My HGI80 equivalent Domoticz setup without HGI80

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  • DanD
    Automated Home Ninja
    • Feb 2016
    • 250

    #61
    @dty

    Yes, you might be right about overloading the MCU with interrupts. It doesn't look like this though as it seems to always be the same few devices which suffer the *INCOMPLETEs and I think this seems to point more towards a signal/CC1101 problem. It could be though that these devices send a burst of consecutive messages, causing an overload of interrupts. I'm really not sure yet. The alternative approaches in your firmware should help with troubleshooting.

    Yes, we're using the synchronous clock approach. The RFBee has an Atmega168/328 running at 8Mhz (3.3V). There are two different versions of the RFBee in circulation; v1.1 has the 168 with an internal clock that can be tweaked via OSCCAL, v1.2 has the 328 with double the memory, but uses an external clock.

    Dan

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    • dty
      Automated Home Ninja
      • Aug 2016
      • 489

      #62
      I think I'm having the same conversation with Bruce via email!

      I doubt it's the radio parameters. I've found that's all-or-nothing. Once you're getting bits, you're getting bits. Maybe slightly tweaking the centre frequency or something would help? If it's not quite right, but the HR92 transmission are within tolerance and the HR80s are not?

      I assume you've looked at/tried my radio parameters? I don't have any HR80s, so I can't comment on whether they're working or not. I don't think (the build I'm using of) Domoticz logs errors when it gets error packets (\x11) from the device, so I don't have good visibility into how reliable my reception is right now. Most devices seem to stay up-to-date, and my Pi sits right next to my Evohome controller, so it should see the same radio strength. But I do occasionally get some devices which don't appear to update for hours at a time, so perhaps I'm dropping messages sometimes and not realising?

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      • DanD
        Automated Home Ninja
        • Feb 2016
        • 250

        #63
        @dty

        Yes, it does look like it could possibly be that the HR92s and other newer devices are within tolerance of the CC1101 settings, but the older HR80s (and a CM67z controller I'm using in my test set-up) aren't. I've tried isolating my test set-up of a couple of HR80s and a CM67z from my live Evohome system and doing some further testing, tweaking the RF frequency setting, but I don't think this helped. Similarly, I've tried using the CC1101 frequency offset functionality in this set-up to see if it's chasing a different centre frequency, but didn't get any conclusive results. Possibly, the HR80s/CM67z were showing greater drift in their transmission frequency, but it wasn't clear and I still was getting the incompletes. I took a quick look at your radio parameters last night and I think we're using the same ones, but I'll double-check.

        The general testing approach that Bruce and I are using is to monitor the messages using our HGI80 and RFBees located in near to each other and then comparing the message streams. My main system is all HR92s, so I get a pretty good match between devices, but still have to do some more detailed testing on this as I was possibly missing my DHW sensor even if I relocated the RFBee to be closer. It's only when I start to add HR80s into the mix I get the message incomplete problems, similar to Bruce's experience, as his system is all HR80s.

        Thanks,

        Dan

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        • bruce_miranda
          Automated Home Legend
          • Jul 2014
          • 2307

          #64
          I think there is something about the radio parameters that makes a difference. The reason I say this is, there is a version of the firmware where a guy changes the frequency offset at every message. Now on it's own that doesn't help very much. But if I amend a few of the radio parameters, suddenly I get an extremely clean output, but am missing many messages altogether.

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          • dty
            Automated Home Ninja
            • Aug 2016
            • 489

            #65
            Since this conversation has now spilled out into PM and e-mail (as well as this thread), I've created a Slack group to try and re-centralise it Anybody who wants to join can PM me.

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            • Shutty
              Automated Home Lurker
              • Mar 2017
              • 8

              #66
              Originally posted by DanD View Post
              @shutty

              As Bruce has said it's all work in progress at the moment, but if you're happy to dive in here's some info which should get you started:

              RFBee firmware: I suggest trying the master branch from my Github area, but you may have to try altering the baud rate to 74880 or 250000 to get sending to work OK. I'm sure I've got it to work on the default 115200, but I tested it again yesterday and had to change the baud rate to get sending to work. I've paused on further work on the firmware at the moment until some more hardware turns up, as I wasn't able to get to the bottom of some problems with *INCOMPLETE errors in some of the messages from HR80s. I hope to be able to do some more troubleshooting on these messages with my new toys in a few weeks.

              Dan
              Dan, you are using some non standard baud rates here, something i have not tweaked before.. Are you updating the available values in registry for the FTDI. ? thanks

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              • bruce_miranda
                Automated Home Legend
                • Jul 2014
                • 2307

                #67
                The ftdi driver baud rates are only defaults. They can be overridden by the client. So you don't need to amend anything. Just make sure your serial client is set to the same baud as the source arduino serial open.

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                • DanD
                  Automated Home Ninja
                  • Feb 2016
                  • 250

                  #68
                  @shutty

                  All I do is set the baud rate in my RFBee firmware (Serial.begin(XXXXX)) and the set the same baud rate is whatever serial client I'm using in Windows (mainly PuTTy or the Arduino serial monitor, but it only has a limited selection of baud rates). I'm really not sure about the exact benefits of going either above versus below 115200, I just know that using 115200 causes problems. A few of us are actively working on tweaking the firmware and hopefully I'll fully understand exactly what I'm doing at some point.

                  Obviously if you're messing with the baud rate you'll need to change it in Evohome.cpp in Domoticz too and recompile.

                  Dan

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                  • Shutty
                    Automated Home Lurker
                    • Mar 2017
                    • 8

                    #69
                    Originally posted by DanD View Post
                    @shutty

                    All I do is set the baud rate in my RFBee firmware (Serial.begin(XXXXX)) and the set the same baud rate is whatever serial client I'm using in Windows (mainly PuTTy or the Arduino serial monitor, but it only has a limited selection of baud rates). I'm really not sure about the exact benefits of going either above versus below 115200, I just know that using 115200 causes problems. A few of us are actively working on tweaking the firmware and hopefully I'll fully understand exactly what I'm doing at some point.

                    Obviously if you're messing with the baud rate you'll need to change it in Evohome.cpp in Domoticz too and recompile.

                    Dan
                    woohoo working... did not realize the client was overriding the com port.(basic lack of knowledge there after 20yrs in IT... Doh...) ....... although it appeared ok at 115200, receiving was fine but not sending. moving the baud down has fixed it , as you advised earlier in the thread. Currently using your python script Dan with your version of firmware... seeing the odd unknown header but my hr92 is syncd... interesting to follow the comparison testing between the hgi80 and rfbee, trying to generate identical output, but I am afraid I can't add any value to that discussion, its quite a specialized subject I see.

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                    • DanD
                      Automated Home Ninja
                      • Feb 2016
                      • 250

                      #70
                      Excellent! It's great to hear that sending is working for you too. With regards to comparing received messages between the RFBee & HGI80, I'm just capturing the output in a couple of PuTTy sessions. I've set the history to 1000 and then I'm just pasting them into Excel for manipulation. It's tricky to differentiate between potential firmware problems & reception issues, but we're working on it. Please share any observations from comparing the messages from your two devices.

                      Dan

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                      • bruce_miranda
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • Jul 2014
                        • 2307

                        #71
                        Originally posted by DanD View Post
                        Excellent! It's great to hear that sending is working for you too. With regards to comparing received messages between the RFBee & HGI80, I'm just capturing the output in a couple of PuTTy sessions. I've set the history to 1000 and then I'm just pasting them into Excel for manipulation. It's tricky to differentiate between potential firmware problems & reception issues, but we're working on it. Please share any observations from comparing the messages from your two devices.

                        Dan
                        Use RealTerm and it will capture the output to a file for you with timestamps et al. You can stop it automatically after some time has elapsed etc. Vary the displayed output. All good stuff

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                        • DanD
                          Automated Home Ninja
                          • Feb 2016
                          • 250

                          #72
                          Hi,

                          I thought I'd post an update as I've been a little quiet for a while. I've now got 3 different Evohome controllers to test out (thanks Bruce!) and I've got 2 of them, the v2 non-wifi colour version and a v1 B&W version linked to a RFG100 gateway. This is so that I can monitor the messages sent between the gateway and the controller when changes are made in the app and vice-versa. This is helping me understand how the controller maintains its scheduling information and I hope will allow me to work out a way of backing up and restoring schedules on the controller via a serial device (I'm not sure if the HGI80 will be able to do this yet). I also hope to have the first functional version of my prototype controller code ready in the next week or so.

                          Dan

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                          • paulockenden
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Apr 2015
                            • 1719

                            #73
                            Where's the 'like' button?

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                            • dty
                              Automated Home Ninja
                              • Aug 2016
                              • 489

                              #74
                              Also worth dropping into conversation that my firmware now works on RFBee devices as well as the busware.de SCC. Thanks to DanD and bruce_miranda for testing it for me as I don't have a device to test on. I'm pleased to say that it appears to be more robust that some of the other firmware out there and deals with messages from older devices (such as the CM67z) that others can't handle.

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                              • DanD
                                Automated Home Ninja
                                • Feb 2016
                                • 250

                                #75
                                @dty thanks for posting your update and for your excellent work on the new firmware for the RFBee!

                                PS I can also confirm that the schedule back-up/restore process works with the HGI80 and on all 3 controller versions . I'll post some python code to my Github area in the next few days to show how the schedule back-up/restore command works. It'll be a while before I get a chance to integrate this functionality into Domoticz, but at least it'll give people a functional version to play with.

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