Where to Start with 1-Wire Infrastructure.

[phsubscribenl]

Reviewing various forums, I am unsure which location is the most appropriate to my question. Can you guide me?

I am looking for recommendations on both the 1-wire hub/interface hardware, temperature probes and best HS3 1-Wire plugin.

I wish to add 1-Wire infrastructure to my HS3 system. I have a 5 zone hot water radiant heating system. I wish to replace the sensors from my existing Alerton IBEX 500 system with temperature sensors into HS3.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Phil T

The list of sensors to include:
Qty - Description
5 - Temp sensors downstream of zone valve
1 - Temp sensor on return loop.
1 - Temp sensor on Domestic Hot Water

[enigmatheatre]

Reviewing various forums, I am unsure which location is the most appropriate to my question. Can you guide me?

I am looking for recommendations on both the 1-wire hub/interface hardware, temperature probes and best HS3 1-Wire plugin.

I wish to add 1-Wire infrastructure to my HS3 system. I have a 5 zone hot water radiant heating system. I wish to replace the sensors from my existing Alerton IBEX 500 system with temperature sensors into HS3.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Phil T

The list of sensors to include:
Qty - Description
5 - Temp sensors downstream of zone valve
1 - Temp sensor on return loop.
1 - Temp sensor on Domestic Hot Water

HI Phil,

I am not 100% on what you are after but I guess you have looked at or know about Arduino. My plugin will interact with the Arduino boards and you can add a one wire bus to it. The DS18S20, DS18B20 and DS1822 temperature sensors are supported and these come in different forms form just the sensor to the sensor on a pcb with resistor built in.
There are other plugins and hardware available that are dedicated to one wire so I guess it depends if you will need other I/O from the Arduino or if you are just after onewire.

more info on my plugin can be found Here

I hope this helps.

Greig.

[randy]

I would add that Greig's Arduino plug-in would do a great job with OneWire devices. If you have read much about OneWire devices you know they will work great distances over CAT5/6 twisted pair cables. You need to pick the value of your pull-up resistor based upon the number of devices and distance of run. I have 5 of them on a single board with as much as 40 feet of cable to the furthest device, with no errors. I am using a 2.2k pull-up resistor on the data line. It is important to avoid a "star" topology when connecting devices. It is better to have them on a single run of cable. I don't know what the design maximum of OneWire devices his plug-in supports, but I would suspect it could handle 10 on a single pin. You can also look at the thread linked in my signature below for the first phase of my hydronic system control. I need to take some time and update that thread because the basic function is still the same, but the scope has expanded and the logic has evolved.

[Vincenttor]

I am using this with the Arduino, but lately it is not working great.
Not sure what is causing this since it first worked pretty good for a couple of weeks.
What i did noticed is when i added more sensors it started to be less precise because with 1 sensor it measured like 33,2 C 33,36 C and after 3 sensors it was only 0.5 degrees measuring but thats not a big problem.

On this website you can find very usefull information and like described above with the cable use is important otherwise it would fail.
I made a daisy chain cable running trough the house

http://www.jon00.me.uk/onewireintro.shtml

[Michael McSharry]

I believe the only software in an HS environment that supports a 1-wire hub is xapmcs1wire. The hub is nice because it provides fault isolation and allows one to add new branches without concern about disrupting the operation of existing branches and devices.

[randy]

I believe the only software in an HS environment that supports a 1-wire hub is xapmcs1wire. The hub is nice because it provides fault isolation and allows one to add new branches without concern about disrupting the operation of existing branches and devices.

Actually the EDS OWServers are great. They support up to a total of 23 devices per server, have 3 RJ11 connectors and the 23 devices can be spread among the three connectors. They are very fault tolerant and provide constant voltage pull-up so that a loop of up to 1000 feet with 23 devices will maintain proper pull-up voltage, regardless of how many devices enter the calculation phase at once.

The calculation phase is the one thing that can cause problems in the Arduino solution, unless one was to add a constant voltage, current limited power supply for the data line. I have five devices on a fairly short run from the Arduino and they are very reliable. Longer runs or higher device counts will get you into trouble.

The EDS OWServer is well supported by Ultrajones Ultra1Wire3 plug-in. I'm currently using that plug-in with 2 OWServers.

[Michael McSharry]

Agree that OWServer is a good solution for the basic 1-wire devices such as temperature or humidity. I also use it with wifi to span range from an outbuilding to house. If you want to do any customizations such as the devices from hobby-boards.com, digital pots and various circuits where DS2438 is applied then the OWServer falls short.

[Vincenttor]

The calculation phase is the one thing that can cause problems in the Arduino solution, unless one was to add a constant voltage, current limited power supply for the data line. I have five devices on a fairly short run from the Arduino and they are very reliable. Longer runs or higher device counts will get you into trouble.

I hope this is causing the problem here that the sensors suddenly are gone.
I am using now just 3 sensors but there on a long cable.

[phsubscribenl]

Thanks, I ordered a OWS Server and 10 sensors.
Question: I read you should not use star configuratiions. Another thread said to add sensors with no more than 2" leads (I assume for the same reasons of avoiding star configurations). If my total trunk run is less than 50' must I still confine myself to such short stubs?

[randy]

Thanks, I ordered a OWS Server and 10 sensors.
Question: I read you should not use star configuratiions. Another thread said to add sensors with no more than 2" leads (I assume for the same reasons of avoiding star configurations). If my total trunk run is less than 50' must I still confine myself to such short stubs?

I have between 3 and 10 feet of CAT6 between the "trunk" and sensors. The minimum length is the 1 meter lead that was attached to the sensors I bought from China. My total loop through the basement is 100 feet and has 22 sensors - 0 problems. My Loop through the attic is probably 150 feet and has 12 devices and will ultimately have 22. 0 problems with that run. Neither server has detected a single error as far as I know. I think where you get into trouble is running multiple long runs directly from the server. Ideally the sensors could be attached directly to the trunk, with the trunk looped to each location. You can "star" from the servers since they have three independent input channels with any combination of sensors up to the maximum allowed with the firmware.

[johan]

I used to use LinkUSB from iButtonLink with MCS Temperature on HS2. It was a very simple setup, robust and worked reliably. I used it to measure my hydronic system among other things, they even had special probes designed to attach to pipes already molded to CAT5 cable. If I recall it used Maxim's 1-wire driver. The problem I am having now is that I can't find any plug in to work with my current setup in HS3 now that MCSTemp is discontinued. Any advice on how to get this working again? I just want to read and log temperatures.

[jon00]

I used to use LinkUSB from iButtonLink with MCS Temperature on HS2. It was a very simple setup, robust and worked reliably. I used it to measure my hydronic system among other things, they even had special probes designed to attach to pipes already molded to CAT5 cable. If I recall it used Maxim's 1-wire driver. The problem I am having now is that I can't find any plug in to work with my current setup in HS3 now that MCSTemp is discontinued. Any advice on how to get this working again? I just want to read and log temperatures.

If you have your LinkUSB connected to a 32 bit version of Windows you can try my One Wire Utility for Homeseer 3 which is available from my site (click on my banner below for access).

[Michael McSharry]

xapmcs1wire was developed from mcsTemperature that accepts the DS9490/LinkUSB. It runs on x64 or x32 windows, but not on Linux. It is paired with mcsXap HS3 plugin. There is a recent thread on 1WIO that Ralfman had running under mcsTemperature with Temp08, but now wanted to move to HS3 so took the xapmcsTemp0x/mcsXap route. Most of the thread is about debugging the addition of 1WIO to xapmcsTemp0x, but it also contains guidance on interfacing with mcsXap plugin.