Posts made by TRS-80

@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."

“Free software.” “Open 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 “free software.”

@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!"

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.

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

Aah, documentation though...

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 ) 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 ) :

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:

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

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

Microsoft

Well, if I still remember Arduino founder antics, they have got nothing on Microsoft. 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 >?

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.

@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).

Very nice!

Clean, professional looking!

@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.

@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 ).

@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.

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

Has anyone tried it?

@BearWithBeard had mentioned it in his reply in my thread about PlatformIO; I am not sure if he has used it yet or just mentioning he was aware of it.

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

I'm not a fan of Electron-based apps

Eww. Me neither.

Having said that, I do use (and actually like) draw.io (or whatever it's called now) and that is also Electron based. Although in that case it's more like "desktop version of an online service."

Although the more I think about it now, perhaps that is what they are going for here, too?

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

maybe this is a step up from the original Arduino IDE?

I suppose that anything is.

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

does Arduino have the bench strength, let alone the focused attention, to ever finish it?

You know, part of reason I have bad taste in my mouth about Arduino project as a whole is because of the stunt (at least that one) founder of Arduino tried to pull in cutting out the other founders once they started to become very popular (and make money). I suppose I never recovered from that, and therefore will always be suspicious of any of their initiatives.

I give them a lot of credit for what they accomplished, for open sourcing it, bringing uCs to the masses, lowering prices, which made Nice Things(tm) much more available for everyone (most especially, tinkerers like us). And I fully admit to not keeping abreast of whatever else they have done in the meantime. But once something like that goes down, it tends to stick with you (at least it does me) for quite a long time...

And so forgive me if I am hesitant to get excited about this, or cynically expect it to turn into some "revenue stream" (i.e. "PRO"), or "cloud" product, etc. as to me these people (if they are even still the same people) have already shown their true colors (at least from my point of view). I know this will likely rustle the jimmies of some of "nicer / more polite" people on this forum than myself, but I call 'em like I see 'em.

@monte said in Looking for a 12-24v DC to 5vDC converter:

don't expect 3A from those exact small modules

No, I don't need it. Only a little bit (far less than 1A) for the uC + radio.

In this case I am just looking to power the uC off the same power supply as LEDs which have already reduced the mains down to 24VDC. I just thought it would be silly to have yet another power supply for the uC (coming from mains I mean), in addition to the one that's already there for the LEDs. So I plan to "piggy back" off that one, getting the 24VDC down finally to the 5VDC or whatever is needed for the uC + radio.

But it is very nice to have such a wide range of inputs (and adjustable output!) available, for as yet unknown future projects / needs. Especially when finding nice and inexpensive module like this, and order some 10s of them from China and just keep them on hand!

@monte said in Looking for a 12-24v DC to 5vDC converter:

MP1584

Ah yes! Those look perfect! Thanks, Monte!

Are those exact same as what was linked (name change perhaps)? Or different modules altogether, but meeting same requirements? I'm even more curious now about these mystery modules Gert had posted about!

@GertSanders said in Looking for a 12-24v DC to 5vDC converter:

I use these:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Standard-Power-Supply-Module-Adjustable-Step-down-3A-DC-DC-Converter-1pc-New-SG053-SZ/32321296375.html?spm=2114.01020208.3.2.d0AiJe&ws_ab_test=201556_2,201527_3_71_72_73_74_75,201560_1

I came across this topic today while looking for same. Of course by now this link is dead. I also tried picking part name, number, etc. out of the link with no success.

LM2596 based modules certainly seem well available and inexpensive, however I am very interested in a module that is smaller than that.

@projectMarvin said in Suggestions for my setup? Very new here.:

I would advise against messing with the FW unless you need to

I agree with general gist of your whole post, except this one point.

If we are talking about stuff like {Tasmota, ESPurna, ESPEasy, etc.} this "messing with firmware" is how you achieve freedom / independence from "clouds" / etc. and by now has become quite mundane and easy, even being able to do so over the air, with no need of soldering.

Other sorts of devices may lead to other conclusions where firmware tinkering may be much more difficult.

Of course, technically you are correct by saying "unless you need to." However in my view (apparently yours as well ), independence from "clouds" is a "need."

Cheers!

@Sasquatch said in Suggestions for my setup? Very new here.:

avoid cloud based sensors at all cost for security and future proofing reasons.

+1

All that "cloud" means is "someone else's computer."

If you do not understand how anything works and just buy some device(s), you will most likely be at mercy of high priced, proprietary locked-in solutions. But as you increase your knowledge, you (greatly!) increase your options and freedom to make different choices!

At least you are doing research, good for you, keep it up!

@Smart-Projects-ABC said in Suggestions for my setup? Very new here.:

Support Google Home Assistant or Amazon Alexa. One of these will be your main control interface.

I disagree with this. Yes I know vast majority of people will do this because "it's easier." However those things creeps me out, personally I would never have one in my home.

I was able to get full and custom (much better than Amazon/Google, actually) voice control in my system using completely F/LOSS Software and Hardware. Yes it took a little more work to set up. But for me, well worth it. And I actually not only have freedom and privacy, but also quite a lot more functionality than what I see friends are able to do with their proprietary solutions.

@Stefan_NE said in ESP8266 Gateway (RFM69) Soft WDT reset every 5 - 10 min:

What I can say for sure is that there is a lot of traffic on the gateway...

It sounds to me like you are on the right track. Proceeding in an organized methodical fashion. I am sure you will get it sorted out this way. And thanks for sharing your progress in the meantime, it will likely help others later.

I am not even up to that many nodes myself yet either, so I'd be interested in anyone's feedback who is, because I do plan to have that many nodes (or more) "some day."

So I got wondering if there have already been any forum threads about large numbers of nodes, and I found this one where some "back of envelope" calculations stated that some thousands (actually 10s of thousands) of nodes were (at least theoretically) possible...

@Oumuamua said in ESP8266 Gateway (RFM69) Soft WDT reset every 5 - 10 min:

Could you the scheme on how to add the capacitor?

We got into pretty good discussion of capacitors in my evidence based testing thread. I had read a lot that one larger + one smaller cap actually works the best. I am no EE either, so I tested several different combinations, the results you can see there along with a very big close up picture I took of how to solder the caps onto the radio.

@jo34l5,

Maybe check out Dr. Zs on YouTube. His channel seems geared more to non-techies. He is big into Sonoff / Tasmota stuff, etc. which nowadays are pretty easy (you can flash them OTA, no more need of soldering).

Having said that, the more you learn, the more options open up to you. Also you will pick up more and more of the stuff over time, no need to rush. Take your time and treat it as a hobby. It took me literally years to get where I am now, I finally got some certain things working that I had wanted to for a long time. But my skills (and parts inventory, etc.) was not up to par yet. Well, now it is.

Another thing to consider, architecturally, is there are couple ways to tie together even otherwise disparate systems. In other words. no need to "commit" to any particular system. Here at Casa de TRS-80 we are using 433mhz, MySensors, as well as some Wi-Fi outlets, etc...

There are a couple different ways to do that. Either in your controller, and/or with some intermediate messaging protocol like MQTT. MQTT is rapidly becoming something like the middle "glue" layer between disparate systems. Lots of things talk MQTT nowadays.

Anyway that way you can mix and match. I bought some Wi-Fi plugs and 433mhz stuff to "get started" and get a few things working, but now I am getting better with MySensors and more "advanced" stuff... Just a thought!

I have not had any trouble just buying my radios the normal way on AliExpress. To me normal means buying about 10 or 20 at a time from the cheapest seller I can find with a high number of sales under their belt and a good reputation. I am getting nRF24 though, not sure if situation is different with RFM59W.

I think most of the stuff you read in forums about fakes was from years ago. Or maybe I am just lucky.

@henk-herck said in Why is stropts.h included ?:

the manufactures are not that interested

There is this, which is true, and then there is outright hostility towards F/LOSS development, which is typically a product of dinosaur business model lock-in mindset (RPi, Nvidea, etc...), which I can only hope will finally die off sooner or later.

@henk-herck said in Why is stropts.h included ?:

amlogic ,allwinner ,rockchip are less known socs but have nice features

Yes, personally I am well aware, but good to mention for others reading. Currently I am eagerly awaiting the release of the version of Helios64 (Rockchip based, IIRC) which is supposed to come with ECC RAM! This will eventually become my new 64-bit ARM ECC ZFS NAS (wow that was a lot of alphabet soup!).

@henk-herck said in Problem changing CS and CE pins on RPi gateway:

Get Armbian and have mainline kernel and up to date linux distro

This is main reason I have become such big fan (and proponent) of Armbian ever since finding out about it only a few years ago!

Very glad to run into a fellow man of taste and distinction!

At least you are able to help OP in the meantime with what he has now. I can't even do that any more as I gave up on RPi long time ago.

@Yveaux said in Time Series Database?:

fed into node-red, formatted and stored in influxdb from there.

I continue to think about this topic. Are you using Node Red as your primary "controller"? Or do you use some other controller, and then only use Node Red for data processing?

I went ahead and filed a bug about this. Thanks for the report @henk-herck.

@henk-herck said in Why is stropts.h included ?:

not RPI specific it is LINUX

RPi have some particular problems because they are on old kernels and custom crap because of the locked down bootloader. Which appears at first to be a "Linux" problem, but ultimately is due to the fact that they are un-cooperative (even hostile) toward Linux developers with their locked down bootloader / binary blob GPU / etc...

EDIT: I just read your post again more carefully, seems this indeed is not relevant in this particular case. Even from the beginning it was only a generalization on my part about RPi anyway. But seems as I am preaching to the choir in this regard, as evidenced by your next comment...

@henk-herck said in Why is stropts.h included ?:

RPI is not that good reccomment more a Odroid or a Orange Pi

Wow, it makes me happy to see someone else realize this. I often feel as if I am on a one man crusade to educate people in this regard.

I like you, you can stay.

Certainly you must be aware of Armbian then, if you have managed to escape the RPi plantation and are already using these sort of boards like you mention.

Welcome to the forums!

Welcome to the forums, tinnut!

@tinnut said in Problem changing CS and CE pins on RPi gateway:

I found MySensors and now I think I have a new hobby

(Emphasis mine). This is certainly the right approach, IMO.

Contrary to popular opinion, I am not such a fan of RPi, but since you already have it, on we go. Even I must admit that it was my first purchase, before I knew any better.

@tinnut said in Problem changing CS and CE pins on RPi gateway:

I found that the rpi would only successfully connect to the nrf24 when I'm using the default CS and CE pins. When I try to change their pins using --my-rf24-ce-pin=33 --my-rf24-cs-pin=37 with the configure script, it didn't appear the change the pins as the rpi would fail to connect to the nrf24 on those pins, but could still connect with the default pins. When the make is running, I can see it launching g++ with -DMY_RF24_CS_PIN=37 -DMY_RF24_CE_PIN=33.
I also tried directly editing the MyConfig.h file to explicitly define the values, but that failed to work as well.
The OpenSprinkler RPi PCB board and case makes it harder (but not impossible) to access the back row of pins which is why I was trying to use non-default pins in the first place.
If I add --extra-cxxflags="-DMY_DEBUG_VERBOSE_RF24" to the configure script, then when I run a test, it includes the output:
DEBUG RF24:INIT:PIN,CE=33,CS=37

Which suggests that the software knows that's I've specified alternate pins to use.

As to particulars of this issue, hopefully one of devs familiar with that part of code (build scripts for RPi?) stops by. Because I am not that person. Furthermore as mentioned, I eschew RPi (for lots of reasons). You could also help the project out tremendously by lodging an issue over at the GitHub, which is probably more likely to get addressed (sooner or later) than posting here in forums, where possibly it could get overlooked.

@tinnut said in Problem changing CS and CE pins on RPi gateway:

I'm using DietPi distribution, btw. It does some things a little different which complicates things.

As you are just beginning to figure out (perhaps) this is only one aspect of the problems with RPi. I played around with DietPi once a little bit (if that is what I am thinking of), what a mess with all their custom stuff going on. It was very hard to even know what is really going on with it, I finally gave up.

Someone else was having some problems also with similar hardware (ESP8266 + RFM69) recently, I don't know yet whether those problems are related or not, just cross posting in case this turns into some sort of investigation.

I don't use this hardware, but I will try to assist nonetheless.

First things to check are the basics:

1. Sufficient / reliable power supply?
2. What changed in the meantime?

In general, yes, the MySensors framework (library?) should support FOTA a couple different ways (read more at link). Were you aware of this, or is there some problem with your particular hardware?

@NielBierman said in FOTA possibilities for remote sensor network:

Raspberry pi

I don't know yet whether you even need to change your gateway from microcontroller (uC) to Single Board Computer (SBC) or not. However if you do (or are looking for a controller, or whatever), by all means, please do yourself (and all of us) a favor and do a little more research as there are lots of better options out there for SBC nowadays, than RPi!

For me, uC have been fine for gateway although I do use some SBC for controllers, MQTT broker, and various other GNU/Linux based servers/services and they are wonderful for that. But perhaps your needs are different from mine.

I don't know this problem in detail (and didn't bother spending time reading into it). But is this yet another (only one of very many) typical RPi related problem? It boggles my mind how often these things are recommended to people...

@ozrex,

I don't want to assume your knowledge level. However the truth is that you will probably need to put together different bits and pieces from various threads in order to come up with your own custom solution (the A/C interface (IR) part, the battery part, etc...).

Maybe it is worth it to create your own new thread, or maybe you want to keep researching / trying on your own a little longer first. The latter is admirable, and is the way I usually do it, too. Some times to a fault in my own case. Don't suffer along in silence if you are struggling to find the information, make a thread instead. If it becomes too difficult you may give up. We all need some small successes along the way to keep motivated and keep it fun.

Probably best to create a new thread (I don't want to derail this one too much) but something you might want to look into is OpenMQTTGateway. I use it for my 433mhz, but it also supports RF, BLE, LoRa (and perhaps others in future) all on the same gateway! To me that was the way to go... And so far has been flawless for me.

I am sorry but your reply is still not very helpful. In general I feel like this is an interrogation session in order to discover relevant information, making the whole process much more difficult than necessary. Please keep in mind that we know absolutely nothing about your system other than what you tell us, and if we instead substitute assumptions, that can lead us to wrong conclusions. In other words, please be more forthcoming with relevant information so we don't have to keep playing this cat and mouse game.

@amkochaki said in V_VOLTGEM EXAMPLE:

My motion sensores are the same of my alarm system.

I don't think that you mentioned anything about what is your alarm system, how it works, etc. therefore this statement is meaningless (at least to me). Perhaps I missed something?

@amkochaki said in V_VOLTGEM EXAMPLE:

Are connected on analogic pins.

Perhaps you are unaware, but the analog pins on the arduino can also be used as Genral Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins, aka digital. So again, this statement still does not clarify whether your sensors are analog or digital...

@amkochaki said in V_VOLTGEM EXAMPLE:

So I need that Arduíno read voltage of the sensores.

Yes, of course. But (at least to me) we still have not determined whether they are analog or digital... Both are measuring voltages, the question is how...

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with difference between analog and digital? I don't like to assume anyone's knowledge level, which can lead to wrong conclusions. On the other hand, I don't want to insult anyone, either...

Besides what Bob (?) mentioned (you seem to be making progress, breadboard unreliability, specifics), I would point out that there have been a number of discussions about ACKs, re-sending, reliability, keeping stats of NACK percentages (as a possible indicator of some problem), etc. over the years. The most recent I can recall was probably this one that I learned about when @BearWithBeard mentioned it here in my evidence based radio testing method (and capacitors) thread. My thread is more about hardware and radio testing, but we get into the subject of software ACKs etc. there in my thread a bit, and also in the linked thread.

Is that the sort of stuff you are looking for?

@MisterMel said in !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY:

The ones with external antenna still don't work, but the it will probably be fine without them

I run all "regular" nRF24 radios, including the gateway, and it works well enough for me. My place is pretty small, but there are masonry walls and walls with metal studs that seem to cut down on range. I found putting the nodes up high on my walls helps a lot.

Glad to hear you got it working.

One more thing I wanted to re-iterate, for people coming along searching this topic later. I mentioned before, but keep experiencing this as I am working on some nodes the last couple days. Seems to me that fairly often actually, right after (re-)flashing and node boot up for first time on new software, I often get a lot of FPAR errors, which the node does not seem to come out of on it's own. But one or two resets (via on-board button) and then it starts working. Not sure what that is all about, or if others have experienced same, but I thought I would mention it again before people go nuts with other troubleshooting steps, and pulling their hair out.

Nice video here about different types of capacitors, and why you see .1uF used so often in digital circuits:

Why electrolytic capacitors are actually kinda crappy 💩 – 07:21
— Afrotechmods

Credit to @NeverDie, who originally posted it here.

In the meantime I discovered a much more portable, easier to use, and even more feature filled implementation of essentially the same ideas as my OP in nRF24Doctor.

Of course, doing the way I did in OP requires no special equipment really, but if you get into MySensors enough, it's probably handy to have a dedicated hardware device for such common issues. I am now quite sure I will build one, sooner or later, as they are only few bucks worth of quite common parts. Worth it, to me!

EDIT:
nRF24Doctor was apparently put on GitHub, including, PDFs of the PCBs. I thought it would be handy to have KiCAD / Gerber files of them instead, so I asked them about that (or even putting it on OpenHardware.io for that matter), I guess we will see what they say!

@Yveaux,

Stop adding on to my list!

Nice piece of kit! I am sure I will build one sooner or later. It's like a much more portable, easier to use, and more feature filled implementation of my evidence based radio testing method. I even think I have all parts needed on hand (or on the way) already, except for the PCB.

Speaking of which, I saw some talk in that thread about PCB design over at GitHub, hopefully that is still available, as I did not see any page on Hardware section about nRF24doctor...?

@Yveaux said in nRF24Doctor:

I've run multiple gateways using W5100 on hw spi with atmega328 and never had any issues apart from that SD card select line.

Very interesting. I just (few weeks ago) built an Ethernet gateway recently and at the time followed the recommendation for soft SPI. Then more recently I read about hardware SPI being required for MY_RX_MESSAGE_BUFFER_FEATURE which of course would be a valuable feature on a gateway.

@benbidouille,

Did you ever investigate further? Even if not, I will probably do so on my own, sooner or later, as I have a few of the various W5500 cheap modules here...

Video in OP was good for "beginner" but you very quickly run into other issues. For me it was getting confused by lots of talk about interrupts (in relation to "input" type sensors). All of Build pages for these type of sensors mention about interrupts only being available on pins 2 and 3 (assuming Arduino Pro Mini, etc.). Which only confused me further (at first). However maybe you are smarter than me. But look closely, most (all?) of MySensors code I have seen for "inputs" (door, motion, etc.) actually DO NOT use interrupts! Notice the code runs right in the main loop. Interrupts are only needed when you sleep the node!

Everything I talk about here is for always powered nodes, where you do not need to sleep because you are not on batteries. For batteries you need to sleep to save power, and then we have to do things different. Then you will need to use the hardware interrupts, to wake the node from sleeping. But that I will call "advanced" and beyond the scope of this particular post here, which I am calling "intermediate". So, back to that...

You can use any pin you want (almost) for inputs when you are not sleeping the node. OP video does mention about non blocking code, but he does not go into detail. I don't know why not, as it is not complicated. You simply do wait() instead of sleep(). Or, if you are combining one or more thing(s) that needs to "listen" all the time (lets say, an actuator/relay, and for fun let's add a motion sensor, too!), with something that needs to send() periodically (let's say a temperature sensor) then you just keep looping over and over checking all your inputs, and then only enter the output (temperature) part of the code every so many millis(). An example:

void loop()     
{
  // put code here to check motion sensor (copy from loop() part of motion sensor sketch)

  // now we check if enough time has passed to check temperature, if so we enter this subroutine
  if ( millis() > millisLastTemperature + TEMPERATURE_CHECK_INTERVAL )
    {
    // put code here to check temperature sensor(s)

    // Right before we exit temperature subroutine, note current time as last time temperature was sent.
    millisLastTemperature = millis();
    }

// That's it for main loop()
}

// the relay needs code to receive incoming messages
void receive(const MyMessage &message)
{
  // Put code here from receive() part of relay sketch
}

Doing this way, you could even combine multiple sensors (temperature, humidity, light, etc.) to take readings even on different intervals. Just duplicate that subroutine, and give each one their own <SENSOR>_CHECK_INTERVAL variable. Just remember to define all your variables at the top of the sketch, and when dealing with millis() you want to use data type of unsigned long.

Speaking of which, I think you also must have some very basic programming or even logical skills. But there is a lot of information in Internet nowadays, so hopefully you can study and teach yourself enough to get by.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to post if you run into trouble. Don't suffer along in silence and then give up, without saying anything to anyone. Ask me how I know.

@RainbowStalin said in ESPboy: Games, IoT, STEM for education & fun (ESP8266 core):

I don't know if this is a good idea.

Is pouring gasoline on a fire a good idea?

Unfortunate situation, I feel for you. I drag my son away from his video games to come with me doing projects and going to hardware store, etc. He sometimes protests a bit at first, but in the end always enjoys spending time with me, doing, and learning things. But he is now 12. I am not sure how far gone your little brother is. We also work very hard to limit his exposure to subversive elements which is pretty much all of popular culture nowadays, unfortunately.

@MisterMel said in !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY:

The new NRF's are the version without external antenna, so I guess they would probably also work without the regulator

This is how I do my gateway with a Nano, and it has been flawless. Do note however that I am using a combination of capacitors which testing revealed were optimal for my setup. Prior to doing that, I did not have nearly as much success / reliability (as can be read in the thread)!

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

only one library i do find in Arduino IDE library manager

I started using PlatformIO recently, and I much prefer their way of searching libraries. When you do pio run it will even take the library.h file name that you are missing and give you a link to look it up in their library search. You can also search there for library name, or file names. Very handy!

Anyway, a bit offtopic for this thread, so recently I started another one where we can discuss PlatformIO (if you are interested).

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

i switched to MQTT and it works fine, and i think MQTT client is more important for me

I rebuilt my gateway recently (few weeks ago) and this time I decided to go MQTT way. I actually have MQTT broker running on separate machine from my HA controller. Sort of distributed architecture, if you will. So far I am really liking this approach. Soon I will add some additional monitoring and metrics based directly off the MQTT, these will also be totally independent of the controller.

Didn't you say plain sketch was working? Other than only being able to connect only once via telnet?

To be honest I am not familiar with using telnet for testing this sort of thing, so I installed it here on my Debian development machine to try and replicate what you are doing, but so far no luck. Probably because first time with tool and simply haven't figured it out yet. But this is what I get so far (probably doing something wrong):

┌─[ 2020-06-26 09:33 trs80@host:~ ]
└─▶ $ telnet 192.168.x.y 1883

Trying 192.168.x.y...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

┌─[ 2020-06-26 09:33 trs80@host:~ ]
└─▶ $ telnet 192.168.x.y:1883

telnet: could not resolve 192.168.x.y:1883/telnet: Name or service not known

Note I am running an MQTT gateway, therefore I set port 1883 in my sketch, furthermore I am running in MY_GATEWAY_MQTT_CLIENT mode (I think I read server mode is default in plain (non-MQTT) Ethernet sketch? not sure). So that could be part of my problem here, too.

I just checked my local files for my gateway, and looks like MySensors is v2.3.2.

I am inclined to think the problem is somewhere else, before assuming a bug in MySensors, however it is possible (although unlikely IMO) that potentially could be the problem. One easy way to find out, anyway...

OK, so it appears the Ethernet part works? I am still not sure what this is about though?:

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

When i close connection (by ctrl+] and close), then i cannot connect to it again

Other than this (potential?) problem, if Ethernet works, brings me back to what I speculated above about the main loop running too much...

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

Well what can i say, it works. I can ping, just after a reboot i can connect to 5003 via telnet.
When i close connection (by ctrl+] and close), then i cannot connect to it again

Was this with the plain (MySensors) Ethernet code? Or your code from OP with the loop commented out?

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

Maybe it's some kind of problem with library version?
I found that only compatibile Ethernet library for MySensors is 2.0.0. so i cant downgrade it, but maybe MySensors has some bug here?

I just put together Ethernet based gateway (with MQTT, but that shouldn't matter) based on W5500 and Arduino Nano not too long ago. I used platform.io, which (I just double checked my local files) apparently pulled in same v2.0.0 of Ethernet library. And mine works absolutely flawless for a few weeks now.

How about we back up a little and go step by step. Try just the plain (MySensors) Ethernet gateway code and see how that works?

@grumpazoid said in Easy PCB Question:

I've switched to open source solutions wherever able.

Good for you!

Personally I prefer the term Free/Libre Software to "Open Source." They are very similar ideas, but not exactly the same.

Cheers!

Well, I am only part way into my first cup of coffee, so maybe my brain just isn't working yet. But so far I am failing to understand what all this shouldAsk and justAsked business is all about? Why not just do a simple check on millis() and if enough time has passed, enter the measurement function? Something like:

void loop() {
  if ( millis() > previousBME280Millis + BME280measurementInterval ) {
    // take measurements, etc...
  }

The way it is presented in OP is, IMO, much more complicated than necessary. Or maybe someone smarter can point out what I am missing?

Your BME280measurementInterval = 60000 (60 seconds), so if you:

@NeoX said in Arduino Mega + W5500 + BME280 = Connection refused all the time:

get measurements every 10 seconds

... then it makes me suspect that something is wrong with the main loop there. And if the loop is hogging the CPU, maybe the Ethernet interface can't get a word in edgewise?

But I couldn't seem to figure out the loop, with everything you've got going on there. Maybe I try again in a little while when I have had some coffee and am all the way "on."

@electrik said in PlatformIO instead of official Arduino IDE:

the inline error checking saves a lot of time

I used the official IDE so little, and it was so long ago, that I did not even remember that it doesn't do this (I thought it did! but I don't remember). So thanks for reminder!

@electrik said in PlatformIO instead of official Arduino IDE:

much easier to use with different library or platform versions on one system

Yes! This is what I meant by finally feeling organized!

For those who haven't used PlatformIO, you just do $ pio project init --board pro16MHzatmega328 (for example) in whatever directory, and it sets up folder structure and everything. Then there is a platform.ini file where you can specify what libraries you want to use (even pin them to specific versions!) and they will be automatically downloaded and put into appropriate folders within the current project only. So very easy and clear to keep libraries separated between projects.

Here is my platform.ini for recent project with MySensors and Dallas Temperature libraries:

; PlatformIO Project Configuration File
;
;   Build options: build flags, source filter
;   Upload options: custom upload port, speed and extra flags
;   Library options: dependencies, extra library storages
;   Advanced options: extra scripting
;
; Please visit documentation for the other options and examples
; https://docs.platformio.org/page/projectconf.html

[platformio]
default_envs = pro16MHzatmega328

[env:pro16MHzatmega328]
platform = atmelavr
board = pro16MHzatmega328
framework = arduino
lib_deps =
  548  ; MySensors
  54   ; DallasTemperature

You can specify Libraries either by their name or number. I do by number because it's more accurate IMO. But the results will be sorted by popularity, so for example if you searched for (or specifed in your platformio.ini file) "MySensors" you would still get lib number 548 anyway. It's all very slick and well thought out.

Aha! You are right! I never looked closely at the regulator before, but sure enough it says "5.0" on it!

I learned something today...

OK, I had always heard stuff along these lines (in vague terms) but never explained so explicitly and clearly:

@BearWithBeard said in !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY:

The Nano doesn't have a dedicated voltage regulator for 3.3V on board. 3.3V are provided through an LDO integrated into the USB-UART controller. If it's a genuine FTDI, it can provide up to 50 mA, but if your Nano is a Chinese clone, it's more likely that they are using a CH340 or something like that. This chip may be able to deliver 25 mA or so and might not be able to regulate larger loads properly, which could cause a lot of noise on the 3.3V line - something that NRF24 transceivers don't like at all.

So, sorry for going offtopic a bit, but I couldn't help but wonder how much "regular" nRF24L01+ draw (especially since I sometimes power them directly from 3.3V on Nano). I guess I could look on the datasheet... Maximum I see there in section 5.1 Power Consumption (p. 14) is 13.5 mA (typical) for receiving at 2 Mbpsl however for the 250kbps that (I think?) MySensors is set at, it says 12.6 mA (typical). Of course clones could differ, but I still think I should be well within acceptable range, especially with supply caps that I always add to the radio... Anyway, something to be aware of for sure...

@BearWithBeard said in !TSM:FPAR:NO REPLY:

The Nano doesn't have a dedicated voltage regulator for 3.3V on board. 3.3V are provided through an LDO integrated into the USB-UART controller.

I had to do a double take when I read this. Then I had to pull one of mine out, because I was sure I thought I saw a regulator on there. And sure enough, I have an AMS1117 right on the bottom side of the board, along with the CH340. And mine are cheap Chinese clones. I can take a pic if you like? So, does this mean that:

1. Mine are different from the norm? Or,

2. The Bear is perhaps mistaken?

I am often impressed by your knowledge and attention to detail, @BearWithBeard, so I'm not sure which case would surprise me more.

Good to hear you got it sorted!

@mountainman said in Sensebendermicro.ino verify errors:

I also got platform.io setup so I'm going to transition to using it going forward in order to help pin the dependencies.

Neat! I'm really curious to hear how you get on with it.

But then I thought, maybe better make a separate thread for that, so I did so here.

Personally, I just started using it and prefer it a lot over the official IDE. Since I seem to now have at least one convert now (and it has come up in other threads too lately) I figured well maybe better to make a separate thread.

I did a search, and there are some discussions going all the way back to 2016 (at least) which surprised me a bit, because (personally) I did not hear about PlatformIO until much more recently it seems.

The main guy behind PlatformIO, Ivan, even has an account here and replied to a lot of questions before which I thought was very cool!

The official IDE had almost turned me off entirely to Arduino development at one point. Now I tried again recently, and started out this time with PlatformIO and it has made all the difference for me! Developing on Arduino seems fun again! And much more organized (apparently to me fun == organized, but remember, I'm descended from Germans! )!

Discuss.

What are you powering the RPi with? It needs to be a good quality 2A (or more) supply.

Is this a serial gateway? Was it always attached to RPi, or this is a recent change (that was unclear to me from your statement)?

I don't know about RFM69 model numbers, because I don't use those (I use regular old nRF24). Maybe someone else can answer that?

I haven't used Nodemcu yet (just ordered first ones to play with) but a (quick) Internet search revealed some issues with unstable pin assignments at startup. Could be related?

@amkochaki said in V_VOLTGEM EXAMPLE:

the analog ports I use for motion sensors

What kind of motion sensors are you using?

The very common HC-SR501 type are digital. So if using digital type of sensors, I think it should just be a matter of setting the pin accordingly.

But if using some motion sensors with analog outputs (do such things exist?) would be a different scenario. MySensors sketch is written for digital.

Wow, I would have never thought that many either! Well done, guys.

I was satisfied when hek said we were above water, and should remain so foreseeable future. But thank you for the additional disclosure @tbowmo, I am sure anyone searching for such information will appreciate your forthrightness.

Well, this is certainly not a MySensors question. You probably need to do more research about 433mhz stuff in general, and/or the Sonoff RF bridge, if that is the system you are interested in using. I am pretty sure there must be some Sonoff forums somewhere where you could get support?

I can tell you that there are lots of different ways to interact with 433mhz stuff, just depends which way you prefer. Personally I just bought a set of 433mhz receiver + transmitter (make sure to get superheterodyne type) and put it together on an Arduino with OpenMQTTGateway for software. it works great, and supports a lot of additional protocols like RF, BLE, etc. should I want to add those later.

I have had weird things happen that were solved simply by pressing the reset button on the microcontroller. Maybe the radio and/or uC get powered in wrong order, I don't really know. I only discovered this on an otherwise already known working setup that all of a sudden couldn't find the parent for some weird reason. And you seem to already have done all the other basic trobleshooting stuff.

If you are unsure about hardware, before throwing it away, perhaps run some of your units through ping pong sketch before even loading MySensors. I made a detailed post about evidence based testing here. It can eliminate some doubt, at least it did for me.

EDIT: As an alternative / in addition to "moving them apart" you can also set the MY_RF24_PA_LEVEL to MIN or LOW if you are testing close to the gateway. I have done this and sometimes it actually improves communication. Remember it is set to HIGH by default. Do so by putting following near top of your sketch:

#define MY_RF24_PA_LEVEL RF24_PA_LOW

DuPont wires can also be bad, or have bad connections...

If you are using breadboard and/or multiple power supplies, make sure all grounds are tied together...

I think that covers most of basic stuff?

Well I'm sorry you took it that way. By the time I happened along into the thread, you had already pronounced your diagnosis. I offered my thoughts into the thread, this way if your first diagnosis turns out not to be correct, you have other ideas to try. These issues can be complicated, and (I know from experience) some times what we think at first ends up not actually being the problem.

As I said, I could be wrong anyway.

@mhkid said in Node registration problem:

And your comment was not based on any evidence it was just a feeling you had

Each of us are chock full of thoughts, memories, things we learned which we are no longer consciously aware of. The sum total of all this "sub-conscious" thoughts and memories can manifest itself as a "gut feeling" but perhaps you are unaware of this.

At any rate, it is not as if you need to be a "radio whisperer" or that this is some obscure subset of problems. Rather I would submit to you that these are the most common type of problems.

@mhkid said in Node registration problem:

you offered no solutions

In fact I said "It sounded like radio propagation issues to me."

No need for me to go into any further detail, if exchanging the gateway has solved the problem. However if you continue to experience problems, please share new information and we can continue from there.

@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...

Well, sounds like you have the basics of a decent system going. The most important thing is probably the interest, and you seem to have that. Everything else can be learned, bought, etc. given enough resources (time, money).

After reading your other thread, it's not even clear MySensors meets your needs, but if it might or you are not dead set on using Wi-Fi (or consider it in combination with other things), then I would encourage you to stick around and read. And I mean read a lot. You will learn a lot here, and you will need it before you will be ready to put together anything that actually has a chance of working. It took me literally years (but maybe you are smarter than me ).

I am not sure I would be shying away from MQTT at this point. In fact personally I am rebuilding my controller and gateway setups recently, and decide this time to go MQTT. I'm sure you have your reasons, but it seems to me that quite a lot of different things are converging on or via MQTT these days, and with good reason. It seems to be a legitimate, quite open, and well adopted standard that is rapidly becoming a lot of the glue between disparate systems. Having said that, there are lots of different ways to skin a cat...

HomeAssistant is a fine choice that many people make. I haven't used it, but haven't heard much if anything bad.

If you think that ESP8266 is not easy for a newbie, I don't think you are ready for MySensors yet.

In fact, if you want Wi-Fi, and homeade sensors, ESP8266 would be the direction I would advise you to look, and especially at aftermarket firmwares like Tasmota, ESPEasy, etc...

MySensors is for when you don't want to use Wi-Fi (as Mikael already pointed out) or when you outgrow those other solutions and need something even more custom to your needs.

Linear rails! Yes! Now we are talking!

Entertaining video! Thanks, one more on to the list of only a few YouTubers worth paying any attention to...

@NeverDie said in Best 3d printers:

With these types of rails, the tolerances can be so tight that if you had rails on both sides they'd likely be binding quite a lot. So, though I agree it seems counterintuitive, there can be an advantage to having the support on just one side.

Well, with linear rails, yes... But, it's almost... cheating, compared to what I was talking about!

All jokes aside, actual design / engineering considerations, bla bla... Of course you are correct.

Anyway, this looks like the "out of the box, ready to go" solution I thought that the Prusa i3 was, I wonder what these go for? After quick search on Internet, wow, comparable in price but far superior design, IMO. Would need to do more research of course, but very impressed initially. I guess these were not available when you bought your Prusa?

@Yveaux said in Time Series Database?:

I've been using the influxdb/grafana combo for around 5 years now and are mostly very happy with it.

Thanks for input. I have certainly heard a lot of people say this.

When you say "mostly" are / were there any gripes / pain points you have / had in particular?

@Yveaux said in Time Series Database?:

Back then there was less to choose from, so I didn't research influxdb.

Did you mean to say Graphite (/Carbon) here?

@Yveaux said in Time Series Database?:

All my home automation goes through mqtt, and a lot of data can be stored directly in influxdb. However, some data does need tweaking, so all is fed into node-red, formatted and stored in influxdb from there.

Yes, I discovered some other tools as well, which I plan on sharing later. Some for straight ingesting, and others to massage the data if needed. In a good and open ecosystem there should be a lot of different ways to skin the same cat so to speak. Options are good.

Inspired by this and the few posts following it, I set out yesterday looking into time series databases, something I have long wanted to add to my setup. The end goal being "nice graphs" in a sort of controller independent way. For the "nice graphs" part, I think Grafana is pretty clearly the answer, as it seems very nice project, that you can plug almost anything into. Which leaves the "(time-series) database back-end" part...

Particularly @BearWithBeard and @sundberg84 comments about the limitations of InfluxDB I found very relevant.

I know that InfluxDB gets recommended quite a lot, especially over at OpenHAB forums where I am also pretty active (off and on). But in looking into it, I detected a strong smell of "open core" and these reports from Bear and sundberg appear to corroborate this. Further (admittedly, slight) research led me to similar comments about large amounts of venture capital funding, one single commercial company behind it, etc. which personally add up to me as something to stay away from (regardless of current popularity and even features). This is just my personal approach, before investing a lot of my own valuable time into learning some new ecosystem; you may have a different calculation.

Anyway one alternative mentioned was Graphite, which is (like many of these) a modular thing where "Carbon" would be the actual database storage component. So I started looking into this some more, and as opposed to InfluxDB in particular, it appears to be a much more "open" project and community, with a number of various companies supporting it. Which is a much more positive sign, in my book, the two different models each leading (quite often) to a set of very predictable results (but not always) in my experience.

Anyway so then I thought the next step, since I have moved to MQTT gateway already for MySensors (as well as some other things) was maybe just to implement this at the MQTT level? Now in general, I prefer Unix philosophy, i.e., modular, one tool for one job sort of approach as much as possible, so separating these concerns appealed to me. I already have my MQTT broker (Mosquitto) running on a separate machine from my controller (OpenHAB) and this would move me even further into this "distributed architecture" experiment.

In case anyone is curious, I am running everything on a few SBC (Cubietruck + couple ODROID-XU4) running Armbian. But you could do the same "in containers" if that is more your cup of tea (I am more "old school" I guess, but who knows, maybe I am "doing it wrong").

So I started looking into tools for that approach, and had some success (after a bit of research). But I wanted to perhaps gather other options and discussion before proceeding any further, or sharing my findings thus far.

@NeverDie said in Best 3d printers:

a video series on how to build a inexpensive clone of a Prusa printer from scratch

I actually saw that! The wood frame made me cringe! First think I was thinking, have my buddy the metal fabricator cut me something out of some off-cut flat stock he likely has lying around...

But then I thought, well, why stop there... (also having The Knack, I suspect you know where this leads )...

So then I start thinking about one of these very stable cube designs out of aluminium T-bar (or whatever it's called) some pics were posted by @mbj further up thread.

In fact all of these "simple, cheap" designs with the hot end just dangling out there at the end of some arm into space just make me shudder! I cannot imagine that staying stable...

But then I hear feedback like from @BearWithBeard along the lines that they are "good enough" for all the sort of similar things I also plan on doing with it, which gives me pause.

And then I start thinking about these combination CNC + 3d printer (+ other?) combination devices, and then I think "well, maybe that is the way to go..." <-- Maybe this is where I am at currently? It's all still in "planning / research" phase, for foreseeable future, anyway.

Thanks for the link though! Perhaps a solution meeting someone else's needs.

@ozrex,

Welcome to the forums.

Looks like OP was "Last Online 1 Dec 2019" according to his profile, also this thread itself is quite old. He may or may not return to reply.

In case he doesn't, it looks to me (I only scanned the thread) that he was using standard Arduino Pro Mini + nRF24 radios, although with some more custom code he implemented (which can be found in the thread). There was some discussion about nRFM69, but that seems more "WIP" to me and would require following some of the links in the thread and doing more research.

Or did you mean the A/C interface part? That would depend on how your A/C is controlled (433mhz? wires? etc.). Need more info there.

I couldn't agree more! If only!

In fact, I had originally in my post (edited out) something along the lines of how, quite predictably, PayPal have become "too big for their britches" with all sorts of obnoxious behaviour as many people assume they are now the only game in town (and maybe they are). But it is not good for anyone (other than PayPal) when one single provider controls that much of any market. Unfortunately that is all too often the case these days...

^ Well, there is the man, right there (Anticimex). ^

You are in much better hands now, I will go back to trying to follow along and learn, as most of that reply still went over my head.

Thanks hek for being so straightforward. I for one certainly appreciate it.

Great news! It sounds like we are in the black (at least for the time being).

By all means, please update us if the situation starts to change!

I think a lot of people (myself included) would be willing to chip in few bucks here and there to help you offset the costs.

For example, I donate few dollars per month on an ongoing basis to Armbian project. Now they have decided to use PayPal directly which I don't like, however there are lots of other options nowadays to set this sort of thing up including many that are specific to F/LOSS/H (perhaps with less fees taken out?) which I think this project certainly would qualify for.

Actually the first one that came to my mind was https://liberapay.com, however looking at that page it seems that ultimately they do use PayPal also. So perhaps more research would need to be done on the right "fit" of payment platform.

Anyway, even though it might not be needed, right now, perhaps something to consider? I am willing to continue doing research in this direction, if you are interested.

I am not sure I understand the problem. Are you saying that all the pins on your Arduino Mega are occupied ("I have motion sensors connected to the analog ports of the mega arduino") and thus you cannot access the analog pins?

As far as examples, have you looked at Build main link in header?

I am not sure how "I can't read the doors" factors in?

I see you have been here quite longer than me (2015) so perhaps you are well beyond what I am about to mention, but I could not help but notice you mentioned encryption and not signing, and my understanding is the project have decided that signing is probably more important than encryption?

Further, I have yet to implement any of that myself (although I am sure I will get to it "one day") so again I could really just be not fully understanding the implications of your question due to lack of knowledge.

A thought just occurred to me while responding in another thread, so I went looking for this sort of information, and only found one very old thread (2014) so I thought I would make a new thread (with title keywords of my own choosing ).

I certainly don't recall any of the main people ever asking for any funds, and from other communities I have been involved in I am aware this is often a sort of labor of love that they support out of their own pocket. And some times more is going out than is coming in.

I have no idea what the situation is here at MySensors because that information does not seem to be published anywhere. Now it is certainly the main people's prerogative whether to publish such information or not, but in an open project some times transparency is best, particularly if the project is hurting financially. I know it must cost something to keep these servers going, and I suppose I just got curious whether the (what I imagine is small) income from affiliate links and ordering boards, etc. has been enough to offset the costs.

I have also seen (in other communities) when the main people came out and said they were coming up a little short, an outpouring of donations from many of the members.

I have just come to really appreciate this resource, and I personally would be distraught it if it were to go away for any reason, financial ones being only one of many that could cause such a thing.

Further, I personally am not a wealthy person, but I do manage to contribute resources (time, money, etc.) wherever I am able towards F/LOSS/H on a sort of "need" basis. For example, I do not contribute anything at all to big and well-funded projects like Firefox, Wikipedia, etc... and prefer to contribute more toward the "little guys" wherever I see more of a need.

Again, I have no idea what the financial situation is here, and I will re-iterate it is certainly the prerogative of the "main people" ( @hek, others (?)) whether they want to disclose this information or not. Feel free to tell me to go get stuffed, you have certainly earned the right by virtue of what you have created and shared here already.

Just my $0.02. Discuss! Or not.

@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.

@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!

Yaay!

Thanks for reporting back.

@BearWithBeard said in Sensebendermicro.ino verify errors:

Maybe it's also time for me to finally get a GitHub account

Please do, friend! Many hands make light work... You are certainly knowledgeable enough!

IMO, ultimately this should be fixed in MySensors, as it is supposed to be "ready to go" sort of packaged solution. In the meantime I post the troubleshooting steps however to try and "feed a man to fish" so to speak...

@BearWithBeard said in Best 3d printers:

I'm happy with the Ender 3 and have no need nor desire for another (filament) printer. The print area is large enough for my needs, [...] Print resolution and detail is fine, I generally have no noteworthy quality complaints aside from the occasional stringing [...] Maintenance is as minimal

Yeah, then I keep waffling back and forth to this. Seems there are quite a number of quite decent "ready to go" units available these days for not too much money.

@BearWithBeard said in Best 3d printers:

But in the end, I don't think it matters much which printer you get...

This point is also well taken. Sounds there is going to be a learning curve no matter what. Maybe a little less so with a widely deployed model...

I dunno, I think... I will keep thinking (for now). Thanks for the feedback, guys.

EDIT: Those CNC are something I keep looking at, too...

To be clear, you are not trying to run the gateway on batteries, correct?

My first thought is power problems at the gateway. What hardware are you running there? If any sort of SBC, I would also add SD card to the troubleshooting list, as those are 2 most common instability problems, by a large margin.

According to https://platformio.org/lib/search?query=sha204_lib_return_codes.h, it looks like it is part of MySensors (and my feeling is ultimately it's imported from one of the following libraries in that list which is likely the ultimate source).

The above very convenient search functionality is just one of many reasons I have switched from official Arduino IDE to PlatformIO. It is very handy tracking down missing dependencies.

It would probably get you working to specify one of those libraries (in PlatformIO this is as simple as specifying it in your config file in the root directory of your project) and then it will automatically be downloaded and compiled along with everything else.

Which only leaves one issue (for MySensors devs) which would be: What happened? I guess if none of them pop in here soon, I will try and remember to lodge issue at GitHub.

EDIT: Another possibility is that Arduino IDE simply cannot find the library or the file. Maybe someone else can help you there, as I gave up on the official IDE (another reason I don't like it, I never liked their folder structure and way they seem to lump everything together).

@NeverDie said in Best 3d printers:

I've built and re-built the Prusia enough times now that maybe I may as well have

See, now this surprises me. The whole thing about the Prusa is that it is supposed to be "ready to go / well engineered solution." And IMO you are paying a premium for that.

I think you are confirming my suspicions to build my own.

In fact I came to same conclusion in almost all areas (IT, vehicles, building, etc.) and pretty much do all my own work. I suppose that is what drew me to MySensors as well (and OpenHAB, and GNU/Linux, etc...).

And yes, I have "The Knack" LOL! I got a great kick out of that, and shared it already to my family. My wife calls it "bedtime stories" when I start talking about my projects. She mostly humors me though, bless her heart.

This is a pretty complicated example / problem. I think maybe why you have not received any replies. I know I had to read multiple times, and even then, I am still not sure I understand the problem.

Maybe try to break it down to one particular part of the problem, so us mortals perusing the forums whilst enjoying our coffee in the morning can at least have a chance at understanding it.

Have you made any progress on this in the meantime?

@kiesel said in Dropped node: arduino blinks only once:

2 AA rechargables, 1.6V in total

Mikael beat me to it, this was also the first thing that jumped out at me. Second thing was all those leads poking out everywhere, maybe trim those up, any one of them touching a ground plane could be causing a short or other issues.

Like many, I have been mulling about getting a 3D printer for years. Finally it seems they are getting to at least decent quality (maybe?). Well, certainly a lot of the trail blazing has been done, and prices come down a lot... So maybe it is time finally.

@BearWithBeard said in Best 3d printers:

I still added a glass plate (IKEA LOTS mirror tile, 8 EUR for a 4-pack) on top, because I think it is a better print surface than this rough and grippy BuildTak stuff. Prints are super shiny on the bottom side, they adhere well and come off with just a gentle touch if you allow them to cool down after the print has finished - just clean it regularly with soap and water. I didn't even need to level the bed again in years of regular use.

This is very interesting. One of biggest features of Prusa i3 mk3 I have seen is that very clever spring steel bed that you just pop off and bend and the piece comes right off. I have read all sorts of stuff about hairspray, etc. and it all seems like such a hassle and mess to me. But it sounds like you have really found the solution to this particular problem.

@NeverDie,

Wanted to ask you how you were getting on with your Prusa i3 mk 3 by now? I read some threads going back years where you were comparing options and then decided to purchase that one.

I think your thought process is a lot like mine (not just in this, but also other comments of yours I have read). I specifically recall you saying how you noticed a pattern in all these review videos where people bought "ready to go out of box" which is really just a kit and then they spend a lot of time dickering with it and then finally end up with something nice. I have noticed the same thing!

I know you said you bought Prusa largely because family reasons (ease of use, etc.) but I am thinking now of building my own from scratch, maybe one of big cube designs as they seem more stable, and no matter what it seems that you end up tinkering a lot anyway, doing upgrades over time, etc... So the way I see it, if you are doing to do all that effort anyway, might as well save yourself some money...

That nifty bed release thing though was one of last remaining things left in favor of Prusa for me, but now if @BearWithBeard is saying a simple glass plate can work just as well, then...

@grumpazoid said in Easy PCB Question:

I am a huge cheapskate so loved the fact I could get 50 x 662K for 99 pence delivered

You are not the only one! I very nearly did myself. In the end, I decided against for 2 reasons:

• They are just so dang small!
• I did a little research on regulators, and realized those tiny ones are actually rated for less amperage than the bigger ones (usually). For radio / microcontroller, they are fine, just be aware of if you think of using them for something else.

If you keep doing this for long enough time, I think the trend is to keep going smaller and smaller, start designing your own boards, etc. which I am sure I will too, eventually... But for now, through hole is good enough for me, I am still learning a lot.

Even the Easy PCB I thought was "too big" relative to some of the super tiny ones I also saw and was quite enamoured with at first, however someone said in some comment (I can't find it now) that Easy PCB (as opposed to JBoard) is from very active forum contributor, has seen several revisions, etc. whereas other guy kind of left his design (although thanks to him for sharing!) and basically has not been back ever since... Which made me decide to get the Easy PCB and then I realized that 5x5 cm is really not that big, and (I think?) might even fit into these sort of very inexpensive project boxes I already have.

And finally, I do think it will make assembly quicker and easier, almost like one of those old electronics kits you would order in the mail, in fact I think assembly is going to be quite enjoyable (for a change)!

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.

I just had to read through the thread again to make sure I was not mixing you up with someone else. But no that's not it, and yes this is the right thread I am thinking of.

It sounded like radio propagation issues to me. I think the gateway thing was a coincidence. I can be wrong of course, maybe it was the gateway after all (or something else).

I wasn't being sarcastic, I really do hope it keeps working for you. I guess we will see...

Very nice!

I knew it would only be a matter of time until we saw MySensors custom injected molded components!

I think if you made a box that could fit the Easy / Newbie board (~50x50cm) plus radio and 2AA batteries, you would probably sell a lot of them! I know I would buy some of those...

That sounds more like lucky coincidence to me than actually pinpointing the problem.

Glad it's back to working for you though.

@bbastos said in BME280/BMP280 high comsumption when sleeping:

7uA during sleep

Sounds pretty good to me!

You calling it done then?

Second picture, left one, middle left of board, large component with 3 leads looks like a regulator to me.

If you bought on Ali, you should have detailed purchase records, take a close look at them it should state 5v or 3.3v pretty clearly.

That's great news! Now back to the fun part!

I prefer to have a repeatable, definable failure mode, and then fix that, rather than an unknown success, but that's just me.

@P72endragon said in MySensors --> MQTT --> OpenHab 2.5:

Thanks for the additional information

Well since you replied I took another scan over the thread.

@P72endragon said in MySensors --> MQTT --> OpenHab 2.5:

native OH MQTT

I have been fairly involved over at OpenHAB forums (on and off; and I read a great deal in general) and the consensus amongst those in the know (last time I checked) seemed to be to use independent, outside MQTT broker.

Personally I subscribe to "Unix philosophy" and since going the MQTT route have always run Mosquitto, but it was nice to see others confirming what I had suspected all along (that OpenHAB was trying to "do too much" with their built-in broker).

@P72endragon said in MySensors --> MQTT --> OpenHab 2.5:

I don't mind not having auto-discovery
[...]
(although I'm not sure I understand quite how it works yet, still a little unclear on Items, Channels, etc)

Getting your head around theOpenHAB concepts is one thing. Just try to imagine what it would take if you were designing a system from the ground up to abstract away a bunch of different incompatible systems into one unified control system, and you will be well on your way to understanding it. Thankfully their docs are very good and their forums are very active, including lots of examples.

But main thing I wanted to touch on was config in text files vs. PaperUI. If you don't care about auto-discovery I can highly recommend the former. IMO, the PaperUI hides too much stuff from you, and I don't like that. All entries in there actually go into some internal database which you cannot edit (other than through PaperUI) and exists in parallell to your text files (which you can have in addition).

So, what happens 2 years from now when you go to upgrade or install on a new system? Yeah good luck remembering what you did in PaperUI that you now need to re-do, in addition to all your text files which you already have. I read a lot of forum threads along such lines, and/or broken stuff after upgrades, etc...

So for me, this time around, I spent the extra time doing complete text file configuration from scratch. And now I have a completely reproducible set of text files that I keep in version control and backed up. I could wipe the system and re-install no problem.

As another upside, you really get to know the ins and outs of the system that way.

In closing I will say that my MySensors Ethernet/MQTT gateway -> OpenHAB has been working flawless, and so to me appears to be the way to go. Come on in, the water is fine!

I actually even run the Mosquitto broker on a separate box from OpenHAB, it was designed from the ground up to be a network based architecture, so it really doesn't matter. In fact I don't even use MySensors binding in OpenHAB at all. Once you get over initial config (which is the challenging part) I believe it is actually the much better way to go. Which is another reason why I wanted to post this, as there is too much conflicting, old, and bad information out there on the Internet about this subject.

That way no more relying on an outside party (MySensors binding developer(s)) for anything. They seem to me a bit overwhelmed (at least in the past). Not knocking them in the least, in fact I applaud their efforts. However personally I decided to remove that dependency from my system and it has proven to be a good decision.

I would love to hear back from someone who is happy with their MySensors 2.5.x binding in OpenHAB. So if that is you, please speak up (and tell us your secrets! )! I personally haven't seen any of those posts though, unfortunately...

Anyway, post back whenever you get to that point, and I will be happy to share some up to date config snippets (or anyone else reading along). I was going to post mine but I just looked at them and realized they need some cleaning up first. Sorry!

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).

@magpern said in MyQTherm - replace IQTherm heating thermostat:

I actually am thinking somewhat in the line of discontinuing mysensors network. It is to much, hacks and tricks, and I forget everything in between sessions.

I gave up more than once, also over period of years. Recently I came back again and decided to focus on the heart of the issue, getting my radios working and once you get over that, it starts to get fun again.

I can respect if you already moved on to something else. I even cheated on MySensors and installed some 433 mhz devices too , just to get something working. You have to keep your interest in HA alive in the meantime. But the reward is great when you get MySensors working.

There are "easier" solutions like Tasmota, 433mhz, etc. but not as customizable as MySensors. MySensors is for when you outgrow those other solutions and need something more custom.

@CraigDubya said in Openhab 2.5.5, raspberry pi 4 with usb boot ssd:

Thanks

You are welcome.

@CraigDubya said in Openhab 2.5.5, raspberry pi 4 with usb boot ssd:

take a break

Some times it is the best thing, and actually can make progress quicker.

I tend to keep many different projects going at once, not only for this reason but also so I can order cheap parts and I'm not in a hurry for them, as there is always something else to work on.

@CraigDubya said in Openhab 2.5.5, raspberry pi 4 with usb boot ssd:

I have a bunch of these sensors that I had working fine with the serial gateway on my old raspberry pi 3 setup

So, what we should be asking ourselves is: What has changed in the meantime?

@CraigDubya said in Openhab 2.5.5, raspberry pi 4 with usb boot ssd:

I believe the MQTT route needs a wifi module of some sort, which are usually more power hungry.

You can also use an Ethernet module like the WizNet W5x00, which is what I use and has been flawless. They are also only few bucks on AliExpress. I prefer wired connection anyway to Wi-Fi, especially for something like a gateway.

Being a gateway, it will be powered all the time anyway, when people say "a lot" of power they are speaking in the context of batteries, when considering mains power the milli- and micro-amps we are talking about are insignificant.

You are certainly free to do as you wish, and you already have the hardware, I just want to make sure you are making best decisions with all the facts in mind.

Keep reporting back your progress, and good luck!

Well there is no more sense in any of us wasting any of our valuable resources (time, thought) if it will not affect the design anyway, since you have already ordered the parts.

Ignorance is fine, inconsideration for other people's time and effort is not (at least with me).

I realize you are in a hurry to build something, we all are, but some times when you hurry you cost yourself time. Or other opportunities like feedback and chance to modify the design. All of which are irrelevant now (at least insofar as this particular project)...

We still expect pictures of the completed project.

@CraigDubya said in Openhab 2.5.5, raspberry pi 4 with usb boot ssd:

Unresolved requirement: Import-Package: gnu.io; version="[3.14.0,4.0.0)"

If I recall correctly, MySensors binding for OpenHAB is still not official. Therefore I am guessing you installed it by putting jar file in addons folder?

When you install "official" bindings, they resolve dependencies automatically. However doing it this way you have to resolve them yourself.

Having said that, I don't recall having to install anything other than the MySensors plug-in when I did a serial gateway. But this was like 2 (3?) years ago IIRC. so could have changed in the meantime of course.

I experienced (and also read about others having) a lot of issues with the older version of MySensors binding for OpenHAB 2.4. It was one of contributing factors in me eventually abandoning the entire Home Automation endeavour altogether. So this time around, I decide to do an Ethernet/MQTT gateway. So far, this way has been flawless for me, and I have had others tell me their experience has been the same. Not sure if things have improved in 2.5 or not. But perhaps worth considering.

The other benefit of MQTT is you can verify it's working using simple command line tools to check everything, outside of any controller or any other parts of your infrastructure. You know, Unix philosophy. Make sure each little piece is working one by one; easier to troubleshoot IMO.

I am starting to suspect this binding actually. If you want to continue on this path, I would suggest perhaps OpenHAB forums, and/or the MySensors plug-in GitHub. Not trying to be dismissive now, I just think either of those fora may bring you more relevant eyeballs to the problem than here. You can also get a couple threads going in parallel (on additional fora I mean), I suppose no harm in that.