TellStick Duo

[Mastiff]

Quick question: I want to use the Tellstick Duo not only for action, but also for events from my switches (mostly Nexa self-learning AC). I thought that would be possible with "device events". But so far I have only been able to do that with raw messages, and they are kind of crude. Seem to read more than there is as well. Here's the raw output from pressing a single switch once:

Code: Select all

14:49:24   TellStickDuo.RawEvent: class:command;protocol:arctech;model:selflearning;house:7375470;unit:11;group:0;method:turnoff;Duo_ID:3
14:49:24   TellStickDuo.RawEvent: class:command;protocol:sartano;model:codeswitch;code:1010111000;method:turnon;Duo_ID:3
14:49:24   TellStickDuo.RawEvent: class:command;protocol:everflourish;model:selflearning;house:2214;unit:4;method:learn;Duo_ID:3

Is there another way to get events from the switches then with raw? I can't seem to find one, but maybe I'm just dumb again... I thnink I'm a Kinder egg (dark on the outside, blonde on the inside...), as my 17 year old daughter so eloquently states it!

[krambriw]

For device events to appear in EG you have to have the devices defined in Telldus Center. Otherwise you only get raw. I created raw mainly for debugging purposes...

[Mastiff]

That's probably where I get stuck. I can of coruse learn a switch in TC, but from there I can only use it to turn on or off something. When I press the physical switch I do not see it in EG's logger. Shouldn't I see it there when I have "Check to log device events" turned on? Because I don't. And it's not the range, because I see the raw events for the same switch.

[krambriw]

If you have wall switches and remotes, that is unfortunately how the TC works and it gets confusing because it does not separate between transmitters and receivers, they all look like lamps in TC.

But did you not have a RFXtrx also? That one handles those events much easier, no need to learn anything.

[Mastiff]

Weird. So how do they actually utilize that thing to something useful? I mean, shouldn't it be possible to make it say "when this button A is pressed, you should send the signal B"? Or isn't that possible with Telldus? If not I guess I can use the raw format, just need to find out which one of the signals I should go for. But I don't see the signals in the logger except for raw format, when I press the button I see nothing at all.

And the reason, my wise friend in the East (very fitting in these pre-Christmas times!), are twofold: range and redundancy. First range: With my RFX I have a problem with AC switches. I have no idea why, but in a cabin where a distance of 10 meters and wooden walls is the maximum I can't get all my AC switches in more reliably than around 7 of 10 when they are more than 5-6 meters and two wooden walls away (even with a rather large, extra antenna), so I need two receivers. One in the living room (on an TP-Link USB/print server) and the RFX in the technical room/storage room (tecnical because I have a full size server tower with pc's and amps for the all cabin sound system). The strange thing is that the Viking sensors I can get from twice that distance without any problems. But I'm wondering if the reason is that when the AC switch sends at the sam time as one of the around 10 temp sensors (one for each room plus the fridge and freezer and two outdoors to make sure I have signal for controlling the power to the heater wire in the water line) it drowns out the AC switch signal for the rfx. That doesn't happen for the Tellstick for some reason.

And redundancy: Since I have seen the RFX fall out maybe once every third month or so I want a solution that uses different hardware with different drivers. Redundancy is the key word. I'm actually considering using two virtual machines on my server, one for the Tellstick and one for the RFX, so they are even more redundant. Then of course I really should use two separete physical VM hosts, but that's going a bit far, even for me... In the soon to be one year that I've been running one full server motherboard at home and one at the cabin (Asus P9D WS motherboard, 32 gig EEC RAM and Intel Xeon E3-1230v3) I haven't had one single crash, even when the power has gone out for a longer time than the UPS can manage. And I want as close to 100 % reliability as possible because my wife and parents are the world's most ruthless beta testers. I call my wife "the Bermuda triangle of electronics". If something can be broken, it will break when she's using it!

[leothlon]

i'f your having such problems with rfxtrx and tellstick even with a extra antenna (conrad.com has one alot of people recommend called "Antenn Aurel GP 433") then you might want to take a look at Z-wave, as each AC switch will work as an repeater so distance shouldn't be to much of a problem.

as for wich raw event to use, if your using nexa wallswitch you should go for the one with "protocol:arctech" if i'm not mistaken.

Also you can teach tellstick a new device, press the wallswitch then use tellstick to teach the AC switch, by doing this you should get "real" events rather than the raw ones. and you should be able to controll the AC switch from both wallswitch and tellstick.

If for example you want to just react to a wallswitch and do other things from EG (start computer or play/pause movie or whatever) i solved simmular things by adding a "fake" device in telldus center, basicly i added a new device, named it "tv" then teached it the signal. then you'll get event in EG for that device and you can then turn it on / off from there...
Sure this might lead to telldus center getting abit crowded with devices and alot of fake ones but atleast it works right ?

[Mastiff]

Leothlon, I considered it, but found it a bit too expensive. I would be up to around 3000 Euro to replace it all. Of course I could do only the wall switches and a receiver, but it's still rather expensive, and I still need the RFX as well for the temp sensors. As for that Conrad antenna I actually have better results with two others. One large rubber whip:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261526002005?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

And one made for DAB:

https://www.beststuff.co.uk/store/visio ... aerial.htm

Both work better than the Conrad one, both in my home setup and here at the cabin.

And thank you very much, I think I finally started to grasp the Telldus Center bullsh1t! So I created a fake event (a KingPin, which I don't have) and I see that in the EG logger when I fire it. But when I click "learn" in Telldus Center and then press the button, there isn't anything learnd. Is there something I haven't done yet?

[Mastiff]

I have no idea what I changed, but suddenly I see the button signals! So all is well that ends well...if this is the end.

[Mastiff]

And I have no idea what changed the opposite way! Now that I'm back in the cabin again it's not working again. I only see the switches in raw mode. So to save me a lot of pain, I'm gonna ask you if you please could make one change with this plug-in: Would it be possible to have an extra setting in the plug-in setup somewhat like "Log only defined raw events"? Then I could activate the current raw event setting, find the event I need and put that in a macro, which in turn would make the plug-in log the event whenever it's fired. That way I will have function in the switches I choose (and probably everything else I can think of that's possible to use through the Tellstick Duo), but avoid having the log window flooded with what's sent from the RFXtrx. It would also (I believe, but I may be wrong) make Telldus center unnecessary to use.

[krambriw]

All events (device, sensor, raw, change...) you can see from Telldus Duo plugin is coming through the Telldus Center, I have no direct communication with the device.

"Log only defined raw events"

This would require some substantial re-work of the plugin and for what benefit? Unless other users report similar problems, you are the only one so most likely there is something in your setup. Or a bug in Telldus stuff. First thing if something is not working ok with the Telldus software, better report the problem to Telldus. I assume you are already using the latest Telldus Center and FW? I do not like the idea to compensate for shortcomings by modyfying the plugin as long as product support is still provided.

An alternative to Telldus Center that might be a good choice could be to use another software package that is communicating directly with the device. It is OpenNetHome and you can run it in Windows or in Linux (like in a Raspberry Pi) and have a communication with EG using MQTT. The author of OpenNetHome has skipped the Telldus Center and OpenNetHome includes a direct driver. "How To" is described here:http://forum.opennethome.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20#p94

The description is assuming you will use an RPi but it will also work with Windows as you will see reading the thread (I have it myself running with a TelldusDuo in a RPi since almost a year back and it is never failing)

BR

[Mastiff]

I had misunderstood a bit. I thought the raw was taken directly from the device, and that only the "friendly" events were taken from the Telldus Center. I have what should be the lastest version and firmware (installed the thing in December), so I think my problems may be a bug in the system somewhere, because I see the button pushes every single time in raw messages.

That alternative looked a lot more interesting, I'm guessing that what works for Heggholmen could work for me. Thanks! If it's stable, I guess already running Girder and EventGhost one program more or less shouldn't be much of a step.

[krambriw]

I had misunderstood a bit

It was not so obvious, I can understand

Yes, if you try to run OpenNetHome under Windows in the same box you can just add the MQTT mosquitto message broker if you do not have it already and OpenNetHome (is a java app so it might be you need to install java as well). Then the rest is just the python script that you can run inside EG and events will start popping in

[Mastiff]

Doesn't sound too intimitading, then! I'm back here in two weeks, so I think I may try that then, since I have too much to do today and tomorrow, before I leave. I can of course control stuff from home over VNC, the problem is a low up speed that doesn't really work well with my impatience!

[krambriw]

Also interesting to know: if you are running OpenNetHomeServer directly driving the TellStickDuo, you get a device that is performing as expected. It becomes fast and responds many times better than if you use Telldus Center (TC) as the middle layer. Obviously NetHome takes the role of being the middle man but for some reason, it is much faster than TC (my opinion).

I just made a renewed test today: downloaded and installed the latest nightly build into a raspberry pi, plugged in the TellStickDuo and there you go, it is running. Next I configured one of my lamps (Nexa on/off learning device). I rapidly clicked on the available 'toggle' command...and the lamp started to flash on/off toggling approximately once every second. If I remember correctly, besides that you cannot change the state of the lamp that fast, this is not possible with the original TC since it doesn't have a queue for multiple commands.

If you still have the device connected to your Windows PC running TC, you can try this out and compare with the difference once/if you migrate to NetHome (In this case, I think you have to uninstall TC to avoid conflicts)

BR

[Mastiff]

Thanks for the tip! Yeah, next time I'm down there (probably the weekend after next) I will se if I have time to experiment a bit with that NetHome stuff on the same computer. I have the Telldus on an USB server, but there's no problems with stability of that. The problem is in TS, I'm pretty sure. All temp sensors come through, it's the switches that are less stable. I think it may be something with transmission strength, because the RFXtrx has problems with those AC switches from Nexa as well.