So, I'm stepping through code trying to work out the best way of switching to mqtt for handling data from various devices and commands to control them and it DIED.
Yep, I couldn't publish anything even though everything was connected. Without anything being published, I naturally couldn't update the weather data base, and everything got lost. Losing data is no big deal, I'll get more; it's not having a clue what went wrong that sucks. I went and looked at the logging for mqtt and enabled it to syslog so I could at least see something, and that's when it started working again. Probably just a coincidence, but I'm leaving the broker logging enabled for a while. During this process I found a nice tool for interacting with mqtt from my Windows laptop mqtt-spy, it is a java application and allows me to stuff things into mqtt and monitor any of the 'topics', but all it told me was that nothing was getting published.
I'll just wait for it to happen again and see if I can get more information.
Otherwise, I decided to organize the topics differently. This is the first of what will probably be a large number of decisions like this ... mostly wrong. Instead of having the weather devices under the topic Desert-Home/Weather, they're now under Desert-Home/Device. I did this because I realized that weather is a collection of readings, not a device. So, the AcuRite 5n1 and the barometer are now Desert-Home/Device/5n1 and Desert-Home/Device/Barometer.
Yes, a comment on my last post by Grant got me to thinking.
As I was moving and changing code, I thought of something else; wouldn't it be cool to create a log of all the activity of the various things in one place on one machine so I could prowl through the day to day operation easily? Thus was invented mqttlogger.py. This new process subscribes to two topics: Desert-Home/Log and Desert-Home/Attention and simply writes what it receives to stdout. I redirect stdout to a file in the init configuration file and ta da, a log of whatever activity I want in one place. The topic Desert-Home/Attention is for stuff like the batteries going dead in the weather head or one of my battery operated devices. I'll eventually hook email to the Attention topic so I can be notified more easily.
The possible plan is to create a topic called Weather that has levels for the various readings that matter. There would be Desert-Home/Weather/CurrentTemp, HighestDaily, CurrentBarometer, RainfallToday, etc. Then I could pick and choose from the various values to present when I get that far. Frankly though, that's a lot of work and it may get modified to a JSON string that represents the weather reading right now. We'll see when I get there.
The weather station software has been converted to use mqtt now and is working reasonably well with the caveat that it may stop at any time because of the problem I mentioned up top. I can monitor the various things using mqtt-spy to see each device and the items involved including the log I created.
I'll post the code for the logger soon, I want to get a little time on it before I go and embarrass myself, and I want to give it a couple of days before cramming it into GitHub.
If it wasn't for that nagging possibility of it failing again I'd be really pleased.
Friday, June 19, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
MQTT Conversion, First Steps
Last post I talked about trying out mqtt and being impressed with the ease of using it. It really went well and I decided to convert my house monitoring system to using this tool. So I took the very first steps. This is going to be a complicated conversion because I already have a system running and I don't want to break it while I'm moving to something different, so I decided on a few things to get me started.
I'm going to divide the sensors, saving data, and presenting data into different things. For example, I'm starting with the weather station because it's the simplest, but still has multiple sensing devices. The entire house is published under the 'topic' Desert-Home, so the weather station will be Desert-home/Weather, and the two current sensors are the Acurite 5n1 and the barometer out on the fence. The interesting thing here is that they are radically different.
The 5n1 is detailed on about a hundred posts on this blog, but finally wound up being a sensor on the roof that transmits in the 933MHz range. I catch and decode the signal with an SDR (software defined radio) and some code I stole and heavily modified. The readings from this sensor will be published under Desert-Home/Weather/5n1.
The barometer is a device I built up myself and put in a Stevenson Screen out on a fence post in the yard. It has an XBee that sends a JSON string to a Pi. This will be published under Desert-Home/Weather/Barometer.
I can see each of these devices by simply subscribing to 'Desert-Home/Weather/#'. The pound sign means to get everything that comes in under 'Desert-Home/Weather' and that will include every sensor I come up with related to weather.
I also decided to use JSON strings as much as possible for a few reasons. Most important to me is the ease of reading a JSON string when you're monitoring the network to see why something is messing up. The JSON string has key:value pairs that tell you what it is and what the value is. This helps a lot when I'm looking for a problem. This will be painful since most of my sensors use another technique entirely and they will have to be converted. Another reason important to me is that I don't have to write parsers to get the data back into variables, There are libraries that will do that for me and all I have to do is use them. Maybe that will make up for the pain I go through converting the devices.
So, since the XBee network I have is on a different Pi than the weather station RF software, I get to try out a multi-machine solution as the very first thing I try. Step one is done; I brought up a mqtt server (mosquitto, see previous post) and added publish lines to the XBee receive code and the weather station decoding. It worked on the second try; I had a couple of syntax errors to fix.
Mosquitto caught the data and all I have to do to see it is use the tool mosquitto_sub to watch the data as it is generated. The command line:
mosquitto_sub -h "192.168.0.205" -t "Desert-Home/Weather/#" -v
shows me what is coming in as it happens:
The code is not in GitHub, I'm going to hold off until I get enough in there to make a significant difference. But, the example from the last post is exactly what I did with the difference above. This is a lot simpler and more versatile than I expected.
I'm going to divide the sensors, saving data, and presenting data into different things. For example, I'm starting with the weather station because it's the simplest, but still has multiple sensing devices. The entire house is published under the 'topic' Desert-Home, so the weather station will be Desert-home/Weather, and the two current sensors are the Acurite 5n1 and the barometer out on the fence. The interesting thing here is that they are radically different.
The 5n1 is detailed on about a hundred posts on this blog, but finally wound up being a sensor on the roof that transmits in the 933MHz range. I catch and decode the signal with an SDR (software defined radio) and some code I stole and heavily modified. The readings from this sensor will be published under Desert-Home/Weather/5n1.
The barometer is a device I built up myself and put in a Stevenson Screen out on a fence post in the yard. It has an XBee that sends a JSON string to a Pi. This will be published under Desert-Home/Weather/Barometer.
I can see each of these devices by simply subscribing to 'Desert-Home/Weather/#'. The pound sign means to get everything that comes in under 'Desert-Home/Weather' and that will include every sensor I come up with related to weather.
I also decided to use JSON strings as much as possible for a few reasons. Most important to me is the ease of reading a JSON string when you're monitoring the network to see why something is messing up. The JSON string has key:value pairs that tell you what it is and what the value is. This helps a lot when I'm looking for a problem. This will be painful since most of my sensors use another technique entirely and they will have to be converted. Another reason important to me is that I don't have to write parsers to get the data back into variables, There are libraries that will do that for me and all I have to do is use them. Maybe that will make up for the pain I go through converting the devices.
So, since the XBee network I have is on a different Pi than the weather station RF software, I get to try out a multi-machine solution as the very first thing I try. Step one is done; I brought up a mqtt server (mosquitto, see previous post) and added publish lines to the XBee receive code and the weather station decoding. It worked on the second try; I had a couple of syntax errors to fix.
Mosquitto caught the data and all I have to do to see it is use the tool mosquitto_sub to watch the data as it is generated. The command line:
mosquitto_sub -h "192.168.0.205" -t "Desert-Home/Weather/#" -v
shows me what is coming in as it happens:
Desert-Home/Weather/Barometer {"Barometer":{"temperature":"114.4","pressure":"1011.4","utime":"1434639446"}}
Desert-Home/Weather/5n1 {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434664650"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434664650"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434664650"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434664650"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"6.0","t":"1434664650"},"windDirection":{"WD":"W","t":"1434664650"},"temperature":{"T":"114.6","t":"1434664632"},"humidity":{"H":"9","t":"1434664632"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434664650"}}
Desert-Home/Weather/5n1 {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434664650"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434664650"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434664650"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434664650"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"6.0","t":"1434664650"},"windDirection":{"WD":"W","t":"1434664650"},"temperature":{"T":"114.6","t":"1434664632"},"humidity":{"H":"9","t":"1434664632"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434664650"}}
Desert-Home/Weather/5n1 {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434664650"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434664650"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434664650"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434664650"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"6.0","t":"1434664650"},"windDirection":{"WD":"W","t":"1434664650"},"temperature":{"T":"114.6","t":"1434664632"},"humidity":{"H":"9","t":"1434664632"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434664650"}}
Yes, the outside temperature is REALLY 114.4, remember I live in Arizona and this is the middle of June, but it's a dry heat, the humidity reading is 9%. As if that matters when the temperature is this high ...
But, also notice that I have both strings coming to the subscription even though they are very different devices, on different Pi's. Heck, they could be half way around the world and it wouldn't matter, it would still work. I tested that with a conspirator just this morning.
Now to follow my plans, I have to catch this data in some other process and save it to my database. I'll get to that soon, maybe even today, but I'm going to hold off on changing the presentation to the web for later because I have many different presentations to consider when I get to that point. See, currently I take everything presented from my data bases. If I'm using my Android app to look at the house, the data is coming out of the data base. When I send a command to close the garage doors, the command is executed and the app doesn't update until it is recorded in the data base. I may change that to reflect the latest reading from the mqtt server. We'll see, and then I'll probably change it.
The code is not in GitHub, I'm going to hold off until I get enough in there to make a significant difference. But, the example from the last post is exactly what I did with the difference above. This is a lot simpler and more versatile than I expected.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
OK, Fine, I'll take a look at MQTT
A number of my readers have mentioned mqtt as a great tool for the kind of thing I'm doing around the house. A couple of them have pointed out that what I'm doing could be done much easier using mqtt and even sent me web sites to look at.
Naturally, I resisted. That's sort of the way I am, but also, the various web sites out there make it look so complex that I just didn't want to try and deal with it. Another stinking process with an API and things I had to learn to use it ... gag!
Then Glenn sent me a link to an Arduino implementation of publishing data to an mqtt server <link> and things clicked into place. What happened was the Arduino was too small and slow for fancy implementations, it had to fit in a couple of K and run on a 16MHz machine, so it was as simple as it could be. That got me to thinking --- there's really no protocol, you build it yourself, There's no registration, special language, ... none of the stuff that drives me nuts. You just use it.
Fine, I've eaten my words before, so I gave it a shot. AWESOME set of tools. This thing is going to be the center piece of a major update to my house control system.
OK, Glen, Brant, others too many to itemize, go ahead ... scream, "I told you so, but you wouldn't listen." I deserve it.
The way I started was to install the mqtt client software on my weather station Pi. I put a few lines in the python code to import, initialize an object and then a single line to send the data to a public mqtt server. Yes, that's literally all there was to publishing data, one single line of actual code.
Then I used the one of the tools to see if it actually got there and I could read it back.
If you've been following the weather station posts, these lines will look really familiar. The tool mosqitto_sub is a test subscriber that took the public server I used, 'test.mosquitto.org', and looked for the published data keyed under 'Desert-Home/Weather/String' and printed it to the console of the Pi. So, what was happening was that my weather station Pi was reading the data from a radio and sending it over the internet to a server. Then on a different Pi, I was reading the data back as it came in from the server I subscribed to. Three machines involved working over the internet and all I had to do was write one line of actual code to do it.
To try it out, install the mqtt client software for python and the command line tool I used above. No, I didn't misspell it, there really are two 't's in there.
sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients
sudo pip install paho-mqtt
This will actually install the mqtt broker and start it up, but you can stop it by the command:
sudo /etc/init.d/mosquitto stop
Then, in some code somewhere, put the lines:
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
The string "Desert-Home/Weather/String" is called a 'topic'. This is a hierarchical set of keys that you construct for your own purposes. I chose "Desert-Home" for obvious reasons, then "Weather" because it's for the weather station, then "String" because I was publishing the JSON string produced by my code that reads the AcuRite 5n1 weather head. I may create another item "OutsideTemperature" to hold the latest outside reading from the fence post sensor in which case it would be:
"Desert-Home/Weather/OutsideTemperature."
Then to get the data back as it is published to the server, use a line like:
mosquitto_sub -h "test.mosquitto.org" -t "Whatever/you/decided" -v
Slick isn't it. There's no mystery here, no special stuff you have to learn, it's all totally up to you how you use it. To make it more versatile, the '#' and '+' characters have special meaning that can help you debug and select things. Check the various sites out there for the usage of those symbols.
There's a ba-jillion web sites out there that talk about mqtt, so I'm not going to recap the light-weight, short transaction, fail safe blather that they cover ad nauseum, instead over the next few weeks, I'm going to convert my house monitor and control system to actually use it and try to show you how to follow my footsteps improving and changing it to suit your particular needs. I'm sure I'm going to mess it up and have to redo things a couple of hundred times, but this should, at least, be good for a laugh.
During this process I'm going to visit my sensor devices and update the code on them to my latest experience level and implement several changes to them as well. JSON strings as data output and input so I can get rid of parsers, that kind of stuff. I'll gateway the devices from the XBee network to messages that will be published to mqtt and caught by whatever needs to handle the data. I don't know what I'm going to do with the Iris devices yet, but something will come to me.
Stay tuned.
Naturally, I resisted. That's sort of the way I am, but also, the various web sites out there make it look so complex that I just didn't want to try and deal with it. Another stinking process with an API and things I had to learn to use it ... gag!
Then Glenn sent me a link to an Arduino implementation of publishing data to an mqtt server <link> and things clicked into place. What happened was the Arduino was too small and slow for fancy implementations, it had to fit in a couple of K and run on a 16MHz machine, so it was as simple as it could be. That got me to thinking --- there's really no protocol, you build it yourself, There's no registration, special language, ... none of the stuff that drives me nuts. You just use it.
Fine, I've eaten my words before, so I gave it a shot. AWESOME set of tools. This thing is going to be the center piece of a major update to my house control system.
OK, Glen, Brant, others too many to itemize, go ahead ... scream, "I told you so, but you wouldn't listen." I deserve it.
The way I started was to install the mqtt client software on my weather station Pi. I put a few lines in the python code to import, initialize an object and then a single line to send the data to a public mqtt server. Yes, that's literally all there was to publishing data, one single line of actual code.
Then I used the one of the tools to see if it actually got there and I could read it back.
pi@deserthome:~/src/other-things$ mosquitto_sub -h "test.mosquitto.org" -t "Desert-Home/#" -v
Desert-Home/Weather/String {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434572606"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434572606"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434572606"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434572606"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"4.0","t":"1434572606"},"windDirection":{"WD":"SSE","t":"1434572587"},"temperature":{"T":"111.7","t":"1434572606"},"humidity":{"H":"11","t":"1434572606"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434572587"}}
Desert-Home/Weather/String {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434572606"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434572606"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434572606"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434572606"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"4.0","t":"1434572606"},"windDirection":{"WD":"SSE","t":"1434572587"},"temperature":{"T":"111.7","t":"1434572606"},"humidity":{"H":"11","t":"1434572606"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434572587"}}
Desert-Home/Weather/String {"sensorId":{"SID":"92","t":"1434572623"},"channel":{"CH":"A","t":"1434572623"},"messageCaught":{"MC":"0","t":"1434572623"},"battLevel":{"BAT":"7","t":"1434572623"},"windSpeed":{"WS":"2.5","t":"1434572623"},"windDirection":{"WD":"SSW","t":"1434572623"},"temperature":{"T":"111.7","t":"1434572606"},"humidity":{"H":"11","t":"1434572606"},"rainCounter":{"RC":"445","t":"1434572623"}}
To try it out, install the mqtt client software for python and the command line tool I used above. No, I didn't misspell it, there really are two 't's in there.
sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients
sudo pip install paho-mqtt
This will actually install the mqtt broker and start it up, but you can stop it by the command:
sudo /etc/init.d/mosquitto stop
Then, in some code somewhere, put the lines:
import paho.mqtt.client as mqtt
mqttc = mqtt.Client()
mqttc.connect("test.mosquitto.org", 1883, 60)
mqttc.loop_start()
To create the object, initialize it and start it up. Then the single line somewhere you are logging or recording something like this:
mqttc.publish("Desert-Home/Weather/String",buff);
"Desert-Home/Weather/OutsideTemperature."
Then to get the data back as it is published to the server, use a line like:
mosquitto_sub -h "test.mosquitto.org" -t "Whatever/you/decided" -v
Slick isn't it. There's no mystery here, no special stuff you have to learn, it's all totally up to you how you use it. To make it more versatile, the '#' and '+' characters have special meaning that can help you debug and select things. Check the various sites out there for the usage of those symbols.
There's a ba-jillion web sites out there that talk about mqtt, so I'm not going to recap the light-weight, short transaction, fail safe blather that they cover ad nauseum, instead over the next few weeks, I'm going to convert my house monitor and control system to actually use it and try to show you how to follow my footsteps improving and changing it to suit your particular needs. I'm sure I'm going to mess it up and have to redo things a couple of hundred times, but this should, at least, be good for a laugh.
During this process I'm going to visit my sensor devices and update the code on them to my latest experience level and implement several changes to them as well. JSON strings as data output and input so I can get rid of parsers, that kind of stuff. I'll gateway the devices from the XBee network to messages that will be published to mqtt and caught by whatever needs to handle the data. I don't know what I'm going to do with the Iris devices yet, but something will come to me.
Stay tuned.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Arduino Controlled Sprinklers, and A Guest Speaker
Yes, I have a guest speaker for this post. Glenn lives in the part of Texas where they got about a ton (per square inch) of rain recently. Since he couldn't play outside, he decided to play inside with ... yes, a sprinkler system. I asked him to write about it because it is a novel and really, really cool setup. It uses those valves that latch into place and take zero current to run saving power and allowing for the possibility of battery operation. I'll shut up now and let Glenn take over:
Lately I have been working on my baler between rain storms. However, during the rain storms I have continued to work on my vineyard irrigation controller. Not that the grapes are going to need watering any time soon. But there will come a time and I must get this moved forward.
I have a large aluminum panel mounted to my steel pipe fence with a water hydrant next to it. I have my three zones of irrigation pipes running up to this panel (just underneath it). I have purchased a three zone manifold valve system from Orbit and equipped it with two 24VDC solenoids. The black object on top of the green valves is the solenoid. The 24VAC ones have two black wires. The 24VDC solenoids have one red and one black wire. The red goes to the set screw terminal and the black goes to the reset terminal of the zone. This is a really easy thing to do. The manifold will be mounted on the lower left of the panel just above the zone pipes. There is no need for me to put these in the ground as it is more of an industrial installation. The aluminum panel faces north so nothing will get direct sunlight, which here in East Texas is intense. Currently the aluminium panel has just a water filter mounted on it. I welded Unistrut ( this is the funny C channel electricians use) to the pipe fence then bolted the panel to the Unistrut. It makes taking the whole panel off really easy should it be necessary.
Back to the controller. Just above the valves I will be mounting a 4X4X2 inch plastic electrical box. I got this box from Home Depot. I comes with a waterproof cover and mounting tabs on each side. This is a shot of it open with the cover reattached backwards.
As you can see from the above photo I will be mounting my ardweeny and support shields to the cover of the box, not inside the box. There will be one or two access holes in the bottom with water tight entry fittings through which the wires will got to the valves as shown in the first picture. There will be three shields to the system. Ardweeny, XBee and Valve controller, all stacked as shown.
The really key thing here is that everything will mount to the cover, not inside the box.
I have several reasons for this. All fall under the category of convenience.
When I open the box and reverse the cover as shown, everything is readily available. I can access the usb port without problem. I can remove any or all of the boards conveniently. I can work with the enclosed wiring without having the shields also in the box getting in the way.
If I need to I can remove the entire controller just by disconnecting a few wires and take it away. The entire box stays mounted in place. Oh and by the way, since there are no screws on the back the box will site flat on the surface of the aluminium plate.
The box cover will also have a key pad mounted on the front for manually turning the irrigation zones off and on:
The Orbit manifold I purchased from Lowe's. They usually have them in stock. They come with everything you need including 24V AC solenoids. I think I paid $54.00 for it. I bought two 24V DC solenoids off Amazon that were "used" actually only the packaging was used for $7.00 each. The third I will buy from Lowe's locally as they are in stock and only cost about $10.00. They simply unscrew. My 24V DC solenoids came with a little gray adapter that has to be removed and then screw it into the manifold. I can take some pix and send them if you like to describe it.
Rain protection. None required. This stuff is meant to be in the ground. It gets wet. Everything will be mounted on a vertical plate of aluminium. If one wanted you could simply add a little roof shelter at the top of the aluminium, but I do not plan to. The 4X4X2 box is water tight. The connections coming in from the bottom mean rain can't enter unless it rains uphill.
I mentioned water proof connectors on the bottom will also prevent wasps, and other critters from getting at the circuitry.
I may put a little roof cover above the keypad like they do for gate openers that you drive up to. I will seal any entry points such as the keyboard cable entry with silicon sealant.
I plan on powering this with either a 9volt battery or a combination of 9volt and three AA's. This way I won't need to have a regulator. I plan on having it shut down through software much the same way as your remote temperature sensor works. The jury is still out just yet on this. I plan to liberally and unashamedly steel Dave's software......Hee Hee Hee. He's done a great job and created a voluminous library of functions that will save me from reinventing the wheel.
I chose to go with Ardweeny because there is a nice little shield for it that fits the Arduino form factor. I can do all my testing and code development with the regular Arduino and then simply replace it with the programmed Ardweeny. No other special mouning requirements. I have the shield on order and as soon as it arrives I can drill the holes.
I plan on a next issue of this showing how I will use insert nuts that have a built in standoff of about a 1/4 of an inch to mount the Ardweeny shield to the cover and gluing up of the finished numeric pad. There will also be more discussion on powering. I am thinking of a second box that could house a small motorcycle battery. I found one for $25.00. The big thing on this to remember is that this only will run through the summer months so I could conceivably charge the motorcycle battery once a year and run it all summer. More to come on this note.
Still a few things to think about with this yet. I'm not sure about a led in the outside of the cover plate that will illuminate when you push the button. I'm thinking that the clicking sound of the solenoid plus the rush sound of the water in the pipes might just be enough. Needs to pass the "wife" test though.
So there you have it. The main theme of the blog is really "Don't forget the cover" and the benefits it affords for mounting options.
Comments?
This is Dave again, I have a comment, AWESOME. I've been using those waterproof boxes from Home Depot for quite a while for various projects and it never, ever occurred to me to mount everything to the lid <link>. Simple idea that I should have thought of.
Yes, I'll be stealing that idea and others from him.
Lately I have been working on my baler between rain storms. However, during the rain storms I have continued to work on my vineyard irrigation controller. Not that the grapes are going to need watering any time soon. But there will come a time and I must get this moved forward.
I have a large aluminum panel mounted to my steel pipe fence with a water hydrant next to it. I have my three zones of irrigation pipes running up to this panel (just underneath it). I have purchased a three zone manifold valve system from Orbit and equipped it with two 24VDC solenoids. The black object on top of the green valves is the solenoid. The 24VAC ones have two black wires. The 24VDC solenoids have one red and one black wire. The red goes to the set screw terminal and the black goes to the reset terminal of the zone. This is a really easy thing to do. The manifold will be mounted on the lower left of the panel just above the zone pipes. There is no need for me to put these in the ground as it is more of an industrial installation. The aluminum panel faces north so nothing will get direct sunlight, which here in East Texas is intense. Currently the aluminium panel has just a water filter mounted on it. I welded Unistrut ( this is the funny C channel electricians use) to the pipe fence then bolted the panel to the Unistrut. It makes taking the whole panel off really easy should it be necessary.
Back to the controller. Just above the valves I will be mounting a 4X4X2 inch plastic electrical box. I got this box from Home Depot. I comes with a waterproof cover and mounting tabs on each side. This is a shot of it open with the cover reattached backwards.
As you can see from the above photo I will be mounting my ardweeny and support shields to the cover of the box, not inside the box. There will be one or two access holes in the bottom with water tight entry fittings through which the wires will got to the valves as shown in the first picture. There will be three shields to the system. Ardweeny, XBee and Valve controller, all stacked as shown.
The really key thing here is that everything will mount to the cover, not inside the box.
I have several reasons for this. All fall under the category of convenience.
When I open the box and reverse the cover as shown, everything is readily available. I can access the usb port without problem. I can remove any or all of the boards conveniently. I can work with the enclosed wiring without having the shields also in the box getting in the way.
If I need to I can remove the entire controller just by disconnecting a few wires and take it away. The entire box stays mounted in place. Oh and by the way, since there are no screws on the back the box will site flat on the surface of the aluminium plate.
The box cover will also have a key pad mounted on the front for manually turning the irrigation zones off and on:
The Orbit manifold I purchased from Lowe's. They usually have them in stock. They come with everything you need including 24V AC solenoids. I think I paid $54.00 for it. I bought two 24V DC solenoids off Amazon that were "used" actually only the packaging was used for $7.00 each. The third I will buy from Lowe's locally as they are in stock and only cost about $10.00. They simply unscrew. My 24V DC solenoids came with a little gray adapter that has to be removed and then screw it into the manifold. I can take some pix and send them if you like to describe it.
Rain protection. None required. This stuff is meant to be in the ground. It gets wet. Everything will be mounted on a vertical plate of aluminium. If one wanted you could simply add a little roof shelter at the top of the aluminium, but I do not plan to. The 4X4X2 box is water tight. The connections coming in from the bottom mean rain can't enter unless it rains uphill.
I mentioned water proof connectors on the bottom will also prevent wasps, and other critters from getting at the circuitry.
I may put a little roof cover above the keypad like they do for gate openers that you drive up to. I will seal any entry points such as the keyboard cable entry with silicon sealant.
I plan on powering this with either a 9volt battery or a combination of 9volt and three AA's. This way I won't need to have a regulator. I plan on having it shut down through software much the same way as your remote temperature sensor works. The jury is still out just yet on this. I plan to liberally and unashamedly steel Dave's software......Hee Hee Hee. He's done a great job and created a voluminous library of functions that will save me from reinventing the wheel.
I chose to go with Ardweeny because there is a nice little shield for it that fits the Arduino form factor. I can do all my testing and code development with the regular Arduino and then simply replace it with the programmed Ardweeny. No other special mouning requirements. I have the shield on order and as soon as it arrives I can drill the holes.
I plan on a next issue of this showing how I will use insert nuts that have a built in standoff of about a 1/4 of an inch to mount the Ardweeny shield to the cover and gluing up of the finished numeric pad. There will also be more discussion on powering. I am thinking of a second box that could house a small motorcycle battery. I found one for $25.00. The big thing on this to remember is that this only will run through the summer months so I could conceivably charge the motorcycle battery once a year and run it all summer. More to come on this note.
Still a few things to think about with this yet. I'm not sure about a led in the outside of the cover plate that will illuminate when you push the button. I'm thinking that the clicking sound of the solenoid plus the rush sound of the water in the pipes might just be enough. Needs to pass the "wife" test though.
So there you have it. The main theme of the blog is really "Don't forget the cover" and the benefits it affords for mounting options.
Comments?
This is Dave again, I have a comment, AWESOME. I've been using those waterproof boxes from Home Depot for quite a while for various projects and it never, ever occurred to me to mount everything to the lid <link>. Simple idea that I should have thought of.
Yes, I'll be stealing that idea and others from him.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Hacking Into The Iris Door Sensor, Part 3, The code
The previous post in the project is here <link>
Last time I described the Key Fob that Lowe's sells and previous to that I showed the Door Switch, but I haven't shown you the way I got them to work. I'm still a little reluctant because my partner in this project hasn't succeeded in getting his devices to work properly, but it occurred to me that someone out there might pick up the code and give it a try. I know several folk have used my Smart Switch code to control and monitor things around the house, maybe they're just waiting for me to publish how to do it.
At any rate, this is how I got the switches and key fob to behave:
I have eight devices, five of the smart switches, two door switches, and a key fob, and all of them are working with the same monitoring code. The code is only to monitor the devices, there's no provisions for control, Actually, the only thing you can control is the smart switches, and I've already posted code for that, so this will show you how to monitor all the devices. This code works pretty easily, pull the battery out of the device, start the code, put the battery back in and push the button eight times quickly. The switch will contact the code and join on its own. Once joined, the door switch and key fob will send status every two minutes telling you they're alive and in range. The smart switches send status much more often with a cumulative status every minute. If you want to join other devices, just pull the battery, put it back, and push the button a bunch of times; joining is always enabled and the next device should work fine. Stopping the code (cntrl-C) and restarting it won't cause the devices to leave the network, they'll be fine when you restart the code. I did this a LOT when I was trying to get them to work.
I could go into intimate details of how the interaction works, but the code will show you this much better. What happens is that the switch sends an device announce message and the code will respond and then they exchange data. During this there are two specific message that are sent to Alertme devices to get them to accept the XBee coordinator; this is the secret part of the Iris system that makes these devices unique. The code I came up with for the smart switches wouldn't work because the door switch and key fob are slower devices and I was hitting them too quickly with the initialization messages. They didn't have time to recognize and react to them. A couple of sleep calls took care of that problem. I used the same setup on the XBee as when I hacked into the Smart Switch, you can look at it here <link>
Once running, you can press a switch on the key fob and it will transmit a messsage telling you that the button was pressed or released along with a counter that represents the time in milliseconds off the action. By subtracting the released time from the pressed time you can look for a long press as opposed to a short press. Nice feature.
The door switch has two switches, a tamper switch that will tell you if the cover is taken off and a reed switch that tells you the door has been opened. The tamper switch will tell you press and release like the key fob does, as will the reed switch. This means you can tell if the door is opened or closed as well as the cover off or on.
Like the smart switches, the key fob and door switch once joined, stay that way. You can pull the battery and put it back in without it having a problem. You can also drive away out of range and come back and everything works just fine. If you kill the coordinator by pulling the power or something, you might have to make them rejoin. This all depends on how long it was off and what happened during the off period. Sometimes the coordinator XBee will choose a different channel and then the switches will have trouble finding it. A simple power failure won't cause any problem, but reloading software to the controller could mean a visit to the devices to force them to rejoin. This kind of problem can be avoided by using the parameters on the XBee controller to limit it to a single predetermined channel. Doing this means the XBee comes up, establishes a network on the channel and the devices then just continue on as before.
So, you're going to get a lot of data as you add devices. Each device will interact at least every couple of minutes and every time you mess with them. For me, this meant missed messages. The traffic was pretty steady, but things didn't look right until I added a queue to the code to hold the messages and took them off one at a time to deal with. There's plenty of unused time to handle the messages, but they tend to come in in bunches and can cause problems. Adding a queue seemed to help that problem a lot; I don't see any missing or partial messages when I run it.
There's lots of debug and logging in the code as well as a test to help you isolate a single device. You'll see it in the code; I look for a list of devices to listen to and ignore the others. I had to do this to keep the other devices on the network from confusing me when I was trying figure out which bit meant what. Look for the test at the top of the code to decode the messages and adjust it as you need to. Also, this doesn't save anything from one run to the next. There's no database of devices that gets updated and the state of the devices isn't saved to compare with later. Once you're comfortable with the code, simply add whatever you want to handle things. I'm going to hook this code in with my database of house devices to save the states and decide exactly what I want to do with it later when I have a little more experience.
Here's the code:
Yes, it's a bit complex. More complex than other hacks I've posted. I had to do this to allow for multiple devices that had multiple endpoints and clusters involved. It still isn't too hard to understand, and you should be fine when you start messing with it.
You'll notice that I keep a list of devices that have contacted the code. This is to allow you to tell what happened with various devices as the interaction continues. I log the long address, time and relevant details as they happen to help you understand how to deal with the incoming data. When you have several devices, the log can become a bit overpowering since nothing stops sending, it just goes on forever. Here's a bit of the logging so you can get an idea what it looks like:
The first field is the Unix timestamp. Basically the number of seconds since 1970. The second is the long address of the device; this never changes. Then the cluster id followed by the data specific to the cluster. I decoded the times for the key fob and the temperature for the door switch because those could be fun to play with. Notice that the smart switches really send a lot of data, this will help you understand why I limit the number of devices with a test at the top of the code. If everything is there, you have a heck of a time picking out what you want to see. The list of know devices is the long address and the currently assigned short address. The short address will change from time to time as you restart the process or pull a battery somewhere.
Remember, this runs on a Raspberry Pi, I haven't tried it on anything else. I have my XBee plugged into a USB port on the Pi, if you're using the serial port, just change the port in the code, that should be all that is needed. If you don't know which usb port to use, there's a ton of articles on the web that will help you find the port, just look around a bit, or to see how I did it look here <link>. What I'm hoping for is a couple of folk that want to use these nicely priced and well made devices with their own code for some project to grab it and give me some feedback on the interaction. It would be nice to see someone else running this code.
Have fun.
The next part to this project is here <link>
Last time I described the Key Fob that Lowe's sells and previous to that I showed the Door Switch, but I haven't shown you the way I got them to work. I'm still a little reluctant because my partner in this project hasn't succeeded in getting his devices to work properly, but it occurred to me that someone out there might pick up the code and give it a try. I know several folk have used my Smart Switch code to control and monitor things around the house, maybe they're just waiting for me to publish how to do it.
At any rate, this is how I got the switches and key fob to behave:
I have eight devices, five of the smart switches, two door switches, and a key fob, and all of them are working with the same monitoring code. The code is only to monitor the devices, there's no provisions for control, Actually, the only thing you can control is the smart switches, and I've already posted code for that, so this will show you how to monitor all the devices. This code works pretty easily, pull the battery out of the device, start the code, put the battery back in and push the button eight times quickly. The switch will contact the code and join on its own. Once joined, the door switch and key fob will send status every two minutes telling you they're alive and in range. The smart switches send status much more often with a cumulative status every minute. If you want to join other devices, just pull the battery, put it back, and push the button a bunch of times; joining is always enabled and the next device should work fine. Stopping the code (cntrl-C) and restarting it won't cause the devices to leave the network, they'll be fine when you restart the code. I did this a LOT when I was trying to get them to work.
I could go into intimate details of how the interaction works, but the code will show you this much better. What happens is that the switch sends an device announce message and the code will respond and then they exchange data. During this there are two specific message that are sent to Alertme devices to get them to accept the XBee coordinator; this is the secret part of the Iris system that makes these devices unique. The code I came up with for the smart switches wouldn't work because the door switch and key fob are slower devices and I was hitting them too quickly with the initialization messages. They didn't have time to recognize and react to them. A couple of sleep calls took care of that problem. I used the same setup on the XBee as when I hacked into the Smart Switch, you can look at it here <link>
Once running, you can press a switch on the key fob and it will transmit a messsage telling you that the button was pressed or released along with a counter that represents the time in milliseconds off the action. By subtracting the released time from the pressed time you can look for a long press as opposed to a short press. Nice feature.
The door switch has two switches, a tamper switch that will tell you if the cover is taken off and a reed switch that tells you the door has been opened. The tamper switch will tell you press and release like the key fob does, as will the reed switch. This means you can tell if the door is opened or closed as well as the cover off or on.
Like the smart switches, the key fob and door switch once joined, stay that way. You can pull the battery and put it back in without it having a problem. You can also drive away out of range and come back and everything works just fine. If you kill the coordinator by pulling the power or something, you might have to make them rejoin. This all depends on how long it was off and what happened during the off period. Sometimes the coordinator XBee will choose a different channel and then the switches will have trouble finding it. A simple power failure won't cause any problem, but reloading software to the controller could mean a visit to the devices to force them to rejoin. This kind of problem can be avoided by using the parameters on the XBee controller to limit it to a single predetermined channel. Doing this means the XBee comes up, establishes a network on the channel and the devices then just continue on as before.
So, you're going to get a lot of data as you add devices. Each device will interact at least every couple of minutes and every time you mess with them. For me, this meant missed messages. The traffic was pretty steady, but things didn't look right until I added a queue to the code to hold the messages and took them off one at a time to deal with. There's plenty of unused time to handle the messages, but they tend to come in in bunches and can cause problems. Adding a queue seemed to help that problem a lot; I don't see any missing or partial messages when I run it.
There's lots of debug and logging in the code as well as a test to help you isolate a single device. You'll see it in the code; I look for a list of devices to listen to and ignore the others. I had to do this to keep the other devices on the network from confusing me when I was trying figure out which bit meant what. Look for the test at the top of the code to decode the messages and adjust it as you need to. Also, this doesn't save anything from one run to the next. There's no database of devices that gets updated and the state of the devices isn't saved to compare with later. Once you're comfortable with the code, simply add whatever you want to handle things. I'm going to hook this code in with my database of house devices to save the states and decide exactly what I want to do with it later when I have a little more experience.
Here's the code:
#! /usr/bin/python
'''
This is a hack into the operation of the Iris Smart Home Smart
Plug, Door Switch, and Key Fob. The evolution of this is discussed
on Desert-Home.com in detail.
Have fun
'''
from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler
from xbee import ZigBee
import logging
import datetime
import Queue
import time
import serial
import sys, traceback
import shlex
from struct import *
def printData(data):
print "********** Message Contents"
for key, value in data.iteritems():
if key == "id":
print key, value
else:
print key, "".join("%02x " % ord(b) for b in data[key])
print "**********"
def clusterData(lAddr,clusterId, data):
print int(time.time()),
print "".join("%02x" % ord(b) for b in lAddr) + \
" clid "+"%04x" % clusterId + "-" + \
"".join("%02x " % ord(b) for b in data)
# this is a call back function. When a message
# comes in this function will get the data
# I had to use a queue to make sure there was enough time to
# decode the incoming messages. Otherwise, in heavy traffic
# periods, I'd get a new message while I was still working on
# the last one.
def messageReceived(data):
#print "queueing message"
messageQueue.put(data)
def handleMessage (data):
try:
'''
I have a network of these devices and had to
add this test to keep the log down to a reasonable
size. If all the devices show up, it's hard to
tell what is going on. Just uncomment the check
and put whatever you want to watch in.
'''
'''if data['source_addr_long'] not in \
['\x00\x0d\x6f\x00\x03\xc2\x71\xcc',
'\x00\x0d\x6f\x00\x02\x83\xfa\x4e']:
return'''
#print ''
#print 'gotta packet',
#printData(data)
if (data['id'] == 'rx_explicit'):
#print "RX Explicit"
#printData(data)
clusterId = (ord(data['cluster'][0])*256) + ord(data['cluster'][1])
#print 'Cluster ID:', hex(clusterId),
#print "profile id:", repr(data['profile'])
if (data['profile']=='\x00\x00'): # The General Profile
print 'Cluster ID:', hex(clusterId),
print "profile id:", repr(data['profile'])
if (clusterId == 0x0000):
print ("Network (16-bit) Address Request")
#printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x0004):
# Simple Descriptor Request,
print("Simple Descriptor Request")
#printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x0005):
# Active Endpoint Request,
print("Active Endpoint Request")
#printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x0006):
print "Match Descriptor Request"
#printData(data)
time.sleep(2)
print "Sending match descriptor response"
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = data['source_addr_long'],
dest_addr = data['source_addr'],
src_endpoint = '\x00',
dest_endpoint = '\x00',
cluster = '\x80\x06',
profile = '\x00\x00',
options = '\x01',
data = '\x04\x00\x00\x00\x01\x02'
)
# The contact switch is a bit slow, give it
# some time to digest the messages.
time.sleep(2)
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = data['source_addr_long'],
dest_addr = data['source_addr'],
src_endpoint = '\x02',
dest_endpoint = '\x02',
cluster = '\x00\xf6',
profile = '\xc2\x16',
data = '\x11\x01\xfc'
)
time.sleep(2)
elif (clusterId == 0x0008):
# I couldn't find a definition for this
print("This was probably sent to the wrong profile")
elif (clusterId == 0x0013):
# This is the device announce message.
print 'Device Announce Message'
# this will tell me the address of the new thing
# so I'm going to send an active endpoint request
print 'Sending active endpoint request'
epc = '\xaa'+data['source_addr'][1]+data['source_addr'][0]
print "".join("%02x " % ord(b) for b in epc)
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = data['source_addr_long'],
dest_addr = data['source_addr'],
src_endpoint = '\x00',
dest_endpoint = '\x00',
cluster = '\x00\x05',
profile = '\x00\x00',
options = '\x01',
data = epc
)
#printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x8000):
print("Network (16-bit) Address Response")
#printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x8038):
print("Management Network Update Request");
elif (clusterId == 0x8005):
# this is the Active Endpoint Response This message tells you
# what the device can do
print 'Active Endpoint Response'
printData(data)
elif (clusterId == 0x8004):
print "simple descriptor response"
else:
print ("Unimplemented Cluster ID", hex(clusterId))
print
elif (data['profile']=='\xc2\x16'): # Alertme Specific
if data['source_addr_long'] not in devices:
devices.setdefault(data['source_addr_long'], []).append(data['source_addr'])
# suppress printing for known clusters
# so I can look at it more closely
if clusterId not in [0X0500, 0x00ef, 0x00f0, 0x00f2, 0x00f3,0x00f6]:
printData(data)
print "Unhandled Message"
if (clusterId == 0xef):
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
clusterCmd = ord(data['rf_data'][2])
status = data['rf_data'] # cut down on typing
if (clusterCmd == 0x81):
usage = unpack('<H', status[3:5])[0]
print " Current Usage:", usage
elif (clusterCmd == 0x82):
usage = unpack('<L', status[3:7])[0] / 3600
upTime = unpack('<L', status[7:11])[0]
print (" Switch Minute Stats: Usage, %d Watt Hours; Uptime, %d Seconds" %(usage/3600, upTime))
elif (clusterId == 0x00f6):
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
print ''
print "Identify Message"
print "Sending init message"
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = data['source_addr_long'],
dest_addr = data['source_addr'],
src_endpoint = '\x00',
dest_endpoint = '\x02',
cluster = '\x00\xf0',
profile = '\xc2\x16',
data = '\x19\x41\xfa\x00\x01'
)
elif (clusterId == 0x00f3):
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
print ' Key Fob Button',
status = data['rf_data']
print ord(status[3]),
if status[2] == '\x01':
print 'Closed',
elif status[2] == '\x00':
print 'Open',
else:
print 'Unknown',
print 'Counter', unpack('<H',status[5:7])[0],
print ''
pass
elif (clusterId == 0x00f2):
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
print 'Tamper Switch Changed State'
pass
elif (clusterId == 0x00f0):
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
# If the cluster cmd byte is 'xfb', it's a status
if data['rf_data'][2] == '\xfb':
status = data['rf_data'] # just to make typing easier
if status[3] == '\x1f':
print " Door Sensor",
print str(float(unpack("<h", status[8:10])[0])\
/ 100.0 * 1.8 + 32) + "F",
elif status[3] == '\x1c':
# Never found anything useful in this
print "Power Switch",
elif status[3] == '\x1d':
print " Key Fob",
print str(float(unpack("<h", status[8:10])[0])\
/ 100.0 * 1.8 + 32) + "F",
unpack('<I',status[4:8])[0]
print 'Counter', unpack('<I',status[4:8])[0],
elif status[3] == '\x1e':
# I haven't figured out what this is yet
# it comes from a door switch and the temperature
# field is always ff ff, it may be an error
# indication.
pass
else:
print " Don't know this device yet",
print ''
pass
elif (clusterId == 0x0500): # This is the security cluster
clusterData(data['source_addr_long'],clusterId,data['rf_data'])
# When the switch first connects, it come up in a state that needs
# initialization, this command seems to take care of that.
# So, look at the value of the data and send the command.
if data['rf_data'][3:7] == '\x15\x00\x39\x10':
print "sending initialization"
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = data['source_addr_long'],
dest_addr = data['source_addr'],
src_endpoint = '\x00',
dest_endpoint = '\x00',
cluster = '\x05\x00',
profile = '\xc2\x16',
data = '\x11\x80\x00\x00\x05'
)
# The switch state is in byte [3] and is a bitfield
# bit 0 is the magnetic reed switch state
# bit 3 is the tamper switch state
switchState = ord(data['rf_data'][3])
if switchState & 0x04:
print 'Tamper Switch Closed',
else:
print 'Tamper Switch Open',
if switchState & 0x01:
print 'Reed Switch Opened',
else:
print 'Reed Switch Closed',
print ''
pass
else:
print ("Unimplemented Profile ID")
elif(data['id'] == 'route_record_indicator'):
print("Route Record Indicator")
else:
print("some other type of packet")
print(data)
except:
print "I didn't expect this error:", sys.exc_info()[0]
traceback.print_exc()
def showDevices():
print "Known Devices ************"
for key in devices:
print "".join("%02x " % ord(b) for b in key)+':',
print "".join("%02x " % ord(b) for b in devices[key][0])
print "**************************"
def sendSwitch(whereLong, whereShort, srcEndpoint, destEndpoint,
clusterId, profileId, clusterCmd, databytes):
payload = '\x11\x00' + clusterCmd + databytes
zb.send('tx_explicit',
dest_addr_long = whereLong,
dest_addr = whereShort,
src_endpoint = srcEndpoint,
dest_endpoint = destEndpoint,
cluster = clusterId,
profile = profileId,
data = payload
)
def tryCommand():
# Try out commands here
print '********* Sending Test Command'
switchLongAddr ='\x00\x0d\x6f\x00\x03\xc2\x71\xcc'
if switchLongAddr in devices:
switchShortAddr = devices[switchLongAddr][0]
print ' Switch Status'
sendSwitch(switchLongAddr, switchShortAddr, '\x00', '\x02',
'\x00\xee', '\xc2\x16', '\x01', '\x01')
else:
print 'Waiting for short address'
#------------ XBee Stuff -------------------------
# this is the /dev/serial/by-id device for the USB card that holds the XBee
ZIGBEEPORT = "/dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_FT232R_USB_UART_A901QL3F-if00-port0"
ZIGBEEBAUD_RATE = 9600
# Open serial port for use by the XBee
ser = serial.Serial(ZIGBEEPORT, ZIGBEEBAUD_RATE)
# The XBee addresses I'm dealing with
BROADCAST = '\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xff\xff'
UNKNOWN = '\xff\xfe' # This is the 'I don't know' 16 bit address
#-------------------------------------------------
logging.basicConfig()
# Create XBee library API object, which spawns a new thread
zb = ZigBee(ser, callback=messageReceived)
# create a queue to put the messages into so they can
# be handled in turn without one interrupting the next.
messageQueue = Queue.Queue(0)
# A dictionary to put devices into as they show up
devices = {}
scheditem = BackgroundScheduler()
scheditem.add_job(showDevices, 'interval', seconds=60)
#scheditem.add_job(tryCommand, 'interval', seconds=15)
scheditem.start()
print ("started")
notYet = True;
firstTime = True;
while True:
try:
if (firstTime):
# this is in case I need some initialization in the
# future
firstTime = False
if messageQueue.qsize() > 0:
#print "getting message"
message = messageQueue.get()
handleMessage(message)
messageQueue.task_done();
time.sleep(0.1)
#print ("tick") # This is here to let you know it's alive
sys.stdout.flush() # if you're running non interactive, do this
except IndexError:
print "empty line"
except NameError as e:
print "NameError:",
print e.message.split("'")[1]
except KeyboardInterrupt:
print ("Keyboard interrupt")
break
except:
print ("I didn't expect this error:", sys.exc_info()[0])
traceback.print_exc()
break
print ("After the while loop")
# halt() must be called before closing the serial
# port in order to ensure proper thread shutdown
scheditem.shutdown(wait=False) # shut down the apscheduler
zb.halt()
ser.close()
You'll notice that I keep a list of devices that have contacted the code. This is to allow you to tell what happened with various devices as the interaction continues. I log the long address, time and relevant details as they happen to help you understand how to deal with the incoming data. When you have several devices, the log can become a bit overpowering since nothing stops sending, it just goes on forever. Here's a bit of the logging so you can get an idea what it looks like:
started 1432598997 000d6f0004510782 clid 00f0-09 9e fb 1f bf 9e 7a 0a b7 0b c4 01 af f4 03 02 Door Sensor 85.982F 1432598998 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432598999 000d6f000283fa4e clid 00f0-09 a2 fb 1d 3c a2 e5 03 bc 0b 00 00 a7 fb 03 00 Key Fob 86.072F Counter 65380924 1432599000 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599000 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 22 dd 95 83 66 32 00 00 b5 b0 01 00 Power Switch 1432599000 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599003 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599005 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599007 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 2b 09 b3 1a 66 32 00 00 b7 fe 01 00 Power Switch 1432599008 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599009 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 82 67 a4 a5 72 80 e5 20 01 00 Switch Minute Stats: Usage, 148 Watt Hours; Uptime, 18933120 Seconds 1432599010 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599010 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599013 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 82 f7 ea 21 00 b8 bc 03 00 00 Switch Minute Stats: Usage, 0 Watt Hours; Uptime, 244920 Seconds 1432599013 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599015 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599018 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599020 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599020 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 82 a9 3d 8a 1f 40 e9 20 01 00 Switch Minute Stats: Usage, 40 Watt Hours; Uptime, 18934080 Seconds 1432599020 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 34 a9 6e 64 fb 31 00 00 ba b7 01 00 Power Switch 1432599020 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599023 000d6f000237b25a clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 25 0d a5 83 4a 32 00 00 b4 b4 01 00 Power Switch 1432599023 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599025 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 91 82 40 35 ff 00 d4 ac 06 00 00 Switch Minute Stats: Usage, 1 Watt Hours; Uptime, 437460 Seconds 1432599025 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599025 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 18 11 f3 0e 66 32 00 00 bd b3 01 00 Power Switch 1432599028 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599030 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599030 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 22 55 96 83 66 32 00 00 b6 b6 01 00 Power Switch 1432599030 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599033 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599035 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599036 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 2b 81 b3 1a 66 32 00 00 b7 fd 01 00 Power Switch 1432599038 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 82 38 42 54 00 bc 1b 19 00 00 Switch Minute Stats: Usage, 0 Watt Hours; Uptime, 1645500 Seconds 1432599038 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599040 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599040 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599043 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599045 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599048 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599050 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599050 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 34 21 6f 64 fb 31 00 00 ba bb 01 00 Power Switch 1432599050 000d6f000237b25a clid 00ef-09 00 81 01 00 Current Usage: 1 1432599053 000d6f000237b25a clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 25 85 a5 83 4a 32 00 00 b4 a4 01 00 Power Switch 1432599054 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599055 000d6f0002547a5d clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599055 000d6f000258a4cc clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 18 89 f3 0e 66 32 00 00 bd b1 01 00 Power Switch Known Devices ************ 00 0d 6f 00 02 83 fa 4e : 92 26 00 0d 6f 00 04 51 07 82 : a9 3b 00 0d 6f 00 02 58 a4 cc : e1 3c 00 0d 6f 00 02 58 86 b3 : 27 f6 00 0d 6f 00 02 37 b2 5a : 2b d1 00 0d 6f 00 02 54 7a 5d : 41 c7 00 0d 6f 00 03 cf 0e 5b : 79 c5 ************************** 1432599058 000d6f0003cf0e5b clid 00ef-09 00 81 00 00 Current Usage: 0 1432599060 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00ef-09 00 81 87 00 Current Usage: 135 1432599060 000d6f00025886b3 clid 00f0-09 00 fb 1c 22 cd 96 83 66 32 00 00 b6 c1 01 00 Power Switch
Remember, this runs on a Raspberry Pi, I haven't tried it on anything else. I have my XBee plugged into a USB port on the Pi, if you're using the serial port, just change the port in the code, that should be all that is needed. If you don't know which usb port to use, there's a ton of articles on the web that will help you find the port, just look around a bit, or to see how I did it look here <link>. What I'm hoping for is a couple of folk that want to use these nicely priced and well made devices with their own code for some project to grab it and give me some feedback on the interaction. It would be nice to see someone else running this code.
Have fun.
The next part to this project is here <link>
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Hacking Into The Iris Door Sensor, Part 2
The previous post on this project is here <link>
Yes, I've made some progress on this project, but first let me talk about why I'm bothering with this. A couple of folk have asked me why I hack into these devices in general; the answer is not an esoteric, "Because they're there." I enjoy the challenge, but mostly it's because I want to use them without a bunch of strings attached.
The Iris devices are fairly priced, but not if you have to subscribe to a service that cost $10+ a month for the rest of time. From dismantling them I can tell the construction is actually pretty well done even though I keep seeing complaints on the web about how they should be smaller, prettier or come in colors. I couldn't build one as nice for the price. Actually, I couldn't build one as nice for twice the price. The single disadvantage is that their usefulness is tied to a web site that is run by a corporation that can change their mind at any time about anything and leave me hanging. Been there, done that, want to avoid it in the future.
Enough philosophy, I'm going to talk about the Iris Key Fob a bit. When I got some reaction from the door switch, I wondered if the key fob would work in a similar way, so since I was going to town anyway, I stopped off at Lowe's and picked up another door switch (I have two now) and a key fob as well.
Edit: I originally forgot to put up a picture it the Key Fob assembled, here it is:
Here it is with the cover off.
Same good construction as the door switch with a pair of switches that you press to activate funtions remotely. Let's pull it apart.
This is the case with the board removed to show how the plastic that operates the buttons is done. This makes for a nice feel when you're pushing the switch. The only problem I saw is that it's easy to press both switches if you squeeze it. A little care can overcome that problem though. Here's one side of the board,
and this is the other
You can click on the picture and zoom in if you want.
The switches have tactile feedback so you know you pressed it and the battery seats firmly so you know it's in there. Nice switch, albeit a bit large for some people's taste.
This switch was designed to control the Iris system in a home. If you push one button, it arms the alarm, and the other switch disarms it. It also provides feedback to the system that the fob is in range. People describe it as the Iris Hub sends messages to the fob every two minutes and if it doesn't get a response, the hub arms the alarm. My reading of the messages that fly back and forth shows that the fob reports every two minutes to the hub, so that would mean two minutes without a message and the hub will arm itself. There may be something I'm missing, but I'll turn it up eventually.
I see this device as two remote control switches that I can do any darn thing I want with. It could be on and off for a machine, light, ceiling fan, whatever I want. I can have one in each room attached to the bed for ceiling lights, or turn off the smoker in the yard if I want to.
I can hear my readers saying, "Fine, nice pictures and philosophy; tell us how the interaction works and give us some code." Well, I'm going to make you wait a couple of days before I bury you in code because this gets somewhat complicated and I'm not sure I've got enough bugs out to trust it yet. I have two door switches, a key fob and five smart switches running on the same XBee controller quite reliably, but a reader who 'volunteered' to try the code also has had nothing but problems.
Where my stuff joins and just works, his decided to get flaky and mess with his mind. We're trading logs and code back and forth to try and figure out what's different.
More later, but you got a look at the internals of a device, so stop complaining.
The next post on this project is here <link>
Yes, I've made some progress on this project, but first let me talk about why I'm bothering with this. A couple of folk have asked me why I hack into these devices in general; the answer is not an esoteric, "Because they're there." I enjoy the challenge, but mostly it's because I want to use them without a bunch of strings attached.
The Iris devices are fairly priced, but not if you have to subscribe to a service that cost $10+ a month for the rest of time. From dismantling them I can tell the construction is actually pretty well done even though I keep seeing complaints on the web about how they should be smaller, prettier or come in colors. I couldn't build one as nice for the price. Actually, I couldn't build one as nice for twice the price. The single disadvantage is that their usefulness is tied to a web site that is run by a corporation that can change their mind at any time about anything and leave me hanging. Been there, done that, want to avoid it in the future.
Enough philosophy, I'm going to talk about the Iris Key Fob a bit. When I got some reaction from the door switch, I wondered if the key fob would work in a similar way, so since I was going to town anyway, I stopped off at Lowe's and picked up another door switch (I have two now) and a key fob as well.
Edit: I originally forgot to put up a picture it the Key Fob assembled, here it is:
Here it is with the cover off.
Same good construction as the door switch with a pair of switches that you press to activate funtions remotely. Let's pull it apart.
This is the case with the board removed to show how the plastic that operates the buttons is done. This makes for a nice feel when you're pushing the switch. The only problem I saw is that it's easy to press both switches if you squeeze it. A little care can overcome that problem though. Here's one side of the board,
and this is the other
You can click on the picture and zoom in if you want.
The switches have tactile feedback so you know you pressed it and the battery seats firmly so you know it's in there. Nice switch, albeit a bit large for some people's taste.
This switch was designed to control the Iris system in a home. If you push one button, it arms the alarm, and the other switch disarms it. It also provides feedback to the system that the fob is in range. People describe it as the Iris Hub sends messages to the fob every two minutes and if it doesn't get a response, the hub arms the alarm. My reading of the messages that fly back and forth shows that the fob reports every two minutes to the hub, so that would mean two minutes without a message and the hub will arm itself. There may be something I'm missing, but I'll turn it up eventually.
I see this device as two remote control switches that I can do any darn thing I want with. It could be on and off for a machine, light, ceiling fan, whatever I want. I can have one in each room attached to the bed for ceiling lights, or turn off the smoker in the yard if I want to.
I can hear my readers saying, "Fine, nice pictures and philosophy; tell us how the interaction works and give us some code." Well, I'm going to make you wait a couple of days before I bury you in code because this gets somewhat complicated and I'm not sure I've got enough bugs out to trust it yet. I have two door switches, a key fob and five smart switches running on the same XBee controller quite reliably, but a reader who 'volunteered' to try the code also has had nothing but problems.
Where my stuff joins and just works, his decided to get flaky and mess with his mind. We're trading logs and code back and forth to try and figure out what's different.
More later, but you got a look at the internals of a device, so stop complaining.
The next post on this project is here <link>
Monday, May 11, 2015
Yet Another Update to the AcuRite 5N1 Weather Sensor
The previous post on this project is here <link>
Just when you thought I'd finally shut up about the AcuRite weather sensor I decide to post again. I promise, at some point I'll actually be satisfied with this device, but not quite yet. Over the months I've been working with this I've received comments and emails from folk that tried it and discovered things. One reader had an especially interesting situation; he had a neighbor that had a sensor within range. This meant that the code would pick them both up and present data from both sensors. To add insult to injury, when he tried changing his station to channel C, he found out that rtl_433 had a bug that prevented his receiving data on that channel. He must have been really annoyed at that point.
Since wind and temperature matter to placement, this was causing him grief and he set off to fix it. He isolated the sensor ID, and while he was at it, decoded the battery level, channel and found a better way to read the RF that allowed channel C to work.
During his trials he also found that the checksum was allowing bad data into the decoding and would present unusual readings. I've seen this over time as well. Things like a wind gust of 147 mph, a temperature spike of 30 or so degrees for no reason, the usual outlier readings, but with weather, it's hard to tell what an outlier really is.
I totally stole his ideas and some of his code and incorporated into my weather station,; I haven't been running it too long, but it looks like the vast majority of the outlier readings are gone. There may be some turn up, but so far it's been good.
First, inspection of the data showed that the bytes holding the various readings were all even parity. I added code to check the parity and discard the message if it didn't pass. Note that I only check the readings bytes because the first, second and last bytes are sensor, status, and checksum; these don't incorporate parity. In the c code I add the decoded sensor id, battery level, and channel to the JSON string I output, then check for the proper values in the python code that receives it. I did it this way because some folk may want to catch multiple sensors and average or compare them; especially if they can see a neighbors device for free.
I also noticed at my house that I receive a couple of devices from other folk that are not AcuRite devices. These things can cause problems as well, especially since they could easily be using the same checksum algorithm.
All the changes meant that I had to get the very latest version of rtl_433 from the original github repository. This was required because the rtl_433 folk made a new decoding method available that works better with the AcuRite data stream. That decoder wasn't there in January, but it is now. So, I tried again to fork it and failed miserably, and wound up just updating my copy of rtl_433. But, another good thing happened as well. The folk that wrote rtl_sdr, the actual radio software have improved it a lot and it installed first time, and I got to remove that from my copy.
Now, you get rtl_sdr, install it, build it, and then get my rtl_433, install it and build it. That will give you the version I'm using with all the changes to support the newest findings. My python code for the weather station I run is in GitHub as well. The specific stuff I use is:
rtl_sdr <link>
rtl_433 <link>
weather station <link>
The reason I linked to a particular commit in GitHub is so you can have exactly the same code to work with. The two rtl projects are in flux and could change dramatically at any time. You can always get the latest version if you think it will serve you better.
The latest version of rtl_433 not only has the new decoder software, it also allows you to specify the device you expect to receive. That makes it nice for me since I only have the AcuRite device I'm interested in. I changed my start up command to support this feature:
rtl_433 -f 433.915e6 -R9 2>> saveweather.log | saveweather.py >> saveweather.log 2>&1
The '-R9' specifies the 5N1 device. Notice how I save the stderr output to a file? That helps me understand how many errors I'm getting and could help me fix a problem. Right now I'm also using the -D for debug option as well to get more information. Try '--help' on rtl_433 to see the other options it has.
I owe this latest version to Pcjunky (yes, I know his name, but I ain't gonna post it without his permission). He took my code and beat on it until it worked to his satisfaction. Thank's a lot.
Now, I want to show you the parity routine I ran across. Here's the code:
static int acuriteParity(uint8_t v){
// returns 1 if parity odd, 0 if parity even
v ^= v >> 4;
v &= 0xf;
return (0x6996 >> v) & 1;
}
This calculates the parity for a byte in around five cpu operations. It's an extremely clever implementation that I leave the explanation as an exercise for the student.
Have fun.
Just when you thought I'd finally shut up about the AcuRite weather sensor I decide to post again. I promise, at some point I'll actually be satisfied with this device, but not quite yet. Over the months I've been working with this I've received comments and emails from folk that tried it and discovered things. One reader had an especially interesting situation; he had a neighbor that had a sensor within range. This meant that the code would pick them both up and present data from both sensors. To add insult to injury, when he tried changing his station to channel C, he found out that rtl_433 had a bug that prevented his receiving data on that channel. He must have been really annoyed at that point.
Since wind and temperature matter to placement, this was causing him grief and he set off to fix it. He isolated the sensor ID, and while he was at it, decoded the battery level, channel and found a better way to read the RF that allowed channel C to work.
During his trials he also found that the checksum was allowing bad data into the decoding and would present unusual readings. I've seen this over time as well. Things like a wind gust of 147 mph, a temperature spike of 30 or so degrees for no reason, the usual outlier readings, but with weather, it's hard to tell what an outlier really is.
I totally stole his ideas and some of his code and incorporated into my weather station,; I haven't been running it too long, but it looks like the vast majority of the outlier readings are gone. There may be some turn up, but so far it's been good.
First, inspection of the data showed that the bytes holding the various readings were all even parity. I added code to check the parity and discard the message if it didn't pass. Note that I only check the readings bytes because the first, second and last bytes are sensor, status, and checksum; these don't incorporate parity. In the c code I add the decoded sensor id, battery level, and channel to the JSON string I output, then check for the proper values in the python code that receives it. I did it this way because some folk may want to catch multiple sensors and average or compare them; especially if they can see a neighbors device for free.
I also noticed at my house that I receive a couple of devices from other folk that are not AcuRite devices. These things can cause problems as well, especially since they could easily be using the same checksum algorithm.
All the changes meant that I had to get the very latest version of rtl_433 from the original github repository. This was required because the rtl_433 folk made a new decoding method available that works better with the AcuRite data stream. That decoder wasn't there in January, but it is now. So, I tried again to fork it and failed miserably, and wound up just updating my copy of rtl_433. But, another good thing happened as well. The folk that wrote rtl_sdr, the actual radio software have improved it a lot and it installed first time, and I got to remove that from my copy.
Now, you get rtl_sdr, install it, build it, and then get my rtl_433, install it and build it. That will give you the version I'm using with all the changes to support the newest findings. My python code for the weather station I run is in GitHub as well. The specific stuff I use is:
rtl_sdr <link>
rtl_433 <link>
weather station <link>
The reason I linked to a particular commit in GitHub is so you can have exactly the same code to work with. The two rtl projects are in flux and could change dramatically at any time. You can always get the latest version if you think it will serve you better.
The latest version of rtl_433 not only has the new decoder software, it also allows you to specify the device you expect to receive. That makes it nice for me since I only have the AcuRite device I'm interested in. I changed my start up command to support this feature:
rtl_433 -f 433.915e6 -R9 2>> saveweather.log | saveweather.py >> saveweather.log 2>&1
The '-R9' specifies the 5N1 device. Notice how I save the stderr output to a file? That helps me understand how many errors I'm getting and could help me fix a problem. Right now I'm also using the -D for debug option as well to get more information. Try '--help' on rtl_433 to see the other options it has.
I owe this latest version to Pcjunky (yes, I know his name, but I ain't gonna post it without his permission). He took my code and beat on it until it worked to his satisfaction. Thank's a lot.
Now, I want to show you the parity routine I ran across. Here's the code:
static int acuriteParity(uint8_t v){
// returns 1 if parity odd, 0 if parity even
v ^= v >> 4;
v &= 0xf;
return (0x6996 >> v) & 1;
}
This calculates the parity for a byte in around five cpu operations. It's an extremely clever implementation that I leave the explanation as an exercise for the student.
Have fun.
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