Integration of a MySensors type of capability

I will be migrating to Hubitat soon. Several of my lower level devices are connected to my Vera through a MySensors gateway (in my case ethernet).

My question, is there a path to connect home grown sensor to Habitat?

Currently I am waiting to receive my Habitat hub so I'v about as green as one can get with this platform. I have seen posts and tutorials talking about being able to "write a driver" however I normally think of drivers (like a windows printer driver) as well beyond my code writing skills.

BTW I have not particular love / hate feelings about MySensors. It seems to work well, however from the posts I've read there might be a similar path using ST_Library.

:slight_smile: Any insight would be appreciated.

John

John,

Welcome to the Hubitat Community. My son and I are the authors of ST_Anything / HubDuino. I think you will find it relatively straightforward to use your own DIY sensors, assuming the devices you currently use are already supported. If you can provide some more details of what you use MySensors for today, I can let you know how easy/difficult the conversion would be.

[Note: The Hubitat Engineering Team recently released a new feature to the platform that I am currently adding back into HubDuino. This will make the set up slightly more straightforward, if you can afford to wait a little while.]

@ogiewon

Thanks for your reply.

Currently I have a simple water sensor (being handled like a motion sensor) and an ultrasonic distance sensor. I plan on adding a Bosch BME-680 sensor for temp, humid, pressure and air quality. That's as far ahead as I am currently thinking.

I have no trouble programming an arduino although I prefer to use the native C++ code and not the arduino extensions. However I don't have the skill to write a complex driver.

I'm confused regarding the work you done with the ST_Anything / Hubdino library. I've read the ST Library has been abandon by Smartthings. Is Hubdino a replacement or continued development by you and your son? Is it only for legacy sensors or should it be considered for new projects.

Thanks
John

Samsung/SmartThings is no longer producing or selling the ThingShield for the Arduino UNO/MEGA platform. We originally wrote ST_Anything as a library that leveraged the ThingShield, in order to make it much simpler for end-users to build their own DIY sensors and actuators, without having to know too much about the SmartThings/Groovy side of things.

When SmartThings (ST) discontinued the ThingShield, I decided to extend ST_Anything to work with LAN connected devices, as well as the old ThingShield, to allow new users to still have an easy method to build DIY sensors.

ST_Anything is still alive and doing well. In order to get things to work initially on Hubitat, I had to make some changes on the groovy side of things. This work has become known as HubDuino. Again, I am still fully supporting both platforms.

It takes a little while to wrap one's head around the ST/Hubitat Driver and App model. But once it clicks, you'll realize that it is pretty simple for most programmers to pick up. My HubDuino groovy code, however, provides a very easy to use jump start so that you won't need to know too much about the groovy code to start with.

Your water sensor should be easy to integrate. The BME-680 is not currently supported in ST_Anything. It wouldn't be too hard to add a new C++ class for it, especially if you're a programmer already. What microcontroller are you using? The ESP8266 is probably the simplest and most reliable platform currently. It has built-in WiFi so it is simple to connect to your home network. You do need to use v2.3 of Board Manager for Arduino IDE with it, due to a memory leak introduced in v2.4/2.4.1.

Again thanks for the response.

Where can I go to find more about the nitty gritty of such an approach?

I am currently using an arduino pro mini and a RFM69 board. One reason I liked the MySensor Concept is that there is only one Router connection, and the RFM69 is at 915Mhz which makes the achievable distance large compared to WiFi.

Sensor1----Pro Mini+ RFM69 -------{radio waves}---- RFM69+SAM21 ====(ethernet cable) ======Router

Sensor2----Pro Mini+ RFM69 ----{radio to above RFM69+SAM21}---^

Regards
John

The high level design is in the ReadMe in my Github repo, linked in the first post of the HubDuino thread.

Thank you, I've found it and I'll see what I can absorb.

John

I also am using Mysensors with a Vera. I use it for monitoring freezer/fridge temps and alerting, as well as distance sensors to alert me of a full septic tank or low salt in my water treatment system.

As I move over to Hubitat, I'd like to get this all managed through Hubitat, or at a minimum at least get the data into Hubitat. If I set up an MQTT gateway for MySensors and send this up to AWS IOT hub, can I subscribe the Hubitat via MQTT to AWS IOT to get the data?

Is anyone working on a Mysensors driver/app?

I was also using MySensors with my previous hub, but I now also have z-wave devices.
I decided to stick with one technology - z-wave as it would be better to have a stronger mesh network.

For my former MySensors sensors, I am now using z-uno. It's a z-wave shield type thing for arduino. https://z-uno.z-wave.me/

Price is much higher per device than MySensors for hardware but thinks it's worth it to be on a single technology.

Then I can mix off the shelf and custom devices and chuck it onto the same mesh network!

Hubduino is probably the best alternative here. But it requires wifi. So all of my Nanos with the cheap radio would need to be switched out with esp8266 devices. No big deal.

But I've replaced most temp sensors with zigbee ones.

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Did you get the Z-Uno to work on the Hubitat? What did you use for drivers? I just got one and can't find a correct driver.

I left MySensors when I moved to Hubitat. I replaced it with an ESP32 board and Hubduino which I have working for some time.
However I recently purchased one of these and I think I can move to Zigbee with little effort.

ThingShield replacement

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