Expandable Zigbee Repeater Solution (With Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and Light sensors)

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438

@Daniel_Dawson, thanks for looing into my project. I hope that we can help each others. For your grow tent, I think there are a couples solution that we can do.

The module have UART expansion. You can add an Arduino. I have an example above on thread 414 connecting to DS18B20 as an example. We can replace the DS18B20 with any sensor you may need. There are many Arduino sensor out there. A bit of coding is needed to package those data and send it back to the hub.

Another option is to use Bluetooth. I have a daughter Bluetooth card that connect to serial port. It act as a BLE gateway. One of the device that I have supported is the following device. If you do not mind going to ebay, these sensor is known as Xiaomi Flora. It comes with Moisture, temperature, fertility and illumination.

The battery live is surprisingly excellent. It has been a couple years. I have not replace the battery yet. The range is not that great. Depending on the size of are of your pots and how open it is, you may need a few gateways. The gateway can listen to multiple of this ā€œfloraā€ devices easily.

Here is a video that I made. The video is made on Hubitat hub which has very similar framework to ST at this point. Please note as ST is moving on new path. I am not sure yet whether I am going to support my devices on ST. I have to see how much time and investment that I need to make for my device to work in ST in the future.

Let me know whether there are some of the solution is close to what you can work with.

Thanks
Iman

439

@Alwas is using @iharyadiā€™s sensor with a soil moisture sensor:

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440

Hi @iharyadi, to get the various child devices displaying correctly in the new app, @mvevitsis walked me through how to do it, many thanks. You delete these 2 lines from the parent dth.

componentName: componentName,
componentLabel: ā€œ${device.displayName} $childDHā€])

So thisā€¦

def childDevice = childDevices.find{item-> return item.deviceNetworkId == "${device.deviceNetworkId}-$childDH"}
if(!childDevice)
{
    childDevice = addChildDevice("iharyadi", 
                                 "$childDH", 
                                 "${device.deviceNetworkId}-$childDH", null,
                                 [completedSetup: true, 
                                  label: "${device.displayName} $childDH",
                                  isComponent: false, 
                                  componentName: componentName, 
                                  componentLabel: "${device.displayName} $childDH"])

}

return childDevice?.configure_child()

becomes thisā€¦

	def childDevice = childDevices.find{item-> return item.deviceNetworkId == "${device.deviceNetworkId}-$childDH"}
    if(!childDevice)
    {
        childDevice = addChildDevice("iharyadi", 
                                     "$childDH", 
                                     "${device.deviceNetworkId}-$childDH", null,
                                     [completedSetup: true, 
                                      label: "${device.displayName} $childDH",
                                      isComponent: false, 
                                      ])

    }
    
    return childDevice?.configure_child()
}

Save and publish, delete the children, then create them again. Itā€™s very strange having an extra 15 devices show correctly in the new app! :+1:

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441

@Alwas & @mvevitsis Thank you for tracking down this issue. I have updated the DTH in github.

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442

Iā€™ll check these out. Thanks

443

@iharyadi just received my new sensor to go along with the others Iā€™ve purchased, great little device!

Is there something I could try to modify in DTH to get the sensor to show temperature vice humidity in the new Smartthings app on the main tile?
SmartSelect_20201121-164720_SmartThings

If not or your not sure, itā€™s no big deal. Just curious??

444

Hi Don,

I am sorry for the late reply. It has been busy weekend. I do not know how to change the tile yet on the new GUI. I am learning as we go with the new transition. Once I find out, I will let you know.

Thanks
Iman

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445

Thank you, and your reply was not late. Lots going on everywhere anymore.

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446

Effective this morning (12/16) my classic app quit working with a message to move to the new appā€¦ Is it just me or are others seeing the same???

447

The Classic App is no moreā€¦may it R.I.P.

448

Given the shutdown of SmartThings Classic is there any way to enable the new application to include the pressure data? I have tried to research this issue with little luckā€¦

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449

The data for the pressure itself is still there. I believe the sensor is still reporting it. I can see it on the web portal as well.

ST GUI have a lot of changes. It seems the concept of tile where the old DTH have control of what to display is gone. None of the code that specify the diagnostic attribute show up.

I canā€™t promise you that I can find a new solution quickly. But, I will try to find a way to learn the new ST GUI display the ā€œcustom attributesā€. Pressure is never part of built in attribute even on the Old GUI. The old gui has a concept of ā€œTileā€ which a DTH can control what is being displayed. The new GUI does not take the tile anymore. I believe this is what is going on.

If anyone else who had some some experience with porting the appearance aspect from old GUI to new GUI, I hope you can share tips and trick to expedite my learning process.

450

Hi @iharyadi, there are a couple of posts about the new custom capabilities, if you read them you will quickly see some of the best minds of these forums having trouble getting things to work, what works one day, doesnā€™t work the next. Apparently the documentation for developers is incomplete, the whole thing is a mess. If staff members themselves arenā€™t able to answer questions or the reasons for the anomalies what hope is there for a professional coder used to dealing with logic. Youā€™ve done so much for this community so far, I honestly donā€™t think itā€™s worth you wasting your time trying to fathom anything out with it yet, until/if they fix it.

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451

@Alwas, As always, I really appreciate your help. I always remember many improvement to my DTH that you sent over. Your effort to find fix for them is something I always will remember.

This time, yes, thanks again for the heads up. I did come across the post about the new capability. I will watch them. When they are ready for prime time and hopefully good and easy example on how to use the new capability, I do really want to get at least the pressure attribute back to the GUI.

Thanks
Iman

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452

When You say delete the children?? Iā€™m not very smart and not sure what I need to do to make these changes work? I updated to latest DTH just not 100% sure what delete the children means?

453

The parent is the main environmental sensor, if you have the expanded version, and added any other sensors like water, sound, motion etc they are the children to delete and recreate.

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454

Thank you for the explanation. I was just trying to understand.

455

Just received my devices. I have two SmartThings v1 hubs. One at home and one at cabin. I tested the devices at home and everything worked. I reset devices and took them to cabin. They were added and show as connected but Iā€™m getting zero data in the app and online GUI. Anyone experience this behavior? I have them next to the hub within 2 feet.

456

I do not think that it is a range issue. The radio modules comes with extra power amplifier. The sensor should not have issues communicating with the hub especially when they are only 2 feet away.

At one point not too long ago, many of us are forced to migrate to the new app from classic app. I saw similar behavior with yours during that migration on my phone app. I send out a support ticket to ST. I was told to remove and re-pair the device. I also was told to clean the configuration on my phone ST app. I use android. There was a config and cache data that I was told to clean. I was skeptical at the beginning as it sounds like a scripted support procedure. But, I did follow the support recommendation anyway. I am now getting data from my sensor just fine. It does not looked like this is your issue because you just pair your sensor. However, it is in my opinion that the new ST app may not be as stable as the classic app that went away. Doing the above may be needed to clear up some bad state of the app.

If you like to give it another try of re-pairing the sensor, perhaps double check on the factory reset procedure on the sensors. Just remove any power (battery and dc) from the sensors. Press the button on the back of the server. Power the sensor back while the button is still pressed. Hold it for 4 to 6 seconds and release it. Then, you can start pairing to the hub.

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457

Also, this may not be the best week to test/include anything on the ST platform, you may not be aware @iharyadi but thereā€™s been/are, major ST cloud outages again at the moment, this week and last, I would wait.

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