[ANSWERED](Arduino and) nRF24L01

Has anybody tried creating his/her own HA based on the nRF24L01 transceiver.

It looks like fun stuff that allows you to create an alternative to z-wave and zigbee.

It is all DIY as far as I can see but the beauty of it is that you can invent your own devices.
Like combining a magnetic switch with a motion detector and an on-board alarm.
The sky seems to be the limit

I am thinking about using my Arduino Plug-in as the basis for communicating with the rest of my system.
As far as I can see it will have to be able to create/use 'parent' and 'child' devices.

Doable?

BTW I am not really unique: http://mysensors.org
Looks like a great place to start.

[jay (support)]

New with Indigo 6 are the concepts of a device factory and device personalities (single physical device, multiple Indigo devices for each function). The former allows you to create device config dialogs that can do a lot of different things - including discover devices (the WeatherSnoop 3 agent device does this) and create multiple related devices (personalities) for a single physical device (the Z-Wave interface does this with multi sensors - temp device, humidity device, motion device, etc). See the Example Device - Factory.indigoPlugin sample plugin in the SDK for details.

Wow, that is exactly what I need (but you already knew that)

Once I have the radio units here I will start building the gateway and the first sensor to see what I can/have to do on the plugin side.

Looks like something that will keep me busy for a while...

Hi Jay,

Devices for Temperature, Wind Speed, Rain etc.
Are they sensors (On/Off/Status) or should I define these as custom?
Not sure actually...

[matt (support)]

You'll want those to be sensors, and you will want to set the SupportsSensorValue property to true (depending on the sensor possibly also SupportsOnState).

Great, will do so...

In the 'Example Device - Factory' plugin buttons are used to add sensors to a device.
To be honest, I really love this flexibility.
This is exactly the part that worried me a bit when I started this project.

But, I have a question: sensors are, as mentioned, added using buttons.
There are at least 22 different sensors/actuators presently.

In the example scenario that would mean 22 buttons to add and 22 buttons to remove a device.
Before I start testing, is it possible to create a 'menu' type with these sensors/actuators and a 'generic' add button.
I assume (or is it hope) that the answer is yes...

[matt (support)]

Yes, take a look at the source for the example factory plugin. The button presses are dynamically creating the new device, so you can inside the button callback look at the setting of another control (type menu) and use that to determine which device type is created (or what properties are set when or after it is created).

Thanks Matt, I decided to do it differently.

I will use a popup that will only show the devices that are not yet defined in Indigo.

After the first selection I will (try to) limit that popup to show only devices (children) that share the same radio id, if any.

I think that this is the most elegant and fool proof solution.

Showing off my progress

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I have not been able to work on the plugin for a while but found some time last week again and the plugin will be ready for beta testing (not sure if anyone is interested though) sometime next week I hope.

@Indigo: what is the best way to announce the plugin and make it available?

[jay (support)]

Use the Plugins forum under User Contributions to announce it. Or, if you'd like, we can create a forum for you under the 3rd Party Developers section where you can post it an anything else you're working on. Just follow the directions in this post and we'll get it created.

If you want to open source your plugin, we can add it to the Indigo Domotics Git Repository (and give you full control) where it's easily found by anyone that wants to use it and/or contribute to it.

If not, then zip it up and email it to us and we'll add it to the File Library (we haven't moved over the UI to do the submission yourself to the new website). Include the following information:

1. An overview of what it does
2. Installation instructions (can be a simple "unzip and double-click")
3. How to use it - including it's ID so people can restart it, script any actions is presents, etc. Whatever is appropriate for your plugin.
4. The URL to your forum post announcing it

Has anybody tried creating his/her own HA based on the nRF24L01 transceiver... ...BTW I am not really unique: http://mysensors.org
Looks like a great place to start.

Sorry to be so long in replying to your initial post, I got distracted with other things... In any case, I finally got around to looking at the nRF24L01 and the link you posted and this looks like a great way to go , especially for applications where battery power is a requirement. Based on the time I spent on the mysensors web site, it looks like you could get a year or more life out of standard alkaline cells, and much more with lithium.

I do have a couple of question about your gateway: Did you base it on an Arduino (I assume so, because of the mention of your Arduino plugin)? How did you hook the gateway to your Mac: Serial to USB converter or direct USB? Did you consider Ethernet? And, could you say a bit more about the Arduino plugin your wrote. I could;t find any details on that n your posts.

Big thanks for getting information on this technology out there this looks like it could be the basis for some really interesting projects.

Hi, I am going to be short in my answers because this will all become more clear once the plugin goes into beta.
And I don't want to spend too much time on discussing things while it is not yet ready.
So here we go:

Did you base it on an Arduino (I assume so, because of the mention of your Arduino plugin)?

Yes

How did you hook the gateway to your Mac: Serial to USB converter or direct USB?

I use the same serial to usb technology that you use to hook up your Arduino to the developer ui..

Did you consider Ethernet?

No

And, could you say a bit more about the Arduino plugin your wrote.

Not much to say yet. All that you can do with MySensors will be hooked up 'sort of' like the implementation of z-wave in Indigo.

Thanks... I will wait until you have more to report.