Mega PWM pins

[Vincenttor]

Thanks, that looks promising.
Going to read the part on arduino.cc on the shift register.
Maybe i can get this working, since it will save me costs in elecricity and to buy arduino's
Also i am running out of ports then with 9 arduino's that you can connect at the same time.

Great stuff

EDIT:

Found the type that you described to be for outputs.
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut


This one is for input:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftIn

[enigmatheatre]

you can use 40 inputs on the latest beta but if you need more then shift registers are a good way to go.

Greig.

[Vincenttor]

I will give it a go to see if i can produce a working script for the shiftin registers.
And then to pick this up in Homeseer will be the trick, but first wait till i get this shift register to test a bit.

[petez69]

Mark.

The 0 (RX) and 1 (TX) are used to receive (RX) and transmit (TX) TTL serial data. These pins are connected to the corresponding pins of the FTDI USB-to-TTL Serial chip. At TTL Level the max you can run is only about 1m. With RS232 you can run up to 15m so you would need to go with RS485 which has a max around 1200m.
You would need a USB to RS485 adapter something like this or if you have a serial port then go for a serial RS232 to RS485 adapter. Then a RS485 to TTL for the nano like this.

As I said before I have ordered lots of parts from China so who knows when they will turn up but it includes RS485 and some wireless modules for me to test out as I think people would like a wireless solution.

Greig.

Greig

Did you ever get to play with the RS485 parts ? I'm thinking of trying this setup myself..

Thanks..Pete

[enigmatheatre]

Greig

Did you ever get to play with the RS485 parts ? I'm thinking of trying this setup myself..

Thanks..Pete

Pete,

I did have a play with Rs485 and it works well. This was not with the plugin but with another project that I was doing and it ran fine. I can not see any reson for this not to work.
Are you not better using Ethernet?

Greig.

[petez69]

Greig

I'm just toying with the idea that I really dont need the Arduinos to sit on the "general" LAN at home as all they do is talk to HS. I had an alarm system that had built in Automation from the US and it was all built around its own RS485 bus.

As I'm planning to put PIRs on the MEGA boards, so a pseudo alarm system not having to put the network switches on a UPS makes life a little easier.

Again, all experimentation, I'll probably grab some parts and have a play. One idea I do like is being able to reprogram the API code on the fly if its connected on the USB....

Cheers..Pete

[usLEDsupply]

i tried the https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=6042 USB extender with around 100ft between and it was working but i was having connection issues with it about once per day i think because the baud rate was too fast, i tried lowering the baud rate to 9600 but it didn't work at all (this was before i found the bug in the manual baud rate setting so i will have to try it again sometime) but if it works it would be ideal for most of the boards in the house as you don't loose as many pins (but the Ethernet is working so well and i plan to have them on their own network anyway so shouldn't be much of an issue with traffic)

[petez69]

Ok on the USB extenders..I've tried an extension cable with a repeater (10ft) and had daily problems with the GSM modem dropping..

I do have the ethernet working fairly well at home however I thought I'd give the RS485 a try, cant hurt. For the price of 2xUSB dongles and 3 arduino RS485 to TTL convertors, its less than a sandwich for lunch :-) No brainer, more toys :-)

Will let the thread know how it goes when the bits turn up in 5 weeks :-)

Pete