ESP Easy > Thingspeak

[crazynight]

Hi I have just got back into using my nodemcu's with ESP Easy. Flashed them to mega-20181022 which was as simple as pi

My setup is as follows

3 x Nodemcu's all with 1 waterproof DS18B20's connected (one has 2 the shed)
I have set them all to read the temp every 60 seconds and send this to a local domoticz server and to my thingspeak channel.

As you can see from the public channel not all readings are been logged, sometimes it can work then appear to stop and then start again. Having looked at domestics it appears to be a similar story.

https://thingspeak.com/channels/607619

Have I missed something obvious on the move to Mega?
RSSI is all good, I can communicate with the units over the wifi fine.

Any advice welcome

[grovkillen]

What settings do you use in the controller?

[crazynight]

I have the thingspeak IP address, will get a screen grab when home, although might have found the noob mistake forget the pullup resistor.....might explain it.

[crazynight]

will get more details later

[crazynight]

resistor added, no change. these are my controller settings

[grovkillen]

Minimum send interval for thingspeak is 15000

[crazynight]

Minimum send interval for thingspeak is 15000

Made no difference

[grovkillen]

Hmm, I must ask someone with thingspeak working to help me out then.

[crazynight]

Hmm, I must ask someone with thingspeak working to help me out then.

I have just split the feeds

From:
ESP 1 Sensor 1 to channel 1
ESP 2 Sensor 2 to channel 1
ESP 3 Sensor 3&4 to channel 1


to:
ESP 1 Sensor 1 to channel 1
ESP 2 Sensor 2 to channel 1
ESP 3 Sensor 3&4 to channel 2

and seems slightly better will give it 30min or so

[grovkillen]

Yeah I reckon it's on the receiving end of the stream that is refusing the connection.

[crazynight]

Would make sense I am guessing due to the 4 sends every minute the chance of it hitting the thingspeak limit was high.

So would it be better to have all sensors on 1 one ESP?

How does ESP Easy send the data to thingspeak if they are difference sensors is it sent as 1 stream with all values or different sends?

[grovkillen]

I'm not 100% sure but I suspect it to be sent in one burst. So for that reason it would be better to have one node. Or you could try to use UDP or MQTT to get all values to one node which is the only one sending the data?

[TD-er]

The minimum send interval for Thingspeak is 15 seconds?
So you should set that value on the Thingspeak controller.

This leaves another problem, how to sync this send interval among nodes when you want to send to the same account.
You can add the ESPeasy P2P networking controller to send values of a physical node to another node which hasn't got the sensor attached.
For this you need to make sure the plugin positions remain the same, so you have to make a list:

Node 1: DS18b20 at plugin position 1 => send to Thingspeak controller
Node 2: DS18b20 at plugin position 2 => send to ESPeasy P2P networking controller
Node 3: DS18b20 at plugin position 3 => send to ESPeasy P2P networking controller

Node 1 must have position 2 and 3 empty(!!)

We make Node 1 the "master" so to say, which will coordinate the sending to Thingspeak.
You also have to make sure all nodes have the same UDP port set in the advanced settings (and reboot the node after setting + saving it)
This will create 'virtual' plugins at position 2 and 3 on Node 1
On node 1, you will then set the plugins at pos 2 and 3 to send to Thingspeak controller too.

This way, the rate limit function for the Thingspeak controller will make sure no more than 1 sample per N seconds is being sent.
You have to set the interval of each plugin higher than <number of sample values> * <send interval>
Or else there may be sensors blocking other sensors in the waiting queue.

[crazynight]

Node 1: DS18b20 at plugin position 1 => send to Thingspeak controller
Node 2: DS18b20 at plugin position 2 => send to ESPeasy P2P networking controller
Node 3: DS18b20 at plugin position 3 => send to ESPeasy P2P networking controller

By plugin position do you mean tasks, as it happens I have been doing some reading on the UDP stuff and seems to be very interesting and has lots of potential for my build, especially to get data all onto one small LCD.

[TD-er]

Yep, the position in the table on the "devices" tab of the web page.

[crazynight]

Finally got there,
All Nodemcu's communicate via UDP the main (living room) Nodemcu. This nodemcu uses the UDP sensors to create a dummy sensor (quad dummy sensor) which is then sent to thingspeak as 1 update (every 60seconds) using a rule. Any other way I tried was hit and miss as it appears ESPEasy sends each update individually not as a bulk update for the controller causing thingspeak to have a meltdown as the updates were more often than the 1 per 15 seconds.

Thanks for all your help.

[grovkillen]

Cool that you got it working, good job

[crazynight]

Just could do with a dummy sensor with 8 variables to max out thingspeak

[garnold]

How are you populating the values in the dummy device? I would like to do something simular to what you have done. Can I please see your rule?

[TD-er]

How are you populating the values in the dummy device? I would like to do something simular to what you have done. Can I please see your rule?

Use TaskValueSet as command.
See also the documentation: https://espeasy.readthedocs.io/en/lates ... ea=default

[garnold]

Thank you for the help