OK, thanks. Will try this.

@jkandasa Yup - You appear to have fixed it! 🙂

@benhub This issue fixed on SNAPSHOT version, for details, have a look here: https://github.com/mycontroller-org/mycontroller/issues/464

Ok, downgraded the java version by using the

JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-8-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java"

line in /etc/environment - AND NOW IT WORKS FINE!

Thanks again! 🙂

@skywatch

See here for reason and solution.....

https://forum.mycontroller.org/topic/328/serial-problem/57

@avamander Thank you for your suggestions.

Your advice is good and I have already done a lot of what you suggested. I didn't put a scope on it, I may make another portable system and try that then as I do not see any pullups on the pro mini nor on the pi3 schematics. That could well be the centre of my problems.

I also stumbled upon this page ...... https://spellfoundry.com/2016/05/29/configuring-gpio-serial-port-raspbian-jessie-including-pi-3/

This also seems to pinpoint issues with serial on the Raspberry Pi 3B, and why they happen. Seems the foundation made changes that have had a detrimental effect on serial comms stability. It would explain why this happened after 'upgrading' from Pi 2B to Pi 3B. It seems conclusive to me that the issue is with the RPi 3B serial port not working correctly.....Live and learn I guess 😉

Still, for the last 4 days I have been running with a serial to usb adapter and no ghost nodes and no data spikes on the graphs. I wonder if there are pullups on the board? It's difficult to see clearly with the plastic wrapper on it!
Things are looking very hopeful right now though...

The only issue I still face is random loss of data from some nodes. The outages can be just one value report missing (Most nodes send data once every 5 minutes), right up to over 6 hours of data loss. Then suddenly it all starts working again. I might have more time now to look into that a bit morenow the system is stable again, but it is so random.

I did also find quite a few 'less than good' dupont cables (from China) - So I have soldered directly a lot of connections now or modified/re-crimped the cables that were 'iffy'.

Thanks again to you and Jkandasa for the support and help. I am nearly there with this now and can build some more nodes with confidence. 🙂

@skywatch I have introduced an option from the script. Now we can safely remove a sensor variable from MyController.
This feature is available from a very recent SNAPSHOT version.

you can follow: https://forum.mycontroller.org/topic/361/how-to-delete-a-sensor-variable-from-script

@jkandasa There are already wait(100); between nrf sends, and big (1000+uF) capacitors to buffer energy for the send.

I have made progress and sent you an email with my findings.

@chrismills59 0.0.3.Alpha2 is too old, after this, I can see 3 more releases. can you try with the SNAPSHOT version and check this error?

Kindly backup everything before moving into latest version.

Hahaha.... I remember that topic (now) - had forgotton all about it.

I'll put a request for this on github along with another for use with lightning detector.

Thanks for reply.

@pighair47 Thank you for the hints. Let me have a look in detail.

@skywatch

Can you post the top of your sketch (the mysensors stuff)...
I had the same issue some time ago where the sensor names that I had set in mycontroller got overwritten, most probably when I upgraded to a new release..

I fixed this by hard coding the sensor description names into the sensors presentation loop:

See: https://www.mysensors.org/download/sensor_api_20#presentation
(copy of the most important part below)

Presentation
The sensors should present themselves before they start reporting sensor data to the controller. Do these calls in your presentation()-function

void present(uint8_t childSensorId, uint8_t sensorType, const char *description, bool ack);

childSensorId - The unique child id you want to choose for the sensor connected to this Arduino. Range 0-254.
sensorType - The sensor type you want to create.
description An optional textual description of the attached sensor.
ack - Set this to true if you want destination node to send ack back to this node. Default is not to request any ack.

Description is the one for investigation..

@skywatch
No worries! good to read you are still busy with mycontroller! :thumbs_up:

Just setting up again and tried this - No problem at all! - Thank you!

@storepeter said in how do I make the build-in MQTT broker work ?:

There is one minor difference - when using the serial gateway all my repeaters were interconnected with lines, now they are all islands. Before I believe that only non-repeater showed as unconnected. I kind of liked that distinction - Why is this so ?

There is no difference in MyController side for MQTT or Serial. On gateway, page select the gateway and execute Discover.
0_1525272973036_1a98f50c-8784-4b84-9f4c-5a5e37b3662e-image.png

Discover job will be executed 30 minutes once I guess(default).

0_1525272840404_ce0d2348-e066-4966-93eb-8a833563164a-image.png

Your MQTT gateway RF may be weaker than serial gateway RF. When enabling ack for your gateway might resolve this issue. If the message failed to send, MyController retries N(in this image 5 times) times in the interval of 1 second(1000 ms).

0_1525273080328_4ee37fa4-470d-4af9-a8e2-ad2fd4684493-image.png

@wanvo Thanks, I have added a fix for this issue. kindly check GitHub issue.

https://github.com/mycontroller-org/mycontroller/issues/447

@njbuch Do you face the issue with recent snapshot version? If yes, kindly report back the errors.

@njbuch master branch works well with ESP8266 2.3.0 version.

The problem comes when we upgrade to 2.4.0 and above. For now, you should revert back your esp8266 Arduino version to 2.3.0