X10, Mochad, USB Wheezy and Jessie and Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04

Just the start of a new post relating to using Mochad on Wheezy and Jessie (and Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04).
 
I have seen posts around relating to many folks updating to Jessie when upgrading or not from the RPi2 to the RPi3 and starting mochad using both systemd and udev when plugging in a USB X10 device.
 
Many folks are running automation today on the RPi and many still utilize X10 stuff.
 
Here I use X10 for my Christmas lighting every year. 

pete_c said:

Just the start of a new post relating to using Mochad on Wheezy and Jessie (and Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04).
 
I have seen posts around relating to many folks updating to Jessie when upgrading or not from the RPi2 to the RPi3 and starting mochad using both systemd and udev when plugging in a USB X10 device.
 
Many folks are running automation today on the RPi and many still utilize X10 stuff.
 
Here I use X10 for my Christmas lighting every year. 

Click to expand...

 
I know nothing! ;-)
 
My preferred method would be udev but I'm not sure it starts up when the system starts up unless you start it with systemd. For some reason Linux doesn't always know that the device is there at reboot. I'll have to try that on one of my Pis. I could use it for the X10 remote (the one thing X10 did right).

Thank you Neil. 
 
The issue seen is that using systemd doesn't alway work. 
 
Here testing Jessie Lite versus Wheezy it appears that Systemd does weigh down the RPi2-3 a bit.
 
Lately too using the RPi's as portable install anywhere mechanism of transport for powerline in general.
 
I have been able to connect a UPB PIM, X10 PIM, Zigbee GPIO card or ZWave GPIO card on one RPi and use it as a hub of sorts.
 
I can stack the GPIO devices if they are not sharing resources. 

pete_c said:

Thank you Neil. 
 
The issue seen is that using systemd doesn't alway work. 

Click to expand...

 
I bet it's the detection problem. I think there's a way to force it but I'll need to look at that. I haven't done it in a while.
 
I'm working to get the development lenv. loaded on a PI. Once I have that loaded I can properly compile things for the Pi. I've never been able to compile the drivers using a cross-compiler. Pehaps I should see if I can find the Pi Docker image and compile there. I did have 
so troubles that as you really need to make sure you've compiled for the right kernel then.
 

pete_c said:

Here testing Jessie Lite versus Wheezy it appears that Systemd does weigh down the RPi2-3 a bit.

Click to expand...

 
Sorry not sure what you mean by 'weigh down'.
 

pete_c said:

Lately too using the RPi's as portable install anywhere mechanism of transport for powerline in general.
 
I have been able to connect a UPB PIM, X10 PIM, Zigbee GPIO card or ZWave GPIO card on one RPi and use it as a hub of sorts.
 
I can stack the GPIO devices if they are not sharing resources. 

Click to expand...

 
Hmm, I've not seen the ZigBee GPIO. If you have all that loaded on a single Pi, make sure your power supply is up to the task.

@Neil,
 
Guessing that it is correct.  BUT I do not have a CM15 USB device here.  (have the rest of the stuff that utilize RS-232)
 
It is being tested in UK with an RPi3-Jessie Lite user there.  It was compiled from your github over there.
 
It works 100% with Wheezy, Ubuntu 14.04, Debian 8 just fine.  It is not always 100% with Jessie, Ubuntu 16.04 or Debian 9.
 
Figured as you are an automation grandfather and involved in Mochad development then standardizing on your build would be best. 
 
Sorry not sure what you mean by 'weigh down'.
 
It is said that the addition of systemd versus upstart utilizes the CPU more. 
 
This is more evident on the RPi2 running Jessie Lite versus the RPi3 running Jessie Lite.
 
Personally seen overall utilization higher here on the RPi2. 
 
The ZigBee GPIO has been out for a while but there wasn't much relating to drivers for it.  There are now drivers and a plugin for Homeseer.
 
It looks almost identical to the ZWave dot me GPIO card.
 
Personally thinking the antenna is bigger and because it sits on the GPIO RPi bus it works better than using a USB port. 
 
Here stacking only a ZWave GPIO card on top of a PiFace RTC shim.  Years now.  Works great. 
 
Beefed up power supplies along with testing on the Pine64 2Gb machine (power sucker) so bulk purchased PS's.

Just got directed here by member pete_c

I'm using Mochad 0.1.17 via a CM15 unit with Homeseer 3 CM15 plugin on a Raspberry 3 using Raspbian Stretch Lite. I was having great difficulty with Mochad locking up and becoming unresponsive. I had created a mochad.service with Systemd. The Udev rules were correct too.

What I did discover which seems to have solved my problem was that an x10 sensor MS13 which I had completely forgotten about was triggering an RF X10 command which was locking up the CM15 unit. I removed the offending MS13 sensor and all appears to be well.

I did read that by using AHP to clear the memory of all macros and clearing the memory's ability to monitor house codes will prevent all this. As it stands all x10 commands are purely PLC but I would like the ability to use x10 RF remotes.

Could anyone confirm that this is the case

petera said:

Just got directed here by member pete_c

I'm using Mochad 0.1.17 via a CM15 unit with Homeseer 3 CM15 plugin on a Raspberry 3 using Raspbian Stretch Lite. I was having great difficulty with Mochad locking up and becoming unresponsive. I had created a mochad.service with Systemd. The Udev rules were correct too.

What I did discover which seems to have solved my problem was that an x10 sensor MS13 which I had completely forgotten about was triggering an RF X10 command which was locking up the CM15 unit. I removed the offending MS13 sensor and all appears to be well.

I did read that by using AHP to clear the memory of all macros and clearing the memory's ability to monitor house codes will prevent all this. As it stands all x10 commands are purely PLC but I would like the ability to use x10 RF remotes.

Could anyone confirm that this is the case

Click to expand...

 
I'll check this, I don't have much in the way of X10 but I do have a few Wireless devices.. I just don't know when I'll get to it.
 
This might explain the issues I see from time to time where I can connect to mochad and I get no response. I still think that mochad is losing it's mind also which might be a different problem.
 
So it sounds like there might be at least 3 issues. Systemd, Cm15A locking (I'm betting stuck state) and mochad losing it's mind. BTW, I'm probably running something a bit later. Code (1.18) with my mods.

There is a 0.1.18 on the Github which supports ipv6 tables. I'm assuming that is you.Not sure what use I could find for this. What mods did you make with it.

I'm happy enough to stick with x10 for the moment. Plenty of devices here that work nicely with it in Linux thanks to Mochad. I could use the CM11 and Heyu but I want to get PLC and RF working together and still working on how to make this work with CM15.

Hi guys
 
Pete recommended me to this thread and to test mochad 0.1.18 on my new machine build and HomeSeer install. This after I had problems with the stock HS CM15A plugin not working. The hope is that the latest mochad build can be advocated as an update for the HS CM15/11 plugin.
 
Some background.

• I had a HomeTroller SEL that ran the stock CM15A plugin for about a year without any problems. But I wanted to upgrade Linux and Mono to 64bit.
• So I built a new Intel NUC 7i5bnh with 64 bit Ubuntu 16.0.3 and Mono 5.4.1.6. I also wiped and upgraded the HomeTroller SEL to Ubuntu 16.0.3 and Mono 5.4.1.6 for a backup. 
• Installed HomeSeer beta 3.0.0.387 on both machines.
• Installed the stock HomeSeer X10 (CM15A) 3.0.0.5 plugin from the plugin manager and immediately ran into problems. Mochad would not load!

After lots of pointers from Pete, thanks Pete, I installed a version of mochad using the command line method that turned out to be 0.1.16 which worked fine. That is when Pete asked me to test the later version by Neil, 0.1.18, which is what I am doing now.
 
I've just installed 0.1.18 and it seems to be running fine. Hotplugging seems to work fine as well, ie unplugging the CM15 module and plugging it back in. 
 
I'll report back in a week or so on my experience.
 
I have a mix of 9 legacy X10 and PLC-Bus (using a PLC-Bus 4808 transfer interface) micro-switch modules in my HS system that are intensively used via 24/7 scheduled events. Just a note, I don't have any X10 motion sensors and I don't use IPv6, so I won't be able to verify that functionality.
 
Cheers
Andrew

Welcome to the Cocoontech forum Andrew!

Thanks for welcome Pete.

It's been 2 weeks now on 0.1.18 and it's been perfect. Absolutely no issues. Well, darn, that is boring 
 
Over to you Pete.
 

abwyatt said:

Hi guys
 
Pete recommended me to this thread and to test mochad 0.1.18 on my new machine build and HomeSeer install. This after I had problems with the stock HS CM15A plugin not working. The hope is that the latest mochad build can be advocated as an update for the HS CM15/11 plugin.
 
Some background.

• I had a HomeTroller SEL that ran the stock CM15A plugin for about a year without any problems. But I wanted to upgrade Linux and Mono to 64bit.
• So I built a new Intel NUC 7i5bnh with 64 bit Ubuntu 16.0.3 and Mono 5.4.1.6. I also wiped and upgraded the HomeTroller SEL to Ubuntu 16.0.3 and Mono 5.4.1.6 for a backup. 
• Installed HomeSeer beta 3.0.0.387 on both machines.
• Installed the stock HomeSeer X10 (CM15A) 3.0.0.5 plugin from the plugin manager and immediately ran into problems. Mochad would not load!

After lots of pointers from Pete, thanks Pete, I installed a version of mochad using the command line method that turned out to be 0.1.16 which worked fine. That is when Pete asked me to test the later version by Neil, 0.1.18, which is what I am doing now.
 
I've just installed 0.1.18 and it seems to be running fine. Hotplugging seems to work fine as well, ie unplugging the CM15 module and plugging it back in. 
 
I'll report back in a week or so on my experience.
 
I have a mix of 9 legacy X10 and PLC-Bus (using a PLC-Bus 4808 transfer interface) micro-switch modules in my HS system that are intensively used via 24/7 scheduled events. Just a note, I don't have any X10 motion sensors and I don't use IPv6, so I won't be able to verify that functionality.
 
Cheers
Andrew

Click to expand...

Next a request to incorporate Mochad V.0.1.18 in the stock Linux build of HS3 with Neil's Mark's and Rich's permission.
 
@Neil can we please utilize your version of Mochad for use with Homeseer 3?

pete_c said:

Next a request to incorporate Mochad V.0.1.18 in the stock Linux build of HS3 with Neil's Mark's and Rich's permission.
 
@Neil can we please utilize your version of Mochad for use with Homeseer 3?

Click to expand...

 
Pete, it's under GPLv3. So it can be used by HomeSeer as long as they abide by the rules. Since it's a separate unix process (a daemon) it's not tied to their code. I think (reminder, not a lawyer) they just need to point to my repos:
 
https://github.com/linuxha/mochad
 
If Homeseer makes any changes they should feed that back to me or fork the repos.
 
BTW, what changes did Rich make? I can see if I can incorporate them.

Thank you Neil.
 
No changes were done to the core Homeseer 3 relating to using Mochad.
 
Original X10 plugin was a quick port over from legacy Homeseer 2 plugin.  Mark (mentioned above) rewrote the plugin and it is now working better than it did in the HS2 days.  (IE: last X10 plugin for HS2 while it worked had issues which you could see using a serial sniffer).
 
Only changes that I see here (well and I do not have a CM15A) is relative to Debian (IE: Wheezy to Jessie to Stretch and Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04).
 
Your Mochad version is 6 years old and the one utilized by Homeseer 3 is probably around 10 or more years old.