Hmm, I’ll have a look at the code when I get home tonight, it looks like 8s from boot to sleep. Must be a bug…
As for the gateway, will probably need to look at the serial logs for that too… I wonder if because there is no blinds reporting valid data if it’s doing a reset …
That makes sense, will check the gateway logs when I’m home tomorrow.
Ok, i think i found the bug… I’ve updated the code and pushed it to GitHub, please give that a go and let me know how you get on. I wasn’t setting a flag to true before going into the waiting for config loop… silly bug and I’m not sure how i ever managed to set up a device!
There is a function that resets the lora radio on the gateway every 2min if no lora packets received, and after 5 radio resets it will reboot the device… so every 10mins you should see it disconnect if you haven’t got any master devices configured
Will do, thank you! At the airport now but have a full day ahead of me when I land but I can find time to update the masters tonight after the kids go to bed.
Flying back out again on Thursday to the UK. No rest for the wicked 
Edit: Connected 2/2 without issue!
Further edit: Skipped a meeting, was too excited to try it out and fix my soldering. It all works and responds now! Learned that I have to make additional adjustments on my 0.2mm nozzle prints as the mechanism does not always respond appropriately.
Good news though, all my electronics/software are working as Chris intended! Will work on the prints in a couple weekends when I am back.
Hi Chris,
Just starting my journey on this, and am playing with the electronic first.
Based in the UK, so have set the gateway to 868, but am struggling to change the master to 868. Couldn’t see anything in the interface to change this, and have found multiple reference in the code, but am still struggling to get changed.
it gets set at the same time as the keys from the file. So when you download the key file from the gateway it also contains the frequency. When this is loaded in the master it saves this to flash
You could try opening the file in a text editor and see if it’s there and set correctly
On the way back in a couple days, looking forward to diving back on!
@chris.huitema when time permits, could you help me with a snap or two of your solar setup? Whatever you think would help me replicate would be very much appreciated 
I’m also travelling for work and for some reason I don’t have decent photos of the solar setup. But I’ll explain it as best I can
The parts are on the electronics BOM.
Basically start with the battery protection circuit board and solder on the 2 pin plug that comes with the solar charger board - 
but check the polarity as they send 1 normal and 1 inverted cable. Then install onto an 18650 battery with the “80 gears spot welder” 
you should be able to find videos of how to spot weld batteries online. I put some of that green battery insulation card to stop rubbing and covered everything with kapton tape.
I then solder an extension cable onto the solar panel and then the other 2 pin plug. Again mindful of the polarity
Then it’s plug it all in… there is the 20cm 1.25 to PH2 cable on the BOM that goes from the battery connection on the heltec module to the batt connection of the solar charger, the battery connects to the second battery connection on the solar charger, and then plug the solar panel into the charger…
I haven’t yet designed a case for it… I actually just used double sided tape to stick it all to the wall, then put a spare actuator cover over it for now… and it’s out of sight out of mind at the moment
One thing with solar panels is if there is the slightest shading on one part it massively effects power output, so make sure it gets full sun… I found the bottom of my windows get more light than the top. for west and east windows I mount it outside in the window recess in a vertical orientation so it gets north facing light (in Southern hemisphere). I’ll add a picture when I get home
I have tried a few different solar controllers but found the one in the BOM to be best value for money. Below is a photo of my old setup, but the wiring is more complex because I crimped my own jst connector on for a different controller board… then migrated to the new board. The new setup as described above using the 2pin plugs that come with the solar charger boards makes it so much easier
This is awesome, thank you!
I have a really strange one, I managed to get the gateway to communicate with the Blind. Was fine for 12 hrs, then the blind switched from 868 to 915.
No clue why.
have refreshed the ESP and set keys again, but cannot seem to get it out of the 915 spectrum.
yeah i can see some really poor coding on my part regarding the loading flash… so many bugs from using AI 
I think the issue is it doesn’t load the settings from flash every boot, it keeps them in memory, but not in RTC memory like it should. to be honest I’m not sure how it ever worked.
I’m currently travelling for work and don’t have anything with me to test with, but adding 1 line of code should help.
In SleepyLoraMaster/src/main.cpp add this at line 669, just before the Serial1.begin
loadConfigFromFlash();
this will force the read from flash after each boot before the values are used anywhere.
how did you identify the 915mhz? was it from the serial logs? could you send them to me so i can double check…
when i get home ill need to do some tidy up and retest
Thank you, the seems to have resolved the frequency issue, and the blind has re registered into MQTT,
still playing around but still having trouble getting it to communicate commands.
Going to but a second unit together tomorrow to test that one.
miss getting the log file first time, but essentially the same, the frequency was 915
[INFO] millis(): 65
[INFO] CPU0 reset reason: [INFO] DEEPSLEEP_RESET
[INFO] CPU1 reset reason: [INFO] DEEPSLEEP_RESET
[INFO] Time at wakeup: 27519237
[INFO] Device ID A8CB2ADB using frequency 868.1 MHz
[INFO] Starting lora_hardware_re_init
[INFO] Checking for event after deep sleep wakeup
[92] [BlindMotor] begin() called
[ 94][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_kp NOT_FOUND
[ 110][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_ki NOT_FOUND
[ 118][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_kd NOT_FOUND
[ 126][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_deadband NOT_FOUND
[ 135][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_imin NOT_FOUND
[ 143][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_imax NOT_FOUND
[ 152][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_dmin NOT_FOUND
[ 160][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_dmax NOT_FOUND
[ 169][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_dalpha NOT_FOUND
[ 177][E][Preferences.cpp:503] getBytesLength(): nvs_get_blob len fail: pid_palpha NOT_FOUND
[INFO] Setup finished
[INFO] millis(): 186
[INFO] Attempting to sync time with gateway, try 1
[INFO] Fully reinitialize the Radio now
[INFO] OTP Time: 27519238 OTP code: 317425
[DEBUG] Data To ENC as HEX values: F1 D7 04 BB DB 2A CB A8 05 E9 A3 01 05 E9 A3 01
[DEBUG] Data encrypted HEX values: F9 21 85 23 87 53 01 D0 25 41 87 4D 93 D5 F5 2C
[DEBUG] DataTX package HEX values: DB 2E 9C 14 F9 21 85 23 87 53 01 D0 25 41 87 4D 93 D5 F5 2C
[INFO] Packet build time 95ms
[INFO] CAD returned channel free after 1 times
[INFO] Transmit finished - Radio Status: 0
[INFO] Packet send time 77ms
[INFO] Set RX mode - Radio Status: 1
[WARN] LoRa loop timeout
[INFO] Going to sleep…
[INFO] SetRxDutyCycle with Rx: 90000 ms (262441 units), Sleep: 60 ms (3840 units)
[INFO] Awake for 20232ms
[INFO] Start sleeping
[INFO] Entering deep sleep.
Hmmm more flash read issues! Let me dig into it tonight… edit: those preferences things are warnings, it just loads defaults. have a look at post 128, i have tweaked the PID settings to make the motors much quieter. when you update the values or press save with the defaults it will get rid of most of those lines. short press of the config button should open the portal, normally i just keep clicking after a reboot till it shows up… it doesn’t stay awake long normally
but it doesn’t appear to be syncing time either and it timed out waiting for a response hence the awake time of 20s. can you share the serial logs from your gateway while its trying to connect too.
I’ve been wanting to automate my shutters for a long time and this is amazing work. Any plans on offering SleepyLoRa kits?
I thought about it for a long time, and thought about making fully assembled tested units too… but it difficult to compete with China and the cheap units they sell. I built this system for me to use in my house and thought it will be useful for the community hence why I open sourced it
I thought there would have been someone over there making them and selling them by now… save me the effort of building and assembling them too!
I totally understand. We have a bunch of shutters in the house and this would be awesome to implement. I’m not super confident building this on my own, but I guess I’ll have to give it a go.
Start small with a gateway and a couple of units, then build up… it’s a big job building them… Last time I built 10 at once… but then I rushed the installs and then they fell down and broke so had to make new parts
Who would have thought that solar charging in summer would be more difficult in summer than in winter? the issue seems to be that the solar panels in the windows are no longer getting direct sunlight, with the winter sun low in the sky they recharged most days and only during full cloud cover days would they not charge… but with the reasonable battery life it wasn’t an issue.
No as we come into summer the sun high in the sky there just isn’t enough direct sun on the panels… the shadow cast by the eve’s blocking the sun just enough to make no power.
unfortunately now i have 8 devices offline for this reason… and need to find another way.
The other issue i have is the resin snapping… I need to beef up the design around the drive mechanism as I’ve had 2 devices fail in the exact same place now on the exact same shutter! i think its a bit tighter than the other blinds and often doesn’t disengage properly, then when my wife wants to go to sleep its slammed closed! it should be a reasonably easy fix when i get the time.
What kind of battery life do you get without solar? Presumably these don’t use a lot of power so if you can minimise idle current that 1850 must last a couple of months?
Must have been super annoying to have the part fail like that, but I’m wondering what kind of torque you must be having to actually snap the plastic? With my blinds I can loosen them all the way so the amount of force required to move them is quite low. Im wondering if you might have the same ability to adjust them?
Last q!! What made you go down the master / Slave route rather than individually pairing them?
they get about 10days without charging. they should be able to get 1000x longer but i just cant get the things to wake and respond to commands… so basically they are always in active listening mode with the esp32 sleeping
the plastic breaking is no so much from the torque rotating its the pressure applied on the gears pushing the rack outwards… and resin printed stuff is just brittle… and its just too thin
my blinds are the cheapest oldest blinds around… there is no adjustment at all… just how much lube i spray on the pins! but i have lubed them well so they dont take much to move.
i went down the master slave route because of a few reasons… mostly cost and batteries… the heltec modules are quite a bit more than the esp32-c3… and over dozens and dozens of them it adds up
