The perfect VSCP companion.
Category: VSCP
This (upper cabinet of refrigerator)
and this (lower cabinet of refrigerator)
is live data from the refrigerator project described here, here and here.
First of all, this is quite a complex way to do this, it could have been solved in an easier way. But I wanted to test the modules Grodans Paradis AB made and put them to work.
Two CAN4VSCP based modules has been use for this project. The Kelvin NTC10K module is used to sense temperatures and the Beijing I/O module is used to turn /on/off the compressor.
Configuration
Kelvin NTC10K
The module is fully describe here.
The Kelvin NTC10K (on nickname = 5) have one thermistor connected to input one which is located in the upper cabinet of the refrigerator and the one thermistor connected to input two which is connected to a sensor that is located in the lower cabinet. Both has been set to send out temperature every ten seconds
As noted also the on-board sensor send out temperature data, It sends out the data with a longer interval (0x3C = 60) which is once a minute. This value can be used to sense the room temperature but is always a bit high as the sensor is placed on the pcb. One can adjust this in the sensor calibration registers
Most thermistor needs a calibration and here it can be set with a two complement number that can calibrate a temperature with an accuracy of two decimals.
If you want temperatures sent to some sort of central server this is actually all you need to configure. The values will be sent with the set interval. The default unit is degrees Celsius but this can be changed. In our case we also need some other features enabled. This configuration we do in the control registers for each sensor
Temperature Sensor 0 and temperature sensor 2 just send out the temperature with the set interval. They are set to 1 which means they send the temperature in degrees Celsius.
For temperature sensor 1 more features has been enabled. It is configured with 0xB9 which is 10111001 in binary.
As Bit 0/Bit 1 forms 1 the temperature will be presented in degrees Celsius as for the other sensors.
Bit 3 is set so low alarm is enables.
Bit 4 is set so high alarm is enabled.
Bit 5 is set which means that CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOff events and CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn events will be sent instead off CLASS1.ALARM, Alarm occurred. So an OFF event will be sent when the temperature goes below the low alarm level and an ON event will be sent then the temperature goes above the high alarm level.
Bit 7 is set which means alarm events will be sent continuously, not just when a limit is passed.
For this to work we need to set the low alarm level
which is set to four degrees Celsius. And also the high alarm value
which is set to six degrees.
The hysteresis value is set to two as default and we leave it at that.
So what will happen here?
If the temperature is below four degrees Celsius CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOff events will be sent out every second. This will continue until the temperature is above the low alarm temperature + the hysteresis, that means at 6 degrees. When the temperature go over 6 degrees Celsius CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn events will be sent out every second until the temperature goes below the set high alarm point minus hysteresis, that means 4 degrees Celsius.
In addition to the TurnOn/TurnOff events the temperatures will also be sent out for us to diagram or collect in a database or do other things with.
Before we setup the Beijing module to handle the TurnOn/TurnOff events we need to mark out TurnOn/TurnOff events so they can be identified to the refrigerator. We can do this with the nickname id (node id) which in this case is set to 5. But this value could be changed if a module is replaced but it can also be good not to use this id for other purposes as well. So instead we use the zone/subzone. For the Kelvin NTC10K we can set a zone/subzone for each sensor. And we set
the zone to hex 23 (35 decimal) and the subzone for each temperature sensor to it’s index. So temperature sensor 0 get subzone= 0, sensor 1 get subzone=1 and so on.
There is no magic here. One can set up any number schema one likes.
This is how a temperature event looks like for sensor 1
And this is how a CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn event looks like
Beijing I/O module
The module is fully described here.
The Beijing module can do many things. But as we have a relay that control the compressor of the refrigerator connected to I/O channel we are only interested in configuration of this channel.
The I/O channels of the Beijing module is set as outputs by defaults
We have set bit 1 as an input here for a task we want to go through in this write-up (refrigerator door sensor).
Note also that the nickname (node id) is set to 4.
We also need to match the zone with the one we set for the Kelvin NTC10K (0x23) and also the subzone (0x01) for I/O channel 0 .
That is all we need to configure.
To complete the task we also need to program the decision matrix of the Beijing module. In this matrix we program what the Beijing should do when certain events is received by the module.
In our case there is the two events from the Kelvin NTC 10K module we are interested in.
If CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn is received we want I/O to be turned on or stay on, that is the compressor of the refrigerator should be turned on.
If CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOff is received we want I/O zero to be turned off or stay off, that is the compressor of the refrigerator should be turned off.
The decision matrix have actions it can perform when an event matches a selection criteria. For us the SET and CLR actions is what we need.
The rest of the actions are described here.
We program the decision matrix like this. One row for each action we want to be carried out
In the first row, which looks like this
we enable the row, don’t check the originating address as we discussed above, and the originating address is not hardcoded, the zone of the received event should match the zone of the our module (0x23) and the subzone should match that for the channel set in the action parameter (I/O 0 = 0) or the module subzone depending on chosen action.
the class mask tells which bits of the class filter that is of interest. Here all is of interest (0x1FF) and the class filter is set to 0x1E which is 30 and is the code for CLASS1.CONTROL
The type mask tells which bits of the type filter is of interest. Here all is of interest (0xFF) and the type is set to 0x05 which is the code for CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn
So if a CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOn event is received with zone=0x23 and subzone=0x01 the Beijing module will carry out the chosen action. We want I/O 0 to be turned on so the compressor is turned on and the action set output of I/O channel high will do that for us. This action expects the I/O channel as action parameter so we set it to x00.
So now out CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnON events will turn on the compressor. The Beijing will confirm the I/O change with a CLASS1.INFORMATION, On event.
The DM row for the CLASS1.CONTROL, TurnOff is then setup in the same way.
Thats it. We have now made a self contained unit consisting of two modules that can work autonomously.
The cloud
The fridge project explains how to share the generated data to the cloud. I will do another write-up about this later. But it’s not more to it then to program the decision matrix of the VSCP daemon to send data to the cloud. You have live data for this setup here as a sample. This data is on a CAN4VSCP bus in this house and is collected by a Raspberry Pi and is sent up to ThingsSpeak.
VSCP have other means of displaying data and more will come in the next version.
The refrigerator again. It takes more time then expected of course. It always do. This time because I have a lot of other things to attend to at the moment. I understand if you ask some questions about this project. So I answer them here (before you actually ask them)
Why this project?
Our refrigerator broke down two weeks ago. And we need one also in my family. Of course we do, open source programmers may not afford much buying stuff but we also want our milk to be cold. Luckily it is winter here now and we have some other storage that is at about four/five degrees so it is no immediate panic, but as weather is getting better (the spring is coming) this is not a good long-term solution.
When our fridge broke down some years ago I decided to try to rescue it and if it was possible I would take standard VSCP modules to do so. The compressor was OK and if it is this is a simple project mostly. This project has worked perfectly well since then and became a nice VSCP demo project.
Yes, Yes, YES it’s an overkill using VSCP standard modules for this. An Arduino or some other simple board would have done the job. But I wanted to use the modules to see if they did their job also over time. The best way to actually see if things are working the way you thought is to put them in some critical system in your house (the heating in our house is already controlled this way). If there is some bugs or design problems things will be solved by necessity. To have them in a demo system on a workbench is just not the same thing.
So for the refrigerator the first question was to check if the compressor still worked. If it was dead it is just a pieces of junk and not a refrigerator. But just as with the fridge it was the control logic that had broken also this time. Make me wonder how many perfectly fine refrigerators/fridges are thrown away out there that could have new control added for a few bucks and do the job they were designed for for many years more.
How?
As with the fridge I decided to go for standard VSCP modules for the refrigerator project to make it a demo project. It is easier this time as I have the CAN4VSCP bus connected to the fridge that stands next to the refrigerator. I just need to connect the two together.
So I put in a Kelvin NTC10K module and a Bejing I/O module in the refrigerator and hook it up to the CAN4VSCP bus so I am able to monitor temperatures and change temperature settings and get possible alarms from the unit. As with all VSCP modules they form a self-contained unit. There is actually no need for a server after they have been configured. The second video here show the configuration process and the first show how the modules are connected together.
The Kelvin NTC 10K module is a module that one can connect a couple of temperature sensors to. It can be programmed to alarm at low and high temperatures and as in this case turn on and off things when certain temperature thresholds are reached.
In the fridge project a Paris module is used together with the Kelvin NTC module. The Paris module is constructed to control relays and have all the electronics on board to do that. It also include protection timers and a lot more.
In the refrigerator project I decided to use the Beijing module instead of the Paris module. Mostly because it did not matter to have standard I/O channels as I use a solid state relay to switch on and off the compressor, but my main reason was that I got a chance to use it in a real life demo system.
So the Kelvin NTC10K module sense the temperature in the refrigerator and the Beijing module is used to switch the compressor on or off and to sense if the refrigerator door is open or not and if it is light the lamp inside the box.
It is possible to sound s siren if the door to the refrigerator is opened between midnight and six in the morning. But some things just hit you right in the face so I will not implement that functionality. At least not now.
Next?
Connect cables and putting it in the refrigerator where the old control logic was located. No programming is needed just configuration. The second video above show a bit of this configuration but I will go through it in a more precise way in a future post. Hopefully things will work as thy should tomorrow. The VCSP modules are very flexible and can be used in most control situations to form self-contained systems that can be connected together and be connected to the world in a safe and secure way.
Part 1
Demos VSCPWorks
Part 2
Categories
#VSCP Register Abstraction Model (VSCP-RAM)
The single most important part of a VSCP system is the Register Abstraction Model. With it you can describe anything that are real (or even not real) in this universe. Quite a piece of a powerful super tool to have in your arsenal.
In the IoT world people often say that MQTT, CoAP, etc is IoT servers/protocols. For me they are transport mechanisms. Good ones, at least in the case of MQTT. Useful for IoT? Yes. But IoT severs no?
Now what!?
To explain my point. Look at a web server. It serve content using the HTTP protocol. Simple enough. Works good. Quite similar to MQTT in fact.
But…
this was not the reason the world-wide web was a success. If everyone started to serve different non standardized content with the http protocol it would have been a mess of it all. Very hard to cope with for the web readers at least. Yes, it would have been useless. Well this was more or less the case also pre HTML. But what HTML did was to specify a common format for the content. That was the killer that made everything moving. Not the web server which is just the transport mechanism just as MQTT and others are in IoT.
VSCP try to be more than a transport mechanism for m2m and IoT. A common way to look at and handle “things”. (yes MQTT can transport it just as CoAP and others can)
In the picture above is a view on how VSCP look at a “thing“. A “thing“can be a TV, a refrigerator, a car, a lamp, a human or whatever. Everything can be described in this way. Yes, everything. Hardware as well as software or a some abstract non existing life form. ANYTHING is the world.
To describe anything is of course not a problem. One just describe the anything in a way that comes up in one’s mind. So if we ask 999 people to describe the anything object there will be 999 different descriptions. That is actually OK. The problem is rather that there will be 999 different ways to interpret the descriptions of the anything. Hard work.
If we instead came up with a common way to look at the anything, an abstraction of it, we could all use that abstraction to describe every the anything and after that we do not need to come up with so many new ways to interpret the descriptions nor ways to interact with the anythings of the world. We could even use this abstraction on top of any of the 999 description from above as it is useful for describing anything. Good if we love our “description” and don’t want to throw away our lovely description and interpretation of it.
Of course, the abstraction would be most useful if it was available for a high-end system or user as well as for low-end system or user. Low end can actually be really low-end. So we better start there. But a high-end user or system demands handling of great complex things so we need to take this into account as well.
VSCP solve this in the following way
- Everything can be described by a collection of 8-bit registers.
- To know whats inside an 8-bit register you need the ability to read it.
- To change the content of an 8-bit register you need the ability to write it.
So VSCP can describe everything in the universe, yes everything from a flower, a person, a car or anything else with a set of 8-bit registers. The only thing needed to interact with the resister set is that registers can be read and written.
So
- Read a byte.
- Write a byte.
is all that is needed for VSCP to work with “anything” on its lowest level.
In VSCP this is called the Register Abstraction Model.
VSCP’s register abstraction model demands that all “anything” objects have a set of registers that contain specific information. Same on all. The two most important parts is GUID, ett globally unique id a 16 byte world unique if for “the anything“, and a 32-byte area which contains a pointer to a Module Description File. The GUID identifies “the anything” much the same way as an Ethernet MAC does for Ethernet device. They can actually be coupled. The MDF pointer can point at a local location or to a file on the Internet. The content is a well-defined XML description of “the anything”.
One thing that is described is of course the registers of “the anything“. But to handle things on a register level can be to hard sometimes. For instance is a floating point value stored in eight registers. If this floating point value for instance represent a temperature of “the anything” and this is what the application or user is interested in there should be no need to know how it is actually stored on “the anything“.
So to make life easier for high-end systems or users the MDF often also contains abstractions. Abstractions specify higher end type such as strings, floats, integers, booleans and tell in what registers they are stored and also how many bytes they use. So a high en user just handle these higher end objects, reading and writing them, even if the system still only read and write bytes.
Both registers and abstractions describe the same “anything“, just on different levels.
At this point it would be possible to build an application that can configure any device, “anything“, just by read/write byte operations and by reading and interpreting the MDF of the unit. The user (or machine) just fill in the values. The same application can be used to configure a car, a TV, a clock radio etc.
The MDF can also contain wizards. A wizard can guide a human user, step by step through a specific setup of a device. They are also described in an abstract way and can be interpreted by C/C++, JavaScript and other higher end programing languages alike. So it is as easy to make an app. that goes through the wizard steps as it is to make an HTML page that do the same.
It is of course possible to use XML/JSON on the higher level to “set register/abstractions”. A read and a write byte operation is still all that is needed.
The fact is that the register abstraction model is so light weight that it easily can live alongside a more proprietary solution
But way?
That you have to think about yourself… ,-)
ps VSCP is of course a lot more than this. There are events, classes/types, bootloaders, decision matrices and a lot of other clever things. ds.
Categories
What the heck…. #VSCP #IoT #m2m
I will probably starve to death doing this but the following hardware modules will be open source again.
can4vscp_accra – Counter module.
can4vscp_sanfrancisco_barometer – Barometer module.
can4vscp_humidity – humidity and temperature
can4vscp_beijing – I/O- module.
can4vscp_vilnius – AD- module.
can4vscp_odessa – Expansion module.
can4vscp_kelvin_1wire – 1-wire temperature module.
can4vscp_frankfurt_rs232 – RS-232 interface to CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_gprs – GPRS interface to CAN4VSCÅ
can4vscp_newyork_lcd_display_controller – Display controller
can4vscp_frankfurt_eth – Ethernet <->CAN4VSCP
zeus_expansion_roma – Ethernet controller.
zeus_expansion_moscow
can4vscp_power_injector
zeus
zeus_expansion_napoli
zeus_expansion_leicester
zeus_expansion_kiev
zeus_expansion_budapest
zeus_expansion_brussels
blitz
thunder
can4vscp_frankfurt_ble
can4vscp_frankfurt_bridge CAN4VSCP <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_rs485 RS485 <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_usb USB <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_kelvin_9700
can4vscp_kelvin_multisensor
can4vscp_kelvin_smt160
can4vscp_kelvin_thermocouple
can4vscp_Loos_temp_control
The following hardware modules will be closed source from today
can4vscp_accra – Counter module.
can4vscp_sanfrancisco_barometer – Barometer module.
can4vscp_humidity – humidity and temperature module.can4vscp_beijing – I/O- module.
can4vscp_vilnius – AD- module.
can4vscp_odessa – Expansion module.
can4vscp_kelvin_1wire – 1-wire temperature module.
can4vscp_frankfurt_rs232 – RS-232 interface to CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_gprs – GPRS interface to CAN4VSCÅ
can4vscp_newyork_lcd_display_controller – Display controller
can4vscp_frankfurt_eth – Ethernet <->CAN4VSCP
zeus_expansion_roma – Ethernet controller.
zeus_expansion_moscow
can4vscp_power_injector
zeus
zeus_expansion_napoli
zeus_expansion_leicester
zeus_expansion_kiev
zeus_expansion_budapest
zeus_expansion_brussels
blitz
thunder
can4vscp_frankfurt_ble
can4vscp_frankfurt_bridge CAN4VSCP <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_rs485 RS485 <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_frankfurt_usb USB <-> CAN4VSCP
can4vscp_kelvin_9700
can4vscp_kelvin_multisensor
can4vscp_kelvin_smt160
can4vscp_kelvin_thermocouple
can4vscp_Loos_temp_control
Paris and Kelvin NTC will be open and free as before for reference as will one or two RF modules resp.Ethernet modules.
Someone may ask why? The answer is that open source has not been working for these modules and I just don’t want to throw away the 1000h of work I put into them.
Categories
Next release of #VSCP #IoT #m2m
It’s been quite some time now since the last release of VSCP & Friends. Sorry to say it will be a few months more until the release is out. Why? Mostly because there is a lot to do and if Google and the likes can do a man year in a week a man year is a man year for someone working alone on a project as I am. But there is a lot of nice functionality coming so it is hopefully worth the wait.
Of course you can use the head code. But beware that database structures will change still for some time and if you use head code please remove all configuration data including databases so it get built from scratch. This will of course be taken care of automatically when the release is out.
And again of course if someone want to take part in the project (there is many tasks) or sponsor it please let me know.
Now it is possible to use execution of JavaScript as a result from a triggered action in the decision matrix of the VSCP Daemon. Things that is triggering an action can typically be events from external nodes or internal VSCP daemon generated events. For example a measurement value can be sent to a remote cloud service or an ON event can enable some special on-board functionality or just toggle a pin on some output. The possibilities are endless.
With the VSCP decision matrix escape functionality dynamic data can be written into the JavaScript before it is executed. This includes the triggering event data as well as environment information.
File, encryption and socket functionality is available from inside the script plus functions to send event, receive events, handle VSCP remote variables, handle measurements and more.
As a script can be stored in a VSCP remote variable it can be externally edited and functionality can therefore be dynamic.
The new functionality is described here.
Callback functions for VSCP functionality is described here.
LUA scripting will be added later making it possible to do slightly more complicated scripting.
Categories
Starwars VSCP
VSCP is like Lego in many respects.Building pieces you can build anything with. The problem is that most people has forgotten how to play with the pieces without a Starwars or other building kit with 1-2-3-4… instructions. So we probably have to supply that kit.
Ake Hedman maintainer of VSCP