With the release of the ESP8266 it seems that really cheap Wifi devices are now a possibility. Instead of only using Zwave sensors, am I able to create sensors that communicate back to the Vera using Wifi?
My plan is to use an Arduino or CoreMCU and then report the sensor data back to the Vera. To be more specific, if I wanted to hook up a DHT11 temp/humidity sensor to an Arduino or CoreMCU and send that data to the Vera how do I do this?
I have read about MySensors and I’m seriously looking into that, but I’d also like to explore the possibility of strictly using Wifi since these ESP8266 chips are so cheap and have a built in microcontroller.
IMO MySenors is the way to go. It works and is reliable. It’s integrated with Vera and other controllers too so you have flexibility should you decide to move away to a different controller. MySensors also works with Arduino so provides additional capabilities. WiFi devices are good, but other radio technologies like NRF24L01+ and RFM69 would be a consideration when using battery operated sensors because of their lower power usage.
There are plenty of plugins which already use sensors which are WiFi devices. The Netatmo suite of sensors is one example, although in that case communication is actually via the cloud rather than directly across the same LAN. From a programming point of view, though, there’s no different at all, except that you might choose not to use HTTP as a protocol.
Vera supports socket-level communications, so you could use TCP flavours. In my implementation of the distributed DataYours logging system, I’ve used UDP, which has very low overhead and despite it having no handshake, I’ve never seen a lost datagram over many, many millions of transactions over my intranet.
i second the mysensors path. you can use it in vera and with other controllers at the same time.
I have mysensors motion/lux/temp/humidity in every room of my house.
i turn on lights and fans based on the sensor data.
it’s all very DIY, but it does work well.
Update: I did install the MySensors plugin and have a couple of sensors going. It does seem pretty easy to use.
I still wish that I could use Wifi, though. It would be awesome if the MySensors “protocol” could be written for Wifi.
As it is now, I can choose between RFM69 and nRF24L01. If this were extended to Wifi then you could still use the same MySensors framework and also remove any need for a gateway since the Vera natively does Wifi.
But for now I’m pretty happy with the MySensors/RFM69 setup.
seeing recent posts related to ESP8266 i thought i shared my experience. a friend of my purchased the eSP/NodeMcu , it is a great device with Wifi accespoint but also client on it.
he is using it to read out the Dutch energy consumption meter (gas/electra). in this way you dont have to connect the meter via USB to Vera.
the thing is so small that i decided to use it to replace my Fibaro FGS001 that i use for reading the doorbell status into my Vera.
The FGS001 was not supported anyway when i upgraded to UI7 and also not found to be always reliable.
now with the ESP8266 (8Eur) and a USB adapter (5 Eur) and a relais (5Eur) i drive the doorbell sounder and i read the doorbell into Vera, using Http Get command.
it works like a charm and finally i dont have to use the fibaro device anymore.
i am intresting if more people are going to use it.
Good afternoon. I made a temperature sensor on ESP8266. Flashed the ESP easy firmware. Configured sending a message to Vera via HTTP requests. In the controller, I created a sensor in the image and likeness of a normal temperature sensor. Everything works fine. Data comes in the current Temperature variable. Temperature changes can be seen in Advanced. But there is no temperature value on the front panel. What could be wrong? I did everything according to the instructions from YouTube: Добавляем WiFi-датчики в Веру (Vera Plus) - YouTube . Please help me!!!
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