Heartbeat

[Archcantor]

The good news is that I connected a 5V 2A wallwart directly to the arduino +5V input (not the power plug input which needs more than 5V) and everything seems stable now. I measure 5.1V at that terminal. I set up an Event to email me whenever there is a status other than Connected. I can now reset the Arduino Mega through Homeseer which will interrupt the 5V power and reset the board. Now I have a fail safe and don''t have to drive there to reset. I could have automated this with a heartbeat and a 555 timer. I just want to see how long it will go. I can still easily automate this by causing a power reset with the email event.

[petez69]

Well done mate for sorting it. Putting the juice directly onto the Arduino 5V pin is the way to go. I found exactly the same with Raspberry PIs, rather than go in via the USB connector I go straight to the board.

Anyway look forward to more updates as you go....

Pete

[Archcantor]

Thanks Pete. The Mega and NodeMCU have been running flawlessly. The Mega is powered directly to the board (not the power jack) with a good 5v supply. I did not add any heartbeat or reset circuits. I am only monitoring the board connected status with an event that sends me an email when it's in a state other than connected. I only get an alert when I restart Homeseer or if I manually mess with the board's connection. I am looking at about 15 inputs, controlling one output and running an LCD display. As a failsafe I have the board's power supply on an X10 Universal Module. That way I can power cycle the Arduino remotely. That will ensure the ethernet shield gets the reset along with the Arduino. So far, so good. I have not had to reset it at all over the last 2 months. -Rick

[petez69]

Hi Mate....

I'm so tempted to go through the pain of upgrading the plugin, I have one board that I would have to pull out which is a big job and take it over to the Homeseer PC where I have the ide loaded :-) I have a spare Mega that I could code up and just go and swap the board out, this I need to think about some more :-)

I've been playing with tasmota firmware on the WeMOS using mqtt. I need to get some led light strip control happening and the arduino plugin has an excellent interface to mix colours. The tasmota firmware needs a "middleman" like node-red and I dont want yet another device in the middle....

I plan to deploy a few NodeMCU's into places I cant get the cat5 cable to for the lighting control of led strips.

Thanks for the feedback on NodeMCU, its good to know it works well

[Archcantor]

Hi Mate....

I'm so tempted to go through the pain of upgrading the plugin, I have one board that I would have to pull out which is a big job and take it over to the Homeseer PC where I have the ide loaded :-) I have a spare Mega that I could code up and just go and swap the board out, this I need to think about some more :-)

I've been playing with tasmota firmware on the WeMOS using mqtt. I need to get some led light strip control happening and the arduino plugin has an excellent interface to mix colours. The tasmota firmware needs a "middleman" like node-red and I dont want yet another device in the middle....

I plan to deploy a few NodeMCU's into places I cant get the cat5 cable to for the lighting control of led strips.

Thanks for the feedback on NodeMCU, its good to know it works well

Hi Pete,

My NodeMCU is actually remote from the Homseer location. I have the two houses linked with the routers running DD-WRT firmware and using Ethernet over IP (EoIP) to allow the two houses to see each other's network. With this I can ping both houses' IP addresses from either house. The NodeMCU is only running an LCD display that shows the Homeseer security system status and time. It updates every minute. It has been just as reliable as the Mega and running for about 3 months now without needing any attention. I updated to the most recent beta plugin 1.0.0.147 but it was running fine on the previous one.

Good luck with your projects!

-Rick