  | "   |  801 | 1016 |  78.84 | 25.75 | 1 |
      |  4 | "  |  3 | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |  910 |  959 |  94.89 | 23.68 |   |
      |  5 | "  |  4 | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |  853 |  946 |  90.17 | 25.22 |   |
      |  6 | 6  |  " | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |  871 |  875 |  99.54 | 23.73 | 2 |
      |  7 | "  |  5 | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |   28 |  289 |   9.69 | 40.39 |   |
      |  8 | "  |  7 | "     | "  | "   | "   | "  | "   |  684 |  684 | 100.00 | 22.91 | 3 |
      |  9 | "  |  " | "     | 1  | "   | "   | 1  | "   |  600 | 1042 |  57.58 | 34.47 |   |
      | 10 | "  |  " | "     | 3  | "   | "   | 3  | "   | 1014 | 1051 |  96.48 | 24.58 |   |
      | 11 |    |    |       |    |     |     |    |     |      |      |        |       |   |
      |----+----+----+-------+----+-----+-----+----+-----+------+------+--------+-------+---|
      - Key:
        - Abbreviations:
          - TN = Test Number
          - SL = Sender Location
          - RL = Receiver Location
          - STC = Sender Test Conditions
          - SC = Sending Capacitance
          - SCL = Sending Cable Length (mm)
          - RTC = Receiver Test Conditions
          - RC = Receiver Capacitance
          - RCL = Receiver Cable Length (mm)
          - LR = Lines Response
          - LT = Lines Total
          - R % = Response %
          - ARTD = Average Round Trip Delay
          - N = Notes
        - Keys:
          - Locations:
            1. desk in front of keyboard
            2. coffee table living room
            3. dining room table
            4. kitchen counter by stove
            5. floor by front door (previous door switch radio location)
            6. On top of both CPU towers, then plastic box
            7. front door but higher up
          - Test Conditions:
            1. Arduino Nano 5v
            2. Arduino Pro Mini 3.3v
            3. Mismatched length power cables
            4. ferrite choke on USB power cable to computer
          - Capacitor(s):
            1. single 4.7uF capacitor
            2. 1uF + 10uF capacitors
          - Notes:
            1. A lot of interference from me moving my chair/body(?) in between and banging tools on the
               table.
            2. Antenna in vertical plane, face toward dining room table.
            3. Took some effort to align plane of receiving antennae face to face.
      

      Now, I am no where nearly as talented in electronics and radios as some of the guys on this forum, however I do know how to follow basic scientific principles and do experiments... And by doing so, I have been able to learn quite a lot about radio propagation, electronics (ideal decoupling capacitor values), as well as things particular to my own site conditions here. And this is what I wanted to share. Even if you are not an expert, you can do the same and get a much better result.

      For me, I feel like I am finally making some progress (instead of throwing darts in the dark)!

      A few other little details. I want to talk about decoupling capacitors. I know it is already mentioned frequently, but doing experiments as above you can test and really see the difference for yourself.

      First, how to attach the caps? I saw in someone's YouTube video (Great Scott! I think it was) where he had soldered the cap to the top part of the nRF board, I mean where the stub of the header pokes through the board, where you would be soldering to attach the header, opposite side of where you would attach your dupont cables. I thought this was a great idea and I started doing it, too. Keeps it out of the way, and insures a good electrical connection. I never really liked just jamming the leads of the cap into the back of the dupont connector housing. I never was sure it was making a good connection, the wires are easy to bend and they are different lengths, etc... just a big hassle. This way is much better!

      IMG_20200607_124626_DRO.jpg

      Secondly, about decoupling capacitor values. I have heard all kinds of stuff thrown around, from 4.7uF to 47uF to 100uF, and then some people even saying to combine a 0.1uF and a 10uF in parallel. I get the impression, that in most of cases (except the parallel case, or in the case of you few EEs out there πŸ˜‰ ) that most people are just guessing, and/or parroting stuff they heard somewhere.

      I did a bit of research on this, even started watching one of EEVBlog videos about it (until I started dozing off, lol). Now, I am no EE for sure, but there appears to be something to the parallel thing, which I was able to bear out in testing. Check some of my results above where I purposefully kept all conditions the same, except for swapping out radios with different decoupling capacitor setups. The results (for me at least) were dramatic. For instance look at tests 8 and 9. Now I didn't have a 0.1uF cap on hand, so I used the smallest one I could find which was 1uF + a 10uF. And with that arrangement, 100% Response %! Compared to 57.58% with a single 4.7uF cap. This is at maybe 20m distance inside, through 1 or 2 walls with metal studs and drywall.

      posted in Troubleshooting
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      TRS-80
    • RE: Easy PCB Question

      Hi @grumpazoid,

      I just ordered some of the Easy PCB for the first time, as I am also tired of dickering with spaghetti mess. Therefore I was studying the board recently. Design in general seems quite adaptable to various powering scenarios (battery, 3.3v, 5v, raw, etc...) which I suppose is the point.

      Space on board for resistor divider is built in, although you may need to calculate different values for 18650 as I think what pre-calculated values are for (2x?) AA maybe(?). Not really sure about that part.

      To your specific question, have you examined the information presented about the board over at OpenHardware.io? There is quite a lot of very useful information there. For example, look closely at the regulator part of the board, and the BOM. It appears to be made to accommodate LE33ACZ, which were what I ordered. Not as cheap as the 662K (plus you already have them) but I figured they are only buck or two for 10 of them (shipped), so in my view for the money probably not worth the hassle (my opinion).

      Back to your specific question, I guess your options are:

      • Study pin outs of board, your regulator, and size (662K are quite tiny!) and see if you think you can make it work with those... Or...

      • Do what I did and just order some of the LE33ACZ which I think were designed to be exact fit.

      If you were hoping for some direct confirmation from someone who has done it already, sorry I can't provide that, but since we are roughly in the same ball park I thought I would share my experience / thoughts.

      posted in Hardware
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    • RE: Cloud storage for home automation?

      Your concerns are absolutely valid! And, BTW congratulations for being one of the few nowadays that question these sort of things (privacy, security) in general, instead of just blindly accepting them!

      Why would you not consider rolling your own? There are a number of inexpensive hardware available, and a number of software choices (and/or combinations of softwares that integrate well together) that will let you do almost whatever you want.

      Going the commercial "out of the box" route may be the easiest to get started, but you may eventually run in to proprietary lock in, incompatibility, and/or missing one or more certain features that you really need (some of which, may not even be apparent at the current time).

      It is for these reasons that I tend personally to lean more in the direction of rolling my own, and using open source software, hardware, etc. You can do whatever you want to, and it's almost always costs less money. πŸ™‚ If things end up not working out with one system, you can change software later and go in another direction, you still own your hardware. But, you will need to spend a little time learning some things. Is that so bad? πŸ™‚

      There are many guides, much useful information, and many helpful communities (like this one!) on the internet nowadays; it's really not that difficult. Plus, it is very rewarding learning and figuring things out and accomplishing them. πŸ™‚

      How much/what kind of data do you need to store? Just the HA setup? Sounds like maybe security system video as well? Video can take up a lot of HDD space (or bandwidth, so much in fact that it is probably not practical to upload). Do you also need a backup solution also for perhaps photos and/or other data?

      Give us a little more information about what you want your ultimate, complete dream system to eventually look like and include, and that will allow us to recommend some hardware and software which will (eventually) meet that goal.

      Begin with the end in mind, I say. It will save you a lot of time, headaches, and $ down the road.

      posted in General Discussion
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    • RE: Finally, progress! (evidence based radio testing method) (and capacitors)

      I wanted to test my theory that two different value capacitors in parallel was somehow better than one of a similar capacity. So with everything exactly the same as I had left it last night, I soldered up two new radios, except this time with only a single 10uF electrolytic 50v capacitor, instead of 1uF + 10uF.

      Results can be found in "test 10" above. Looks slightly less reliable at 96.48% than test 8 which was 100%!

      Now, I am not going to the trouble of using the exact same radios, desoldering components, etc... I suppose there is a chance that some of these radios might be "better" in some way than others. They did all come from the same batch at least, FWIW...

      Perhaps one of you professional angry pixie wranglers out there can verify that there is in fact something to the "two capacitors of different values in parallel" theory?

      But for me, this is a dramatic improvement over what I was getting before (test 7 being closest approximation), so I think I will get back to building a new gateway and some new nodes, putting to work some of the things I have learned here.

      Cheers! 🍻

      posted in Troubleshooting
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    • RE: Easy PCB Question

      @grumpazoid said in Easy PCB Question:

      Those cases look good value.

      They are even cheaper on AliExpress, IIRC. I buy through the MySensors store affiliate links whenever possible, but if the price difference is big enough, well... Also some times the store links are not always up to date (thinking further now, I guess the real solution is to probably ping someone about that somehow, in order to get them updated?).

      Often I prefer to directly financially support projects I care about by simply making a donation. Haven't done that in the case of MySensors yet, as they seem to be doing "OK" (although I have no idea really) but I'm sure I will at some point when I am back to work.

      @grumpazoid said in Easy PCB Question:

      Luckily I have access to a 3D printer

      Very nice. This is the best option, of course. I keep thinking about it, and certainly I will pick up (or build) one, sooner or later... For now though, it's still boxes for me. πŸ˜„

      @sundberg84 said in Easy PCB Question:

      who needs to be here wathing your hardware questions when you have such a good community - thanks

      Helping out in whatever small way I can is the least I can do in return of the spirit in which so much thought, research, work has been carried out before I came along, and then shared freely here! Cheers! 🍻

      I certainly do not act this way towards proprietary, closed source solutions and their dinosaur business models, and personally I strongly encourage others to take the same approach. Not a single ounce of my valuable resources (time, thought, mindshare, money, etc.) to support them! In fact I would not so much as urinate on those sort if they were on fire! πŸ˜„

      posted in Hardware
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    • RE: Read this first - it could SAVE YOU A LOT OF TIME

      Like many, I struggled for literally years getting MySensors to work. Recently I tried (yet again) and this time around I began by focussing on an evidence based radio testing method, which for me was the key to success. I humbly cross-link it from here in the hopes that it is helpful to others, because it makes me sad reading how many people have given up trying to get MySensors to work.

      Good luck!

      And by all means please do not suffer, struggling along in silence. Make a post and try and get some help before frustration mounts too high, and you give up (as I did, many times).

      posted in Troubleshooting
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    • RE: MH-Z19 CO2 sensor

      @Joseph-Gill said in MH-Z19 CO2 sensor:

      "simplicity"

      Welcome to the forums, Joseph.

      I am glad to see you put "simplicity" in quotes. Personally, I think that the level of difficulty that is portrayed towards new people (i.e., "it's easy!") is a little misleading. It is easy if you have "The Knack" but perhaps not so for everyone.

      @Joseph-Gill said in MH-Z19 CO2 sensor:

      How hard would it be

      I think this depends mostly on an honest evaluation of your own skills. You will need to have at least basic understanding of the technologies involved: radio propagation, electronics, coding, etc...

      Now, all of this can be learned of course, especially if you have interest, and time...

      So another part of it is also your expectations. If you need something "right now" then you might be happier to go buy something "off the shelf."

      OTOH, if you enjoy tinkering, learning, and want to eventually be able to build all different sort of devices exactly to your specifications and needs, then MySensors might be the right thing for you.

      IMO, I think the best approach is to take this as a hobby, slowly acquiring parts (the least expensive ones take a long time to come from China!) as well as knowledge, and eventually increasing your capabilities over a long period of time. And you will learn (IMO) very valuable skills in the process...

      posted in Hardware
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    • RE: one question ! about interference wave !

      Somewhat related, is anyone aware of a tool that would allow you to visualize (or otherwise look at in any fashion) RF spectrum, without spending an arm and a leg?

      I know I have an app on my Android called Wi-Fi Analyzer, it's very helpful some times in diagnosing overlapping Wi-Fi channels in a crowded apartment building for example.

      I suppose I was just wondering if there was something more generalized to RF and not Wi-Fi channels specifically?

      posted in Vera
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    • RE: Your workshop :)

      I enjoyed perusing everyone's work benches. πŸ™‚

      I have a number of other (non electronic) projects already in the works, but when I complete those I'll be setting up a little area to do my electronic piddling. I'm really looking forward to it.

      When I get that set up, I'll post back here. πŸ™‚

      posted in General Discussion
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    • RE: Finally, progress! (evidence based radio testing method) (and capacitors)

      Not using repeaters, but I am aware that the return from send() is for next hop only. In fact that was part of what convinced me to skip the repeater function in the node I am currently working on, even though it is centrally located and always powered. Well, that plus my radio testing indicating a repeater was not needed as long as I keep all the radios high up on the walls.

      Anyway, I gave it a quick glance, looks nice! I think I might agree with you about the method of logging the time series data, but need to think about it still. I'll dig into it (and that other thread) later on as I'm knee deep in something else at the moment. πŸ™‚

      Thanks for posting up your code! I've pulled enough hair out by now, anything to ease the pain is always greatly appreciated! 🍻

      posted in Troubleshooting
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    Latest posts made by TRS-80

    • RE: The "new" Arduino Pro IDE

      @NeverDie said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      I think of freedom and open source going hand in hand

      And in most of cases, they do. In fact they are almost about the same things (perhaps with some disagreements about how to get there).

      A really good article that I link to often (in fact I think I already did further up thread):

      Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software (from point of view of FSF/GNU) makes some really good points about subtle misunderstandings that can arise from commonly used terms, and why they insist (and people like me agree with and follow) the recommendation to use term "Free Software" or "F/LOSS" instead of the more common nowadays "open source."

      β€œFree software.” β€œOpen source.” If it's the same software (or nearly so), does it matter which name you use? Yes, because different words convey different ideas. While a free program by any other name would give you the same freedom today, establishing freedom in a lasting way depends above all on teaching people to value freedom. If you want to help do this, it is essential to speak of β€œfree software.”

      posted in Development
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    • RE: The "new" Arduino Pro IDE

      @NeverDie said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      it's for profit, yet everything is open source

      The "free" in Free Software is referring to freedom, not price (part of what is explained at link). Charging for your work (or for hardware) is in no way inconsistent with the values of F/LOSS.

      Or as they say "free as in freedom, not as in free beer!"

      GNU_free_as_in_freedom.png

      Also why the "L" in F/LOSS (for Libre).

      Perhaps you are aware of this already, but always there are others reading, too, so I figured it bears repeating...

      @NeverDie said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      Amazon's FreeRTOS at least has Amazon behind it

      They are another 800 pound gorilla in the room, who I don't trust, either. So them being "behind" something, is not a plus, in my view.

      Historically, they have also heavily locked down their e-reader devices. Yet another in a long list of companies who is so obnoxious as to think that they really own the device you paid for with your own hard earned money.

      Other than that, I haven't really followed things on the RTOS front, so maybe I will learn something interesting.

      posted in Development
      TRS-80
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    • RE: Yet Another MySensors Thermostat (US 24VAC multi wire)

      OK, I suppose it's time for an update, as I have actually had this working for some time already. 😎

      Aah, documentation though... πŸ˜„

      Why so many different "thermostat" projects already?

      So first off, I think I learned a couple things from my (admittedly, non-exhaustive) research into existing MySensors (and other) thermostat projects:

      1. Everyone is making a thermostat to work with whatever sort of HVAC system they already have. This varies throughout the world.

      2. Everyone has a different idea about what the UI should be. Some people have nice touch screens, some people prefer physical controls, etc...

      Multiplying #1 by #2 it becomes clear why there is such a proliferation of "MySensors thermostats", and why I did not at first find "the one" general project I thought I was looking for...

      So now taking that into account, I have appended "(US 24VAC multi wire)" to the title, and I will begin by listing what I think a thermostat should be:

      Specifications

      1. Dictated by / must work with my existing HVAC system, which is the very common sort here in US of 24VAC with several wires (one each for heat, compressor, fan, etc...).

      2. In my case, no common comes down from the central unit in the attic to the thermostat/controller. So I will need to provide my own power for the uC and radio (could be 1.b., really).

      3. Personally, I don't really care about fancy UI, touch screens or any of that. In fact, for my purposes (mostly expediency) I am fine with controlling the thing strictly through the HA controller (OpenHAB) through web or other interfaces (voice, XMPP/Jabber, etc.).

      4. I want to be able to make decisions (turn on/off heating/cooling) based on all the temperature sensors in the home, or perhaps an average of them, instead of just the one built in to the thermostat. And perhaps also other things (like weather forecasts).

      5. However, at same time I have built in some failsafes in case the controller (or communication, or whatever other parts of system) should break down.

      OK, I think that just about covers it. I went for an easy implementation, basically some temperature sensors and a few relays. Most of this implementation (besides research πŸ˜„) is in software (on the node as well as in OpenHAB).

      Operational Model

      In order to achieve #4 from Specifications, above, I will need to get the temp from the whole house back to the controller somehow. Well, if it wasn't for #5 I could do everything in the controller (OpenHAB) and just have the node be some dumb relays. But since #5 is a requirement, we must do the actual logic in the node.

      So my plan is to send the average temp in the home to the node every minute or so let's say. Then the node will store this value and make it's decisions based on that value.

      Redundancy / Fallback

      Which leads into this topic. What if the node does not receive the average temp from the controller? Well, the code in the node features a time out. After some configurable time (currently 5 min, which is still less than short cycle minimum cycle limit (more on that below)) the node will simply begin to use the directly attached temperature sensor, instead of the received average value, to continue to make it's own decisions, independently of the controller.

      As a further backup against some catastrophic failure of the node itself (or any part of system really), I have simply left the existing/old unit hooked up. I connected the wires from my new unit straight to the old one (screw terminals) and set the switch on the old one to "OFF." This way, worst case I just unplug my (perhaps failed) unit and turn the switch on the old one back "ON" and we would be right back in business.

      Hysteresis and Short Cycling

      Finally, if you have read anything about this topic, or ever thought about doing it yourself, you will at some point come across some mention of these topics.

      I will admit to being overly worried of them too for a while (what if I break my main HVAC unit, etc.), until I simply started paying close attention to my existing HVAC unit, including actually timing the cycles.

      When I realized that (in our case) the thing seems to run for at least 30-40 minutes at a time, I quit worrying about it so much. Also I found some other info online that basically said the longer you run the unit for at each cycle, the more efficient it is.

      But I have read some threads where people go really bananas on this topic, and to put it simply, I am almost certain that very few if any thermostat manufacturers fret over "hysteresis" as much as some of these various online fora pontificatiors do. Anyway, I suppose I have done enough research by now to not be worried about it any more.

      I have made provision to set some minimum cycle time in the node (so far 20 min), and that is good enough. I may adjust this value over time.

      For "hysteresis" I have the code in the node currently written like:

      if (ROOM_TEMP >= HVAC_SET_COOL) {
        // turn on A/C
      }
      

      Careful observers will note that the >= (as opposed to just >) builds in 1 degree a sort of "hysteresis" (in addition to the minimum cycle time).

      I think I wrote enough for today. I need to clean up the whole code before I post it. The hardware is uninteresting, but I guess I can post pics if anyone is interested. Let me know.

      Screen shots of UI (in OpenHAB / Basic UI)

      One thing that is easy to share is a screen shot from the interface in OpenHAB. I guess I can post that as a teaser (I have dark theme set on almost everything, including browser, use your imagination if you prefer white background πŸ˜ƒ ) :

      2020-07-15_screenshot.png

      OK, fine! Since it's really hard to see the "raised card" effect of OpenHAB with a dark background, I turned off my dark browser theme, so here it is in white:

      2020-07-15_screenshot2.png

      Let me know what you think. Any questions, etc...

      posted in My Project
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    • RE: The "new" Arduino Pro IDE

      @BearWithBeard said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      Microsoft

      Well, if I still remember Arduino founder antics, they have got nothing on Microsoft. πŸ˜„ It's not for no reason they are shunned by many (including myself). I am not sure how old you are Bear (I suspect a little younger than me) however I still well remember their funding of SCO–Linux lawsuits, Embrace, extend, and extinguish, patent abuse, and on and on and on...

      Not picking on you personally, Bear, nor your choices. Just pointing out facts for anyone (perhaps including yourself) who may be unaware that Microsoft have been actively hostile towards the principles of Free/Libre Software for a very, very long time now. Personally I am not "buying" that they suddenly "got religion" with regards to open source, regardless of their huge recent marketing effort to the contrary.

      @BearWithBeard said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      I've downloaded the Pro IDE earlier this year - I think it was still Alpha 0.0.5 - and at first glance it had a lot of similarities with VS Code. It has the same look and feel, many UI concepts are identical. The config is now a (UI-configurable) JSON file, just like in VS Code. Among others, it uses the same CTRL + P and CTRL + SHIFT + P shortcuts to search for files and commands. Then again, even such basic things like code formatting or even syntax highlighting didn't work at all. And almost a year after its introduction, it's still in an (early?) alpha stage - so I don't know what we should realistically expect from it. I mean, it's definitely a step in the right direction, but they have a looong way to go to be able to compete with other IDEs.

      This is why I pinged you. Personally, I'm not even going to spend any of my valuable time looking into it. But I somewhat expected you had, and also you are more open-minded towards it. So, thanks for the feedback in case anyone is interested.

      @BearWithBeard said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      I was curious if they would manage to implement an open hardware debugger for AVRs, because as of yet, this is AFAIK still only possible with proprietary Atmel / Microchip hard- and software. But I doubt that this is going to happen.

      I have come across some mentions about "debugging" in PlatformIO but to be honest never really looked into it yet, as so far I haven't needed to (as far as I know). But if this is "hardware" related as you say, I wonder how they are doing that? Maybe just software support, in the case your hardware already supports it I guess </total wild arse speculation πŸ˜„ >?

      posted in Development
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    • RE: converting a project to mysensors.

      I am pretty sure there are already some posts about that, did you study those? They will probably be helpful in getting you started.

      Other than that, post whatever specific problems you run into as you go along, and you will be more likely to get some specific replies.

      posted in My Project
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    • RE: The "new" Arduino Pro IDE

      @Sasquatch said in The "new" Arduino Pro IDE:

      arduino didn't lower board prices, aliexpress clone sellers did

      Of course. And Chinese will probably copy/clone it anyway sooner or later (if popular enough), even if it was not F/LOSS/H (actually, H - Hardware) design. However Arduino founders deserve credit for liberating the hardware designs (instead of clinging stubbornly to some dinosaur business model). Which was the point I was trying to make. And I like to think had a large part in their success, or rather, success of whole ecosystem (clones included).

      posted in Development
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    • RE: πŸ’¬ Personal EPD terminal

      Very nice!

      Clean, professional looking! πŸ‘

      posted in OpenHardware.io
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    • RE: BATERY CHARGER CONNECTION ?

      @Sasquatch said in BATERY CHARGER CONNECTION ?:

      Tp4056 is linear regulator, very inefficient, look at spv1040 or spv1050 instead - MPPT tracking propper solar chargers.

      C-x b wiki.org -> Electronics <TAB> -> Components <TAB> -> Power -> C-u M-<RET> to create new sub-heading ("MPPT tracking solar chargers"), paste (Yank) useful info for future reference. πŸ˜‰

      posted in General Discussion
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    • RE: Is there a 3D printable enclosure for RPi 4 w/ serial gateway?

      @Kikakee,

      Looks very nice and professional!

      Couldn't help but wonder however if there is a way to connect the Arduino to the RPi through internal GPIO pins, in order to eliminate the external USB cable? I think that would be the finishing touch on such an otherwise nice looking project.

      Version 0.3 perhaps? If not I (and perhaps others coming by later) suppose I was wondering if there was some technical reason why not to do this?

      Or maybe you simply didn't get around to it yet (perfectly acceptable reason as well πŸ˜ƒ ).

      posted in Enclosures / 3D Printing
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    • RE: BATERY CHARGER CONNECTION ?

      @jongnum said in BATERY CHARGER CONNECTION ?:

      TP4056

      Quick Internet search on that confirmed my suspicions that it's some sort of solar charge controller.

      So basically you are going to connect that between the panel and the battery. How exactly? I could make a guess just based on the pins in your diagram here, however you would be much better off simply studying its datasheet.

      posted in General Discussion
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