Environment - RadSens I2C radiation counter

RadSens I2C radiation counter

Plugin details

Type: Environment

Name: RadSens I2C radiation counter

Status ESP32: COLLECTION G

Status ESP8266: .

GitHub: P163_RadSens.ino

Maintainer: tonhuisman

Used libraries: ClimateGuard/RadSens

Description

The RadSens and RadSens mini boards are radiation counters, that provide the counted values via the I2C interface.

Warning

These boards use fairly high voltages (400V or higher) to drive the geiger tube. When operated they should be installed electrically safe to protect the public and operator from harm.

Configuration

• Name: Required by ESPEasy, must be unique among the list of available devices/tasks.

• Enabled: The device can be disabled or enabled. When not enabled the device should not use any resources.

Dats Source

• Remote Unit: Shows the remote unit, by number and name, where the data originates if the ESPEasy P2P Network is used to transmit sensor data to this units. Remote Unit 0 is shown when no remote unit is configured, and the data is collected from a locally connected sensor (the standard/usual configuration).

I2C options

The available settings here depend on the build used. At least the Force Slow I2C speed option is available, but selections for the I2C Multiplexer can also be shown. For details see the I2C Bus page

Currently, only the default I2C address of 0x66 is supported. Multiple sensors can be connected using an I2C multiplexer.

Device Settings

• Read incremental count: If you want to see the incrementing count over a certain timespan, you can use the Incremental Count value, and after some time, reset the count using the radsens,resetcount command. When unchecked the number of impulses since the last read is used.

• Reset after read: When checked, the incremental counter is reset after reading the value. This counter can also be cleared via the radsens,resetcount command.

• Low-power mode: To use the low power mode of the board, this option can be checked.

• Enable onboard Led: By default, the onboard Led of the sensor board shows an indication of the impulses counted. This setting can be used to turn the Led off. (On by default).

• Events on Count-threshold: Select the threshold for the Count value to trigger an event. This can avoid the generation of many events if the count changes only slightly. Event generation can be disabled by setting this value to -1.

• Use Count-average of values: To make the event triggers more stable, instead of using only the previous value, an averange of the last ‘n’ measurements can be used to even out the response. The max. number of values depends on the ESP used, for ESP8266: 16, for ESP32: 250.

Note

To be able to use the Count-average value, the Stats checkbox for the Count value must be enabled. Only the available values will be used for the average, as data from any previous run is not persisted after plugin restart.

Data Acquisition

This group of settings are standard available configuration items.

• Single event with all values: When this setting is enabled, all available values will be sent in a single event <TaskName>#All, with all values in order as arguments to the event.

• Show derived values: When checked, the Devices overview page, and the /json endpoint (used for updating the Devices overview page) will include any Derived values as defined. See the TaskValueSetDerived and TaskValueSetPresentation commands.

• Event & Log derived values: When checked, the Derived values will be generated as Events, to be handled in Rules, and sent to logging devices like the Syslog server and/or SD-card logging.

(The derived values options are only available if String variables feature is included in the build.)

• Send to Controller: Select the Controller(s) to send the Values to, either on a TaskRun command applied to the task, or on an Interval time action.

Send to Controller is only visible when one or more Controllers are configured.

Depending on the controller capabilities, some configuration settings may be shown:

All configured Controllers are shown here, including the enabled or disabled state (multiple Controllers can be enabled, only a single MQTT Controller can be enabled at one time!).

For each controller the user can select wether the data should be sent on each Interval (or explicit TaskRun).

For the Domoticz controllers the value index (IDX) has to be configured.

For some controllers, like Home Assistant/openHAB, there are extra options available.

• Group: This represents the group id to combine all values from multiple tasks into a single grouped-device during MQTT AutoDiscovery. Groups, by design, can span multiple ESPEasy devices, if desired, as long as the Task/Valuename combinations are unique. If a group should only combine Tasks from a single ESPEasy unit, the group id should be unique across multiple ESPEasy units. The group description, default Group <n>, can be adjusted in Home Assistant. If the Group value matches the current Unit nr, the Unit name, %sysname%, is used instead of Group <nr>.

• Retained: For MQTT Controllers, this setting can be enabled to send the values for the current task with the Retain flag set. The Publish Retain flag in the Controller settings will override this by sending all task values with Retain flag enabled.

• Send derived: This checkbox determines if any configured Derived values should also be sent to the controller (and included in the AutoDiscovery if that’s available and enabled).

• Resend MQTT Discovery: When checked, will start a resend of the MQTT Discovery process for this task after a random delay, when Submit is clicked, so any changed settings will be updated in the MQTT broker. This setting is only available if the controller is enabled, the Auto Discovery feature is available and enabled for the controller. This setting is not stored.

Other controllers, like f.e. FHEM HTTP, do not support additional settings besides the checkbox to enable sending the data.

• Interval By default, Interval will be set to 60 sec. The data will be collected and optionally sent to any configured controllers using this interval.

Values

The plugin provides measurements Count in impulses/microRad, iDynamic the dynamic radiation intensity < 123 sec., iStatic the static radiation intensity, and IncrCount, the incremented counter value since the last reset or restart of the plugin.

Per Value is a Stats checkbox available, that when checked, gathers the data and presents recent data in a graph, as described here: Task Value Statistics:

To use the Count-average as threshold, the Stats option for Count has to be enabled.

Commands available

Command Syntax	Extra information
radsens,calibration,<value>	Change the calibration value for the board in impulses per microrad. Can be used when a different type of geiger tube is installed on the board. The default tube uses 105 imp/uRad.
radsens,highvoltage,<0|1>	Enable (1) or disable (0) the High Voltage generator on the board that powers the geiger tube. When this is turned off, the used power is greatly reduced, but no usable measurements can be retrieved. This command can be used when bringing the ESP in sleep mode, and when returning from sleep mode.
radsens,resetcount	Clear the incremental count in the sensor driver.

Change log

Changed in version 2.0: …

added 2024-08-13 Initial release version.