Mr Chiu and his team of engineers have developed a prototype of a combined UCM/UHAI module in order to produce a commercial quality solution.
I am very excited to be receiving this module shortly and will start porting the code to run on it.
It will make a tremendous difference to the reliability of the solution, taking advantage of the Comfort PSU and watchdog timers available in the UCM and directly connecting the RPi to the Comfort system.
From the images I have seen, the quality of the prototype is exceptional, and I will share more news with you as we progress.
Following up on this thread, I\'d like to share with you the progress we are making.
We have identified a couple of small hardware issues with the first prototype and are working to resolve them. We have managed to overcome these issues on the prototype with a little creative thinking and I am now working on the software.
As a result of the SD card issues on the RPi solution, we have decided to lock to filesystem to readonly mode. This will mean that installation specific information needs to be stored elsewhere. I have 2 solutions in mind:
1. Store the site specific information on a server which is downloaded to the device at startup. This data will be locked to the device and encrypted using a key generate on the device at first boot. It will however require the UCM to have internet access at all times.
2. Store the site specific information on a separate partition on the device which is only mounted when it is needed to be read or written to. This negates the need for the internet connection for this purpose (although there are other benefits) but does increase the change of the data becoming corrupted if the power is interrupted during this window of read/write.
I\'m also going to use this opportunity to change the backend architecture and ST integration. MQTT will now form the core backbone of interprocess communications allowing modules to be loaded, configured and updated without losing functionality and allowing new modules to be added on demand. Secure MQTT will also be used to send telemetry data and receive updates to our central server (and if 1 were used as above, this is how config data would be sent and received).
SmartThings will now be configured separately to the core comms module (as it may not always be required) and will allow each element to be configured according to its purpose (for example, a zone may be exposed as a PIR or Door to make it clearer in ST).
I plan to make this functionality available in Beta form for those of you wishing to try it on your existing hardware but it will require completely reinstalling both the RPi and ST components as they are going to be completely overhauled - and unfortunately won\'t benefit from some of the UCM specific features such as hardware monitoring.
Finally, as a little teaser, here is a photo of the prototype UCM.
We are still working through some electrical gremlins, but rest assured development is moving forward nicely. I have recently implemented UCMEth emulation so you can programme comfort from this UCM whilst the Pi is running
I have looked at the Pis, but had not previously seen any with an edge connector until looking now.
I was about to buy a pi but will hold off now until this is ready (seems odd that the simpler CM3 is 50% more than the pi3 SBC).
I notice other guinea pigs already in line, but if you want a \'fresh\' one, that hasnt previously used this kit, I can give it a go. I\'ve posted elsewhere what I want to do with it.
just looking at the r-pi module, Would I be correct in thinking that if the info was stored on board would it be through a usb stick? secondly from what I now understand about r-pi the biggest problem seems to be that it requires a constant power source. I think the power source on the comfort runs at 13.8v 1amp which usauly has to power a lot of kit, and obviously the more you add the greater the demand! I think it maybe a case that the transformer used in Comfort will need to be ramped up to cover the power situation and also the r-pi runs at 5V (various ampere ratings, depending) so I presume there is a step down voltage module incorporated or will there be a dedicated connection point to be introduced? or am completly of track here?
