Insteon 2448A7 + RaspberryPi + ISY994?

[doctorjerry]

I'll be attempting to build this. I have a PowerLinc V2 USB #2424U plm that I think came with

my first ISY 99i. Do you think this will work like a 2413U the presently available USB PLM?

 

Jerome

[lilyoyo1]

9 minutes ago, doctorjerry said:

I'll be attempting to build this. I have a PowerLinc V2 USB #2424U plm that I think came with

my first ISY 99i. Do you think this will work like a 2413U the presently available USB PLM?

 

Jerome

2424u or 2414u? The 2414u will not work as it is a controller itself.

[Brian H]

The ISY99i and ISY994i both use the serial port 2412S or 2413S PLMs.

The 2414S,2414U and 2814U are all PLC modules and not a PLM. Completely different device and would not work.

A 2413U was mentioned as working in the project. The older 2412U may work also. Though depending on it revision. May have the smaller 417 Link Database.

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, Brian H said:

The ISY99i and ISY994i both use the serial port 2412S or 2413S PLMs.

The 2414S,2414U and 2814U are all PLC modules and not a PLM. Completely different device and would not work.

A 2413U was mentioned as working in the project. The older 2412U may work also. Though depending on it revision. May have the smaller 417 Link Database.

Is there a way to tell how big the link database is inside any PLM?

[Brian H]

I have not seen any easy way to find the Link Database size.  Other than observing what my assortment of PLMs had inside and what Smarthome sales said when the 2412 went from 477 to 2016.

My 2412S Revision 2.75 Firmware 63 was my last 417. Revision 2.9 Firmware 72 was changed to 2016.  One thing I do remember is the larger Link Database memory. Was too slow the use the whole 2016. I had seen >800 starting missing things.

All the 2413S PLMs are 1023 with a faster memory.

Missed the most obvious thing.  Pop the top cover and read the part number on the chip. 2412S 24LC32 was the 417. 24LC128 was the ~2000. I did have a old 2412S with the 2414S serial board in it.  24LC256, RTC Chip and its coin cell battery backup. Though RTC and most of the memory was not available.  2413S 24FC64.

[Kevin Connolly]

I am very interested in this project. Anything new since July?

I "think" you used a pi zero due to it's size. Would a pi4 work as well?

[MrWorf]

Been using a Pi zero because it's cheap It works with pretty much anything that can run linux and python. So any Raspberry Pi would work.

I know a number of people have had success with this and my ISY994+RPiZ hybrid has been chugging along very nicely since my last post.

Only thing really remaining is if there's any interest in a dedicated SDCard image to simplify setup? It's quite an undertaking but can be done if there's enough interest. It would be tailored to be minimal and would most likely have little to no network support since it's not really needed.

[Kevin Connolly]

Yeah, I'm pretty cheap too! Ha.

I have a Pi dedicated to Polyglot. I was thinking of dual purposing that as both Polyglot and PLM.

I have my Pi's in a 3D printed enclosure that's my server farm. 3Pi's on two bitscope blades. Power supply and ethernet switch onboard. The blades are an uno and a duo so I have a spot for a hat. I also have a little spare room upstairs, as we say, on the blade side. Hmmmmm....You have me thinking!

[MrWorf]

Very nice setup! Me likey!

[Kevin Connolly]

Thanks! I had a little time on my hands when we went into lock down last year and my son-in-law has a 3d printer. Spent a little time in freecad, a little specing of 5 port switches, power supplies, and the blades (which can take a range of voltages!) and wala! 

[Kevin Connolly]

One last question....Will this procedure work with a 2413U?

 

[hart2hart]

One last question....Will this procedure work with a 2413U?
 

Yes. I tested with it and there is a post with images.

[Kevin Connolly]

Do you have the link to that post?

[hart2hart]

Do you have the link to that post?

Insteon 2448A7 + RaspberryPi + ISY994?
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink/topic?share_fid=23986&share_tid=32546&share_pid=315419&url=https://forum.universal-devices.com/index.php?/topic/32546-Insteon-2448A7-%2B-RaspberryPi-%2B-ISY994%3F/page__view__findpost__p__315419&share_type=t&link_source=app



It’s post 40 in this thread.

[Kevin Connolly]

Well that’s embarrassing…

Does the Witmotion 6 in 1 work reasonably well? The board you guys ended up using doesn’t look like it’s available anymore on Amazon.

I noticed @MrWorf used that in his initial testing.

 

[Kevin Connolly]

Since I’ll be dual purposing a Pi4 with this build…how did/does the cpu overhead on the zero look while it’s running?

[MrWorf]

Zero. It uses signaling to detect data from either serial port at which point it will fetch available data and transmit. Most of the time it's spent in waiting mode. The Insteon network isn't very chatty so amount of data is minimal, the highest load would be on boot since the ISY994 will query the insteon network, but even then the datarate is super low (in comparison to for example wifi).

[Kevin Connolly]

Excellent!

I ordered a Witmotion 6 in 1 and the RJ45 adapter. Can’t wait to put this bad boy together. 
thanks for all the work you put into it!

 

[jlv]

I'm going to head into to building one of these, then build a couple more if it works well.  I'll be building a Pi Zero W to 2413U as I think that will be the easiest for others.  Will probably do a solder and non-solder version, but leave the "use ISY power instead of wallwart" to those who want to read this thread.

I plan to add to the instructions so we have a single page with links to products, etc. so that anyone can build by just going to that page. The idea would be a specific recipe with software ready.  You buy these parts, build this way, install this software, run these tests, etc.  I"m considering doing the image/config work as well (for Pi Zero W) and detailed build instructions for other pi's.  It appears we'll need a custom kernel for fast boot. I haven't played with Pi OS before but it doesn't look hard to figure out.  if anyone has already done the image work or install/config beyond the install.sh mentioned in the thread, please let me know.

In terms of contributing content, should I use the github project? Any other pointers so I don't duplicate work would be helpful.  I'll report back (it may take me a while to get to it).

[Kevin Connolly]

Ok this may be a really goofy question (I'm sometimes prone to those) but...

Would it be possible to take your generic Pi and do the signal throughput within the Pi itself? (ie. connect Port A of the isy to the ethernet connection, and do some python or other magic inside the Pi to switch to wifi LAN and output the signal on the ethernet port to the usb connection)

[gdb]

Ok this may be a really goofy question (I'm sometimes prone to those) but...
Would it be possible to take your generic Pi and do the signal throughput within the Pi itself? (ie. connect Port A of the isy to the ethernet connection, and do some python or other magic inside the Pi to switch to wifi LAN and output the signal on the ethernet port to the usb connection)

Hi Kevin,

The port that looks like Ethernet on the Serial PLM (and ISY) isn’t really Ethernet, it is serial, and the RF component of the Insteon protocol isn’t WiFi, it is actually in the 915Mhz unlicensed spectrum. There is also the signaling on the house wiring that the PLM performs, which is in addition to the radio signaling that may be important to some due to devices they have, or for reliability/redundancy. Neither of these signaling methods exist in an off the shelf Pi.

For those that like technical gore:

https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Terminology/Insteon-RF-and-Powerline-Protocol-basics.html

Which is a summary of a technical document from Insteon.


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[Kevin Connolly]

Glad I lead with...this may be a really goofy question. I'm obviously not an EE. Ha

[gdb]

Glad I lead with...this may be a really goofy question. I'm obviously not an EE. Ha

No worries, I am not an EE either, and a lot of what I know on many subjects came from the patient explanations of those who knew more than me. I just wanted to give you a better answer than: “It won’t work”. Have a great day!


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[apostolakisl]

On 7/27/2021 at 11:10 PM, MrWorf said:

Uhm... so... I couldn't help myself...

 Yupp, it fits ... What you're seeing here is the first ISY994i with built-in Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless being powered by the ISY itself.

Turned out that the first pin on the top right provides 5V, followed by 3.3V followed by GND, as can be seen here

 The tricky thing was making sure that the serial bridge was started fast enough when coldbooting the RPi.

Goal is to update the README.md with instructions for doing this, since it's crucial for the ISY to be able to find the PLM. If it's too slow to start the bridge, the ISY will just assume nothing is connected.

If you can't wait, the following resource should get you started on the right path http://himeshp.blogspot.com/2018/08/fast-boot-with-raspberry-pi.html. I'm pretty sure disabling network would further improve speed, but I like that I can SSH into my RPiZW

 

Very nice work.  Wondering, is there not somewhere that you can tap into the rs232 terminals on the ISY board instead of doing the U-Turn Cat6?  Also you are tapping into that header.  Does this not interfere if there is a z-wave board?

 

EDIT: Trying to look at photos to figure out.  The z-wave board goes into the bottom row of sockets and it looks like you tapped into the top row.  Are the top row and bottom row sharing the same electrical contacts?  I don't see enough pins soldered into the board for the top row and bottom row to be different and obviously the top row isn't just empty since you are using them.

 

EDIT AGAIN:  I also have to wonder if there isn't somewhere you can tap directly into ISY UART and avoid the RS232 entirely.

[MrWorf]

I tapped in the top ones because it was easier to access. But if I would guess, I'd say both top and bottom are the same and they just used a dual connector for physical stability, however I never confirmed this so YMMV.

By putting the RPi inside the case, I use all the space which would normally have been used by the Zigbee/Zwave card so running both would be tricky, also don't know about the power envelope, running RPiZ and an expansion card might cause issues, but I don't know. I use HomeAssistant for Zwave anyway so it's not an issue for me.

I briefly considered tapping into the RS232 internally but I decided against it since I didn't want to make any physical modifications to my ISY. This way I can easily replace the board should I need to.

I'd caution against tapping into the ISY UART directly since I do believe there might some issues with voltage drops or similar since you'd still have an RS232 converter sitting at the end of the UART which could cause issues.