VSCP is now part of the GitHub sponsor program. Under the first year GitHub will go in with the same amount as other go in for. So if you like VSCP this is a chance to show that you do that helping me to continue this project for another nineteen years.
At last, after a long time the PIR sensors and the door sensors start to deliver some VSCP events. This is something that should have been live this spring, but due to unforeseen events of life, it all has been delayed. But better late than never I guess.
This is nothing fancy of course but I will still describe the project here in detail later. For me it is important to get some real world data to work with. Using real world data always give more insight in how things should work than simulate things. Side-effects of this project is smart lights, lock control and some other things, for part of our house and my office.
Now some coffee, then it’s time to go on with other parts of this project.
VSCP is now part of the GitHub sponsor program. Under the first year GitHub will go in with the same amount as other go in for. So if you like VSCP this is a chance to show that you do that helping me to continue this project for another nineteen years.
The CANAL API specification has been moved from the vscp daemon documentation and is now documented in it’s own document.
[The new documentation can be found here.](https://docs.vscp.org/#canal)
We need someone with C# knowledge to take over the vscp-helper-charp project which Bas Bongenaar. The design goal is to make the VSCP helper lib functionality easy to use for C# developers.
If you want to make a debian package on a Raspberry Pi with Stretch installed or another machine with an older debian version installed the debhelper build process may complain about multiple runs of dh_autoreconf and abort. This is due to a bug in dh_autoreconf which just warns for this in later versions.
Solution
Get the latest version of dh_autoreconf
wget http://sourcearchive.raspbian.org/main/d/dh-autoreconf/dh-autoreconf_19.tar.xz
Unpack
tar xvf dh-autoreconf_19.tar.xz
Save a copy of the old sh_autoreconf
sudo mv /usr/bin/dh_autoreconf /usr/bin/dh_autoreconf.save
Copy the new file
copy dh_autoreconf to /usr/bin
Problem should be solved.
What is the range of Bluetooth? The effective, reliable range between Bluetooth devices is anywhere from more than a kilometer down to less than a meter. Use the Bluetooth Range Estimator What…
Source: Understanding Bluetooth Range | Bluetooth Technology Website
New firmware – version 1.1.4 – has been released for the Frankfurt-RS-232 module. This firmware fixes a problem that prevented mode switching when in VSCP serial protocol mode.
Instructions on how to update firmware can be found in the manual.
The new firmware can be downloaded here.
Source is here.
Not much has happend in the VSCP world this year (hopefully it have in other places then in my location) but now it is time to do some serious stuff again.
Big changes are coming for VSCP.
One thing that happend the last years is that MQTT has become an IoT standard. Personally I have not been so keen to go this way because it really did not solve the issues of a fragmented IoT message community. Rather it encourage fragmentation.
The fact however is that MQTT became a standard and VSCP has a driver for it since it became available and people seems to prefer it so there is no other option really than to jump on this movement. The gain is massive software support and understanding of course. In VSCP case this means VSCP events will be pushed on a MQTT server on the JSON format as of the specification. Published on a channel /vscp/class/type/guid/index/zone/subzone it is easy to do some filtering also as MQTT allow for wildcards on each level. As an example subscribing to /vscp/10/6/* will get all temperature events. Details will follow.
Another thing I kept an eye on for many years is node-red. Up until recently this has been more of a toy but lately it has matured and now solve many of the things I have planned for vscpd. I therefore have decided to use node-red for higher level VSCP stuff in the future instead of doing this development on a parallel track. The coupling between vscp and node-red is easy. A node-red module that feed events form vscpd and a node-red module that send events to vscpd. Add some filtering and other stuff to this and we have a real winner IMHO. Expect a package soon.
Wo what does this mean for the vscp software suite?
Well, a new version of vscpworks is in development built on node.js and electron. Much nicer and faster development. It just needs to add MQTT interfacing to the tcp/ip and websocket interface that is available today. Also there is a node.js module available already.
vscpd will take a new development path and be a hub/relay or what it should be called, against lower level VSCP stuff such as can4vscp(bluetooth/etc drivers. It will do two tings.
The rest of the functionality will go away. Most will be moved to Level II drivers wherever possible. MQTT interfacing is done with the MQTT driver available today.
So
So vscpd will be a server that handles drivers and interface the higher level world through a tcp/ip and websocket interface. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Another important change that will come is to separate drivers from the software three. This lowers the dependencies to build the vscp tools a lot. Especially now when the dependency on wxwidgets is gone. The goal is to make things very easy to instal and use on devices such as Raspberry Pi and the likes.
So the roadmap for the near future is to implement this. As much of the work is to take a step back it is not expected to be a long runner.
As you all know I have been hospitalized under a long period this year due to an infection I got from a surgery. This is not fully cured and even when it is I have to redo the full operation sequence that started all of this. This mean I will be off for more time, not being able to do any development. But hopefully this will be a shorter time then the current disaster and mess.
I am very excited about all this and is confident that this is the way to go. Please let me now if you have questions or concerns about this.
Cheers
/Ake
