HS3-Pi As remote z-wave interface

[simplextech]

Interesting - I have never tried that. So the replication occurs over the air vs. over the network. Good find!

Yes! It is over the air and I confirmed it as I was sniffing the wire AND doing a process trace on ser2net while trying which originally is why I was so frustrated and wondering WTH... then when I saw that other post I was like... wait a minute and I moved the Pi a couple feet from the SmartStick+ and BAM there it went... I was still tracing the process and the network and it looked the same as it did when it was at a distance. So the sync/replication is OTA.

[simplextech]

FYI.

Here's a breakdown of parts costing from amazon as of today. Building this is really easy, but after you look through the parts listing see my notes below. Spoiler I think the Z-Net is a good bargain.

Individual Parts Cost (rPi parts cheaper as a Kit but not much):
Raspberry Pi 3: $36.98
Raspberry Pi 3 Case: $7.95
Z-WAVE GPIO HAT: $59.95
16G MicroSD Card: $8.58
Good Power Supply: $9.99

Total: $123.45

With the DIY you then have to assemble/test/install/tweak/tune etc etc. I looked through the z-net quite a bit and looked and they did some kernel tuning to adjust the tcp stack a bit for the small packets which was nice and they have their web interface. Albeit the web interface is nothing fancy but it does the job and that took development time and there's all the support costs associated with a consumer device as well.

In summary. If you have the skill not only to build a z-net but also to support it on your own then it's a great option and even better if you already have all of the parts just sitting around.

However to put on the business hat the cost of a z-net is justified with the cost of the parts and the development work that went into making it into a "product" and then associated customer service/support costs I think the Z-Net is correctly priced.

[Timon]

I'm going to give this a try but I sure wish that HS would allow ZeeS2 to boot either as a ZeeS2 or as a Z-NET. It's a total waste of good hardware to not be able to convert a ZeeSe to a Z-NET.

[Timon]

FYI.

Here's a breakdown of parts costing from amazon as of today. Building this is really easy, but after you look through the parts listing see my notes below. Spoiler I think the Z-Net is a good bargain.

Individual Parts Cost (rPi parts cheaper as a Kit but not much):
Raspberry Pi 3: $36.98
Raspberry Pi 3 Case: $7.95
Z-WAVE GPIO HAT: $59.95
16G MicroSD Card: $8.58
Good Power Supply: $9.99

Total: $123.45

With the DIY you then have to assemble/test/install/tweak/tune etc etc. I looked through the z-net quite a bit and looked and they did some kernel tuning to adjust the tcp stack a bit for the small packets which was nice and they have their web interface. Albeit the web interface is nothing fancy but it does the job and that took development time and there's all the support costs associated with a consumer device as well.

In summary. If you have the skill not only to build a z-net but also to support it on your own then it's a great option and even better if you already have all of the parts just sitting around.

However to put on the business hat the cost of a z-net is justified with the cost of the parts and the development work that went into making it into a "product" and then associated customer service/support costs I think the Z-Net is correctly priced.

However if you have a ZeeS2 that you don't need then it's just an SD card and some time.

[Timon]

This has not been my day.

I think I have figured out what's gong on. It looks like the normal port that HS3 and the ser2net wants to use needs to be swapped inside Raspbian. So HS3 and ser2net has been actually trying to talk to the Bluetooth module all this time. Looks like there is a whole procedure you need to do in order to change this.

I'm betting that someplace on the ZeeS2 startup there is code to do this.

Now to find it.

[zwolfpack]

That's right forgot about that...

- modify /boot/cmdline.txt to:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=b172ef55-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait

leave the PARTUUID as is.

- append to /boot/config.txt:

# switch bluetooth function to ttyS0 and restore UART0/ttyAMA0 over GPIO 14&15
dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt

[Timon]

That's right forgot about that...

- modify /boot/cmdline.txt to:

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=b172ef55-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait

leave the PARTUUID as is.

- append to /boot/config.txt:

# switch bluetooth function to ttyS0 and restore UART0/ttyAMA0 over GPIO 14&15
dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt

First thanks for this program. It's going to make my final upgrade to the Rocked64 much easier.

Went through what you have above and what was on the ZeeS2 and the new build that I made. You're spot on when it comes to the config.txt but I left the cmdline.txt basically untouched although I did actually remove the "console=tty1" section based on information I found on the subject. Other parameters on that line were left as they were. See originals below:

ZeeS2

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=/dev/mmcblk0p7 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait

New build

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=1049d9d9-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait

One interesting point. The original ZeeS2 doesn't have a "gpu_mem=16" entry which I think means it defaults to 64K. Changing that would get back some memory for those using ZeeS2.

Ok, now that that's been done I tried again. Was not sure which model it should be I tried both Ethernet and Z-NET and found that it's Z-NET.

Here is my ser2net.conf file. I edited port 2002 for the Pi:

CONTROLPORT:2000
DEFAULT:kickolduser:true
2001:raw:120:/dev/ttyAMA0:115200
2002:raw:120:/dev/zwave:115200
2003:raw:120:/dev/ttyUSB0:115200

Had some issues with HS3 always trying to pickup on port 2001 and getting confused so I swapped the setting in the config file to make sure that the one I wanted was port 2001.

Oops, spoke too soon about coming up. It's a hit or miss thing. I'm having to do many restarts because I'm getting the following:

Note: Only one system may connect to an Ethernet interface at one time. If 2 systems are connecting to your Z-Wave interface, HomeSeer will not connect.

I was having a really bad time getting this to work. so I figured something else is gong on. I decided to put back the ZeeS2 SD card and test it. Well guess what, it was failing so I decided to restore and generally cleanup the entire Z-Wave settings on the card from my backups. Once that was done I put back in the ser2net SD card and bingo, now everything seems works but I do need to do much more testing.

There are a few thing however that are an issue when putting Standard or Pro on a Pi. One is controlling the EZZee LED if you're wanting to monitor boot and the other is TTS but that was to be expected since none of the Pi TTS code, i.e., flite, have been loaded or the speech files updated I don't expect that to be hard to fix but these are subjects for another thread.

---------------------- Short Rant you can skip if you want----------------------
This rant is not to diminish the code that's been written to do this and in fact the code seem to be working fine and I love that it exists. That said however...

I still contend that ZeeS2 owners should not have to build their own Z-NET when upgrading from a ZeeS2 to HS3 standard or Pro but should be able to keep the ZeeS2 and have it act as a Z-NET.

After all, HS knows that people that buy ZeeS2 will VERY likely at some point upgrade to HS3 standard or pro so rather than end up having them toss a perfectly good ZeeS2, or just have it be a paper weight and not a good one at that, they should allow ZeeS2 to act as Z-NETs so the customer can maintain some of their investment.

I've been told they can't release the Z-NET as standalone software package, and I accept that, but I see no reason why the Z-NET functionality can't be imbedded into the ZeeS2 build since both can't run at the same time and all of the Z-Wave license fees have been paid. After the ZeeS2 and the Z-NET use the exact same hardware, as far as I know, so why toss it! All they need to do is imbed the Z-NET code into the ZeeS2 build and add an option for which way it should startup.

This would also a good sales feature for the ZeeS2. You can tell the customers, "Hey, start with our lowest cost solution and when you're ready to upgrade you have you're Z-Wave interface ready to go with what ever hardware platform you upgrade to.

Please HS, let the ZeeS2 act either way.

[randy]

Rich posted a link to the Z-Net v2 image here. Just download the image, burn it to an SD card and turn your Zee into a Z-Net. It is an older version, but it will update to the current version. You can keep your Zee SD card as it is if you ever want to revert.

[Timon]

Loaded up the real Z-Net on my ZeeS2 and it's up. However I'm having problems with my Evolve switches, not that unusual, in that they will just lock up. Need to do some more playing around.

Update:

Things are MUCH better. I've gone through several full optimizations and some manual route updates and the system seems much more stable.

I'm so glad to be up on full HS3. Now to start putting together a Rocket64 (maybe even pro) and generally speed this system up.

[Timon]

That works, thanks

[Timon]

Rich posted a link to the Z-Net v2 image here. Just download the image, burn it to an SD card and turn your Zee into a Z-Net. It is an older version, but it will update to the current version. You can keep your Zee SD card as it is if you ever want to revert.

Forgot to say thanks. Oh yes, I have the ZeeS2 SD Card tapped inside the cover so it won't get lost.

The one other thing I want to do is to breakdown the build of the Z-NET SD card. That way I can upgrade the OS and if needed add other functions such as Audio out for TTS from the HS3 system.

[Timon]

I've been working on the breakdown of the Z-NET so I could easily load it up on a more recent version of Raspbian. I'm hoping to be able to have the Z-NET do a little more than just act as a Z-Wave interface but also provide speaker service using Spuds AirPlay Speaker or RaspberryIO.

Let me say that I was quite surprised to find out that HS's driver was also called ser2net but then I remembered that zwolfpack had made a comment about other packages called ser2net.

Anyway it looks like there aren't many routines to the Z-NET in fact none of the code even requires Mono. It does have pieces of WiringPi loaded, although it's in an odd location, so it can control the LEDs. It also has the find_homeseer loaded. Still have more to do but it looks like it will be quite easy to move this to the latest version of Raspbian.

[Pete]

You can also just run the ZWave plugin on the RPi and remote it to your Homeseer server.

Initially before using sertonet I did this BUT:

1 - you need mono installed on the RPi
2 - it is slower than using sertonet

That said I have tested other Homeseer plugins doing the remote thing like Spud's Kinect plugin running on a mini Windows 10 computer tacked on to the back of a touchscreen monitor. All the plugins written to work in Linux and Windows should be working in this fashion.

[zwolfpack]

ser2net is an open source package. The z-net's version is based on 2.9.1, with wiringPi routines patched in to operate the LEDs. And yes, they copied some of the wiringPi library files rather than installing the package. This ill-advised implementation has caused grief to several folks when attempting to apply OS upgrades - since wiringPi package isn't installed, it doesn't update and breaks wiringPi (and thus the ser2net app) because it becomes out of sync with the rest of the OS.

The ser2net package I posted is essentially equivalent, except its based on the latest version 3.5. Advantages (minor) to my version are (1) improved recovery from comm loss (2) a small security enhancement or two.

Other z-net features
(1) the register_with_find script that you pointed out. I've rewritten this for myself; the HS version has a couple coding blunders, the most annoying of which deposits zero length files named '-d' in various places thru the file system. An "enhancement" is ability to add arbitrary entries to the search results. Or, if you know some other user's WAN address, you can add entries to his/her search results! I also have a script that queries and displays same as the web page but in plain text. Worthless, but fun.
(2) the network configuration / software updater web app. I've redone this one and added some extra stuff. A complaint of the HS version is that it isn't password protect-able, but its "on the list" - lol
(3) there is a feature that allows the user to reset the network configuration to default if 'r' + Enter is input from a connected keyboard within the first few seconds after boot. This is probably not much benefit to advanced users (but of course I've written one of those too).

I think that's about it.

[Timon]

Wow, Between Pete, rprade, zwolfpack and a couple of others I've learned a ton of stuff over the last week or so.

Pete, your network diagram of your attic pie was quite interesting and causes a few other ideas to popup in my hear. Other information you've passed on has been priceless.

You also talked about remote plugins, never hear of that. How it's done not that I would do it with Z-Wave but I'm still curious for other reasons.

Zwolfpack, your last post really cleared up the whole Z-Net functionally issue. I have a much better understanding of the whole thing. Up until now I though HS's Z-NET was something totally custom and although it's modified open source it really isn't.

Since we may sell the house in the next year or so, and I plan to leave the system here, I'm trying to keep it as close to pure HS as I can. So although I do plan to make upgrades to my ZeeS2 converted to Z-NET with original code I will still do work with yours as it's easy to swap SD cards and go back to pure HS without changing system operation. Then if whoever buys the house happens to be a techie I won't touch a thing.