Post by trouserhams on Oct 22, 2015 22:25:02 GMT
Hi All,
Firstly I wanted to say thank you to all who have contributed to this, its clear a number of you have put a serious amount of time/thought/effort into getting this put together! I have been reading as many threads as possible so I don't bother anyone with stupid questions, as I am a complete computer n00b!
I thought I would start a thread to show my progress and intentions, with the hope that this will help other computably challenged individuals take the leap into starting a project such as this.
My main reason for doing this project is that I want to build a fully zoned smart heating system. I know there are plenty of commercially available options such as Honeywell Evohome, however everything is set up for those with conventional central heating; and my home is completely electric. On the face of it you'd presume this is the simpler option, however once you factor in the available kit can only switch 5A and doesn't have a built in thermostat like the conventional radiator solenoid valves it gets prohibitively expensive very quickly.
I plan to build a number of the DHT end nodes to define my 'zones' (rooms) and then to have one 'slave' end node at the home consumer unit controlling a raft of solid state relays turning on the power to various radiators around the house. This is possible because most of the radiators have their own dedicated circuits due to the current demands. For the smaller room radiators (0.5kW) there are 4 on a single loop so I will eventually make individual relay end nodes that I can hide in the wall socket to control these individually, but that will come later.
Im a development engineer by trade, and so I am happy with the hardware side, but as you will find out, my computer/software skills are virtually non existent (I'm hoping this project will take a step to improving this!).
I have a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenHAB and Mosquito. I can communicate with Mosquito using two terminal windows on the raspberry Pi and have seen confirmation that both systems start on boot so I think it is working! The Pi has a fixed IP address on eth0 of 192.168.1.150 which is what I have used as the 'byte mqtt_server[] = { 192, 168, 1, 150}; in the gateway sketch. I did not touch the MAC address line, is this correct? I know that the MAC address for the Pi is different to this, but I'm guessing this is what gets assigned to the gateway? for the 'byte ip[] =' section I used 192.168.1.149 as another generic IP address. Is this ok to use? I'm sorry for the stupid questions! I adjusted the w5100.h library file with the suggested additions.
For the encryption key I chose a 16 letter phrase with no spaces. Are there any rules for this? Does it have to be all numbers or anything specific?, presumably as long as they are the same on the gateway and the nodes, you could even leave it as 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'?
Other than setting the RFM69 hardware type (mine are RFM69W's so i commented out the HW sections) is there anything else that I need to change in the .ino file before I can do a debug test connection?
I have made the gateway node according to the circuit diagram here;Link
The only difference I currently have is that I connected the power and grounds for the w5100 to the 3.3v side of the regulator as my board had the option. I therefore also didn't use the second 100nF Capacitor. Is this ok to do? The lights on the w5100 seem to flash when plugged in so I guess so, but as I'll get to in a moment, it doesn't work...
When uploading the sketch to the Arduino Pro Mini (link) with the DEBUG uncommented I get an error saying that the sketch is too large, using 31,312 bytes (101%) which then won't upload. To resolve this I commented out some of the lower debug comments, hoping that I could work my way through the debug series, switching some of the earlier ones off to create space. Is this a workable solution? Has anyone else had this space restriction issue with he debug active?
I have made the DHT end node according to the circuit diagram here;link
I'm waiting for my push-to-make switch to arrive, so please excuse the two loose wires!
My current situation is that I don't get any LED status/connection lights on the gateway when I plug everything in
(apart from those flashing on the back of the w5100, and those constantly on for the arduino, w5100 and the 3.3v regulator)
The debug may be flawed due to my previous modifications to allow the sketch to fit on the arduino, however all I get is the following;
Gateway version 2.2
Listening on 868MHz...
And nothing further. Looking through the code, the next stage is the ethernet, so I am guessing my issue lies here?
Has anyone else had a similar issue before? The DHT end node doesn't seem to do anything , other than light the LED when I join the push to make wires, and then turn off on a second connection. Is this correct? I will try the debug on this sensor too and see where I get.
I hope some of you are able to find time in your busy days to read my thread and possibly help with some of my issues. I will endeavour to write up my findings in an easy to apply guide, to hopefully avoid threads such as these in the future!
Kind regards,
James
Firstly I wanted to say thank you to all who have contributed to this, its clear a number of you have put a serious amount of time/thought/effort into getting this put together! I have been reading as many threads as possible so I don't bother anyone with stupid questions, as I am a complete computer n00b!
I thought I would start a thread to show my progress and intentions, with the hope that this will help other computably challenged individuals take the leap into starting a project such as this.
My main reason for doing this project is that I want to build a fully zoned smart heating system. I know there are plenty of commercially available options such as Honeywell Evohome, however everything is set up for those with conventional central heating; and my home is completely electric. On the face of it you'd presume this is the simpler option, however once you factor in the available kit can only switch 5A and doesn't have a built in thermostat like the conventional radiator solenoid valves it gets prohibitively expensive very quickly.
I plan to build a number of the DHT end nodes to define my 'zones' (rooms) and then to have one 'slave' end node at the home consumer unit controlling a raft of solid state relays turning on the power to various radiators around the house. This is possible because most of the radiators have their own dedicated circuits due to the current demands. For the smaller room radiators (0.5kW) there are 4 on a single loop so I will eventually make individual relay end nodes that I can hide in the wall socket to control these individually, but that will come later.
Im a development engineer by trade, and so I am happy with the hardware side, but as you will find out, my computer/software skills are virtually non existent (I'm hoping this project will take a step to improving this!).
I have a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenHAB and Mosquito. I can communicate with Mosquito using two terminal windows on the raspberry Pi and have seen confirmation that both systems start on boot so I think it is working! The Pi has a fixed IP address on eth0 of 192.168.1.150 which is what I have used as the 'byte mqtt_server[] = { 192, 168, 1, 150}; in the gateway sketch. I did not touch the MAC address line, is this correct? I know that the MAC address for the Pi is different to this, but I'm guessing this is what gets assigned to the gateway? for the 'byte ip[] =' section I used 192.168.1.149 as another generic IP address. Is this ok to use? I'm sorry for the stupid questions! I adjusted the w5100.h library file with the suggested additions.
For the encryption key I chose a 16 letter phrase with no spaces. Are there any rules for this? Does it have to be all numbers or anything specific?, presumably as long as they are the same on the gateway and the nodes, you could even leave it as 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'?
Other than setting the RFM69 hardware type (mine are RFM69W's so i commented out the HW sections) is there anything else that I need to change in the .ino file before I can do a debug test connection?
I have made the gateway node according to the circuit diagram here;Link
The only difference I currently have is that I connected the power and grounds for the w5100 to the 3.3v side of the regulator as my board had the option. I therefore also didn't use the second 100nF Capacitor. Is this ok to do? The lights on the w5100 seem to flash when plugged in so I guess so, but as I'll get to in a moment, it doesn't work...
When uploading the sketch to the Arduino Pro Mini (link) with the DEBUG uncommented I get an error saying that the sketch is too large, using 31,312 bytes (101%) which then won't upload. To resolve this I commented out some of the lower debug comments, hoping that I could work my way through the debug series, switching some of the earlier ones off to create space. Is this a workable solution? Has anyone else had this space restriction issue with he debug active?
I have made the DHT end node according to the circuit diagram here;link
I'm waiting for my push-to-make switch to arrive, so please excuse the two loose wires!
My current situation is that I don't get any LED status/connection lights on the gateway when I plug everything in
(apart from those flashing on the back of the w5100, and those constantly on for the arduino, w5100 and the 3.3v regulator)The debug may be flawed due to my previous modifications to allow the sketch to fit on the arduino, however all I get is the following;
Gateway version 2.2
Listening on 868MHz...
And nothing further. Looking through the code, the next stage is the ethernet, so I am guessing my issue lies here?
Has anyone else had a similar issue before? The DHT end node doesn't seem to do anything , other than light the LED when I join the push to make wires, and then turn off on a second connection. Is this correct? I will try the debug on this sensor too and see where I get.
I hope some of you are able to find time in your busy days to read my thread and possibly help with some of my issues. I will endeavour to write up my findings in an easy to apply guide, to hopefully avoid threads such as these in the future!
Kind regards,
James
