RFlink experiences

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Hi there,

What are your experiences with rflink?
I’m currently using homeduino but don’t need all protocols that are available. The plugin seems sometimes slow to me and I wonder if this would be better with rflink. Second the rflink plugin and hardware support 868MHz as well.

thanks

I don’t follow what you mean with “I’m currently using homeduino but don’t need all protocols that are available” ?
The protocols are in the homeduino software not the hardware.
Where do you experience delay / slow ?

Well I mean I’m only using KAKU switches and dimmers and not receive data from weatherstations etc.
When switching on multiple dimmers at once it sometimes takes 2 seconds before they switch on. When switching on a mysensors dimmer it goes much faster

@rikki78 said in RFlink experiences:

Well I mean I’m only using KAKU switches and dimmers and not receive data from weatherstations etc.
When switching on multiple dimmers at once it sometimes takes 2 seconds before they switch on. When switching on a mysensors dimmer it goes much faster

That’s not entirely the fault of homeduino, but how RF works (allthough I’m unaware of how mysensors works).
When you send/broadcast a on RF, all the receiving devices within range will start listening to the broadcast and are unable to listen/receive other messages on the same frequency.
Homeduino will send 7 repeats (default setting) for every broadcast it does. When the first device is switched on it will broadcast 7 times the same message. When the receiving device is in a good range it might respond to the first broadcast (the light goes on). When the next 6 repeats are done, homeduino can send the next 7 for the next device.
If you have no reception issues, you could lower the repeats.

It doesn’t matter what kind of plugin you use, you still have to send broadcasts over the same frequency.

MySensors is working completely different: it sends a message addressed to a specific node and does not repeat it. So sending 5 commands takes only 5 transmits, while it needs 4 (first 4 devices) * 7 (repeats) +1 (signal to the last device) =29 transmits until all KAKU’s are switched on.

@Anduril said in RFlink experiences:

MySensors is working completely different: it sends a message addressed to a specific node and does not repeat it. So sending 5 commands takes only 5 transmits, while it needs 4 (first 4 devices) * 7 (repeats) +1 (signal to the last device) =29 transmits until all KAKU’s are switched on.

If your reception is good, you can simply lower the repeats

@koffienl

Yes that is clear. But then the first dimmer should always switch on quickly isn’t it? That’s not the case either. I remember the length of one burst is around 40ms (at least for the old protocol) so if that is repeated 7 times (with some delay in between the bursts) it will take 1 second in the worst case before the next one can be send.

I’ve tried to lower the repeats in the past already but that didn’t make a difference. I will try again though, maybe I did something wrong back then.

So I was wondering if some of you are using the RFlink gateway and how that is working.

@koffienl

I followed your tip and I see some improvement. Still there is a delay. The ACK also comes late in these cases.
Sometimes the response is quick, sometimes the ACK comes after 5 seconds…
Any idea to improve this?
Thanks

19:34:58debug [pimatic-homeduino]: data: "ACK"
19:34:56debug [pimatic-homeduino]: Sending Protocol: dimmer1 unit:2 id:27 dimlevel:5 all:false Pin:6 Repeats:3

19:33:19debug [pimatic-homeduino]: data: "ACK"
19:33:14debug [pimatic-homeduino]: Sending Protocol: dimmer1 unit:2 id:27 dimlevel:11 all:false Pin:6 Repeats:3

19:33:11debug [pimatic-homeduino]: data: "ACK"
19:33:10debug [pimatic-homeduino]: Sending Protocol: dimmer1 unit:2 id:27 dimlevel:6 all:false Pin:6 Repeats:3

19:33:08debug [pimatic-homeduino]: data: "ACK"
19:33:07debug [pimatic-homeduino]: Sending Protocol: dimmer1 unit:2 id:27 dimlevel:10 all:false Pin:6 Repeats:3

19:33:00debug [pimatic-homeduino]: data: "ACK"
19:32:58debug [pimatic-homeduino]: Sending Protocol: dimmer1 unit:2 id:27 dimlevel:6 all:false Pin:6 Repeats:3

maybe you can try to use ESPimaticRF and see if it is working faster.

@leader21 said in RFlink experiences:

maybe you can try to use ESPimaticRF and see if it is working faster.

In theory ESPimaticRF should be slower (because of the extra wifi connection. But a ESP runs at 80 Mhz so it could responsd quicker to pimatic).
On the other hand, the original homeduino sends a ACK to pimatic when receiving is done, ESPimaticRF sends the ACK before the receiving.

my experiences with ESPimaticRF - it feels like switching a bit faster

@leader21 Do you have delays between the actual command and the ACK? Could you post the logs please?