Best posts made by skywatch

Great work as always JK - I have just updated with no issues at all!

As expected the raspberry pi foundation have announced that they are ceasing production of 1Gb raspberry pi models. The falling price of ram on the open market and demand from users for more ram both contriubted to this action.

Now the entry level pi comes with 2Gb ram and has also seen a £10.00 price reduction to under £35.00 in the UK.

@jkandasa I think that instead of 'sensor' you could use 'source' as all data has to come from somewhere!

Variable vould become 'value' or 'info' or 'data'.

Just my thoughts on an early Sunday morning!

Just to wish all of you a happy holiday and good health in the new year!

2021 the year of MyController 2.0? - I can't wait

Great news that version 2.0 is soon in progress!!

I would like to see a more user focused product with many more guages 'out of the box' and colour options to fully customise the web interface, individual graph colour options, and more drag and click to setup the windows in the dashboard.
I strongly suggest you go to the my sensors site and visit all the 'other' controller sites to seek inspiration to take your next version to the top!

I think the automation rules/actions is far to annoying in its current state and a better way of getting something to happen based on conditions would be a bonus.
I'd prefer to keep the operations in one place on one page, that would help to start with!

It would be nice if we could also have the ability to add a video window to the dashboard pages. I use motioneye as cctv controller and would love to easily be able to add cameras from this to the mycontroller pages. All cameras are pi+camera and motion pi runs on a pi3 next to the mycontroller pi. An option to have a 'pop-up' video window on motion detect would also be nice to have.

Ability for dark mode display on timer or light sensor. Good for night time usage and also powersaving.

Ability to add floorplans for bulidings and surrounding area (gardens, outbuildings) etc with sensor locations and sensor status shown on there. Would then see at a glance which security sensor has triggered the alarm on the plan.

Ability to add photos similar to the above. Then taping or clicking on (for example) the lamp in the photo of the room would control that item.

Built in voice control - but probably a step too far for a controller, but maybe the ability to interface with another pi running voice recognition. This is very low on the list though.

Full support for 'ack' messages and better debugging of the system. Maybe some form of test page where each sensor can be interrogated and report back the result?

An automated installer! - I think that setting this all up puts a lot of people off even trying it,which is a shame. Add to that an updater script. These two things alone would improve usability to those who are put off by the current process!

Battery level graph on the dashboard. A must really.

Ability to zoom and pan the graphs within the dashboard environment. Would be probably more use on tablets, but with mouse would also work.

Easy implementation of min/max values and reporting.

Easy support for 'multi use' sensors. E.g. A motion sensor in my kitchen has various modes. Armed = send alarm on detection. Perimeter= Turn on kitchen lights on motion detection and leave on until no motion detceted for x minutes, but only if it is dark enough (that info is from another sensor). Off = Do nothing on sensor detection. Currently it is a pain to get this type of thing working.... which gives me the idae to be able to create a rule and then use that rule as a template for the next sensor/actuator by copying and changing the node/sensor/automation to suit, that would speed up setting things up!

I hope this will give you some thoughts to making an even better mycontroller in 2018!.......

Thank you for making and sharing mycontroller and making this all possible in the first place - Your support and talent is amazing!

Thank you!

Just to wish those who celebrate it a Happy Christmas and of course a Happy New Year to you all!

@jkandasa Done -#472

Hoorah !!!! - It is working now !!!!

Thank you so much for your kind support and time today. Whilst I have only been running this for a week or so I have learnt a lot in the process. But don't worry, I will soon be back with more questions!

typo in 4th command - missing 'o'

@jkandasa I'm in for a new version!!!

In a future release would it be possible to change the weather forecast symbols to better match the conditions. ATM I can't tell the difference between stable and sunny as they both use the sunny icon.

I suggest using the current 'cloudy' icon (sun & cloud) for 'stable' and use the 'double cloud' icon for cloudy weather.

You asked for suggestions so here's a couple for now....

1. Monitor and report network lan traffic bandwidth used (maybe with options to see different types of traffic eg tcp/http/udp etc....).

2. Get data for the number of packets sent/received by the nrf24l01+ attached to the pi.

Still, it's working well now and very useful to see this info!

It wouldn't be too difficult to write a bash script to automate this (maybe even downloading before uncompressing included - with user selectable 'stable' or 'snapshot' branch selection and backup and restore too....) and then have an 'update' button on the main page?
Would be easier for less technical people to upgrade then.......Possible???

@jkandasa How about 'content' or 'contents' for field?

@jkandasa It is just what I would like to do. It is not at all urgent for me, just would be nice to do sometime.

Maybe better to think of it for version 2.0 than spend time on it now and maybe find a way to make it easier for us mere mortals to do it ourselves.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you on (or behind) this forum.

Here's to 2018 and a much better year for us all!

@francois No changes for installation as far as I am aware.

As for Java, it's always best to use the latest version for security and compatibility unless there is a compelling reason to use an older version.

@daniele Yes, Message would be good!

The 'source' sends a 'message' to the controller, no problem there.... But then the controller sends a 'message' to the, er, 'destination'.....

But we can't have both can we?

Now I think about it the controller becomes the 'source' of the data in the same way as a node would be considered a 'source'. it's all about where we are looking at the data 'message' from (Einstein had something to say about relative points of viewing the same thing, didn't he?).

In the past when WU was down for a while I used yahoo weather. Yahoo weather is still free or if you look at my thread on this forum you can see how to get data from metcheck, which gives excellent forecasts and much more on their site.

If you want to automate keeping your pi up-to-date then this little script may be for you.

Just copy and save it in a file (I called mine autoupdate.sh - but you can use whatever name you like!) and then use crontab -e to run the above named file whenever you want.

I tested it by daily running, but now it only runs once a week in the early hours of the morning.

#!/bin/sh
export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
export DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical
sudo bash /home/mycontroller/bin/stop.sh
sleep 15
sudo bash /home/mcagent/bin/stop.sh
sleep 15
sudo -E apt-get -qy update
sudo -E apt-get -qy -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confdef" -o "Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold" upgrade
sudo -E apt-get -qy autoclean
sudo reboot

Maybe some of you might even have improvements to suggest!