MySensors gateway/relay for different floor levels

[Albsucher]

Hello,

i am still using Domoticz a while and it works great. But still new to the MySensors, so excuse if the question seems a bit stupid...

I want to do the MySensors Pulse Powermeter (http://www.mysensors.org/build/pulse_power) and Pulse Watermeter (http://www.mysensors.org/build/pulse_water).

Bith are licated on two different of my basegrounds. Domoticz running on a RasPi is located in my livingRoom.

I understand Domoticz needs either MySensors Gateway via USB or Ethernet.

My questions:
1. How do i best transfer all data from the Pulsemeters to the gateway? Or maybe its best to add a WLAN to send data via json to Domoticz? Did anyone do that already?
2. Any idea how to constantly power the sensors? Should be somewhat from the normal german 230V power.

Thanks in advance,
Albsucher aka Ralf

[malarcy]

Mysensors project uses 2.4ghz radio transceivers to communicate amongst themselves.

For domoticz - you need a gateway -- as you say usb or ethernet - the gateway is the thing that all the sensors talk to - via the radio transmitter / receiver . Domoticz knows about the gateway and the type of sensors it supports and handles them.

The sensors and the gateway are built using arduino's - they take essentially USB power (anything from 3 to 20v DC normally - but they work just fine on USB power) - so you either use batteries - probably not a good idea for your requirements, or you power them via a USB phone charger or similar - it's up to you since you build them and you get the power from where you can.

Hope this helps

[joshimosh]

Hi there,

Hello,

i am still using Domoticz a while and it works great. But still new to the MySensors, so excuse if the question seems a bit stupid...

there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers
So I hope my answer is not too stupid

I want to do the MySensors Pulse Powermeter (http://www.mysensors.org/build/pulse_power) and Pulse Watermeter (http://www.mysensors.org/build/pulse_water).

Bith are licated on two different of my basegrounds. Domoticz running on a RasPi is located in my livingRoom.

I understand Domoticz needs either MySensors Gateway via USB or Ethernet.

My questions:
1. How do i best transfer all data from the Pulsemeters to the gateway? Or maybe its best to add a WLAN to send data via json to Domoticz? Did anyone do that already?
2. Any idea how to constantly power the sensors? Should be somewhat from the normal german 230V power.

Thanks in advance,
Albsucher aka Ralf

Answer to 1: MySensors and Domoticz are a very good team. I have a Raspi in the first floor of my house, together with a MySensors USB gateway. My sensors and actuators are spread all over the house (rooftop sensors temperature and smokedetector, first floor sensors temperature, smoke detector, mains switch for my printer, ground floor sensors temperature, smokedetector, various mains switches, basement sensors temperature, smoke detector, watermeter, gas meter, power meter and garden gate with mail detector). All but one work very well and reliable.
The trouble maker is in the basement. Source of the problem is the rather limited range of the nRF24 radios. At my gateway, I have a special version with a booster amplifier and and an external antenna (looks like the antennas you have at your WLAN router). The nRF24 radios in my basement are at their limits, since the radio waves have to travel from my first floor to the basement, penetrating through some rather thick walls (it's an old house). The connection to two of the three radios in the basement (I have several rooms in my basement, like you seem to have) is rather unreliable. I am now experimenting with a WLAN gateway to MySensors, hoping that this will help (WLAN reception is ok in my basement).

Answer to 2: the previous post covers it already. If you use a bare ATMega328 chip instead of an Arduino Pro Mini or if you remove the LEDs from a Pro Mini, you can run your sensors from battery. I have been testing it for a moisture sensor in my garden, which took a sample every five minutes and was idle the rest of the time. The battery lasted or almost a year. But it takes careful design of hardware and software. My recommendation would be to use 5V from cheap mobile phone chargers with USB. I have tons of those lying around ...

Hope that helps. Good luck
Josh

[Albsucher]

Okay, i understand now how to start.
Thanks for the help.

Just one additional question... I want to start with the power meter (see link in my first post). The example shows the sketch how to program. Does this automatically include the sending via the 2.4GHz module or do i need to add the gateway sketch or something else?

Thanks for your help in advane,
Ralf aka Albsucher

[pj-r]

The MySensors library will do that stuff in behind.

Code: Select all

#include <MySensor.h>

This instantiates the "sensors/node" handling object that is responsible about communication between node and gw.

Code: Select all

MySensor gw;

In code this call is reponsible of sending pulsedata to --radio--> GW --serial/ethernet--> Domoticz.

Code: Select all

gw.send(pcMsg.set(pulseCount));

These might help you in the begining:
http://www.mysensors.org/about/network
http://www.mysensors.org/download/sensor_api_15