Insteon SDM and Linux/Wine

[roussell]

I'm away from home so I can't test this fully, but you know how you're bored sometimes and you just start thinking "What if?"

I downloaded the Smarthome SDM and ran it under Wine on my Ubuntu 6.06 Linux laptop just a few minutes ago. I was amazed to see that is not only loaded but the web server portion seems to be working just fine. I opened up Firefox and pointed it to http://localhost:9020?help and the SDM responded with the help screen, I can query the sdm and recieve responses just like I can on my windows box. As I said earlier, I'm away from home and disconneced from the PLC so I can't test everything but from what I see, it looks like it just may work...

Has anyone tried this before? I'm trying not to get my hopes up too early, but if this works I'm gonna be runnin' through the streets screaming like a school girl.

Terry

 

[pschneider]

Any updates on whether you were able to use SDM on Ubuntu successfully?
I have attempted to run SDM3, v188 on Ubuntu 6.06 under Wine. The Device Manager panel displays, but when I issue commands, I receive a Write access error from SDM3.
I would love to migrate my Insteon control to Linux.

 

[DavidL]

A MainLobby customer said he got Cinemar's MLServer running on LInux using Wine. No mention of reliability or performance metrics though.

 

[KenM]

I tried it (SDM 235) with PC Linux on a dual boot Win/Linux setup and could not get the SDM to start up. No real surprise. I'm not real familiar with Wine so maybe I did something wrong. Most of my other simple Win32 programs do well.

Ken

 

[roussell]

Sorry, work and home have really gotten in the way of my hobby lately. I haven't gotten a chance to actually try it with a serial controller connected yet but I still am able to send commands to the SDM and get a response. If I have a break-out box connected to the serial port I also see activity accociated with the command so I'm hopeful that it will work with the serial controller. I'm not sure about the USB controller though as I've never had too much luck with USB devices and wine/Linux. Sadly, it's the USB controller that I have so I'll need to order a serial version to do any further testing.

As far as my Wine install, it's pertty basic. Ubuntu Daper Drake install, followed by an "apt-get install wine". I have copied several dlls from a real windows install (2k3 server in my case) to the system folder of the Wine C drive and copied all of the fonts over too, but that's pretty much it. The only other thing is that I'm running all of this as root and not a normal user, not sure if that has anything to do with it or not...

When I launch the SDM, the systray icon appears in a window on my desktop but other than that seems to function normally. I'm heading out of country in the morning, but I'll try to get a serial controller ordered and maybe try it on a clean Ubuntu install when I return.

Terry

Edit: Mostly unrelated but interesting - I have also gotten the Housebot client (swremote.exe) to successfully run under Ubuntu/wine. It seems to have full functionality. I also tried the Mainlobby3 client but am unsuccessful so far...

 

[roussell]

A late update to anyone interested:

I can successfully install and run the SDM from Linux in a Wine session with seemingly perfect control of my Insteon devices. A screen-shot is attached - it shows the SDM running with a few commands in the window. The install is pretty basic and took about 30-40 minutes from a "bare metal" start. I can post more specific details if anyone is interested but the basic steps I took are as follows:

Hardware: This was preformed on a mini-ITX PC (PIII 833 128Mb RAM) with an Insteon serial controller on com1

1. Download Ubuntu 6.10 server
2. Perform a basic install on (LAMP server option) PC
3. Update system (enable 'universe repositories' in /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get update & apt-get upgrade)
4. Install TightVNC (apt-get install tightvnc)
5. Install a window manager (I chose blackbox - apt-get install blackbox - but any will do)
6. Install Wine (apt-get install wine)
7. Launch vnc (vncserver :1 -depth 16 -geometry 800x600)
8. Download the latest SDM (wget http://www.jltsoft.com/SetupSmarthomeDeviceManager3-308.exe /yourdownload directory) or elsewhere if you have an alternate link

Now, connect to your vnc session (serveraddress:1) from another box, you may have to manually start your window manager if it's not running) and install the SDM by typing 'wine /pathtoexe' (no quotes) and follow the instructions as with any other windows install. when finished - cd to the directory (mine was /root/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/Smarthome/Device Manager) and run the sdm by typing 'wine ./SDM3.exe'. After that you can search for the PLC - it should find it on COM1 (if that's where you put it) and you should be able to initiate an "isresponding from a browser to the SDMs webserver to get the PLC talking. After that you can issue a help querystring to see what commands and responses are available (http://serveraddress:9020/index.txt?help)

Obviously, there are many improvements to be made, this was done as a proof-of-concept and to see just if it would in fact work and how hard it would be to make it happen. I'm going to experiment further and refine the process so that vncserver automatically launches the SDM when it starts. If there is any interest, I'll post results here and to the Misterhouse board.

Terry