Re: Re: HouseHeat

["Martyn Wendon" <martynwendon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, I didn't receive much help from the guys at HouseHeat either when
enquiring about a Windows SDK, understandable I guess since they want to
sell their own software for it.

There's another web site at http://fhz4linux.info/tiki-index.php
where a lot
of work has been done on reverse engineering the protocol and offering ways
to get the hardware working over a standard USB Virtual Comm port.

I think I may have got lucky though as the Windows software that came with
mine had all the device driver files available so I could install it
without
the software.  Initially it installs as a USB device, so I thought I was
going to have to jump through hoops as per the above web site to get it
working, but on the device driver properties page I spotted a little tick
box "load VSP" which when ticked loads a virtual serial port and
allows the
device to be talked to over RS232.

FHEM was pretty easy to setup and get running, although it's written in
perl
which may have drawbacks for some people I guess.

My xAP gateway is also written in perl and so far I've got it representing
all the available settings / measurements from FHEM as BSC endpoints
sending
..info messages at startup and every 5 minutes and .event messages as
things
change and get reported from FHEM.  .cmd and .query will be next on the
list
of things to do, once I've got those up and running people are welcome to
it!

The "PC Control Kit" as HouseHeat name it, is a bit pricey at
¢G190ish, but
that does include a thermostat control and radiator actuator which are
usual
¢G75ish as a pair I think, so that makes it about ¢G115 for the
interface.

I did spot though that each thermostat control can control up to 8 radiator
actuators and you can send commands via FHEM to manually control each one
as
a percentage "open".  Therefore in theory if you already have
temperature
measurement in rooms via another method, then with the PC Connect Kit and 7
actuators at ¢G40ish each you can effectively control 8 radiators for
an
outlay of less than ¢G500, which I think makes it reasonably cost
effective?

The RF side of things is also pretty impressive since I have my controller
in node zero, which is in an enclosed rack in the garage so the signal has
to come through a full thickness external wall to talk to the thermostat
controls in the house!


Cheers,

Martyn

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Hawkins" <yahoogroupskh@xxxxxxx>
To: <xap_automation@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:22 AM
Subject: [xap_automation] Re: HouseHeat


> Interesting Martyn - keep us posted..
>
> I am going to get a couple of HouseHeat parts just to play I think ,
> although at the moment I'm dithering between HouseHeat and Hometronic
for
> my system.
>
> I was in a brief dialog with someone at HouseHeat but a lot of the
replies
> were 'I'll get back to you / that information isn't available' so it's
> good to know you're making progress.  The main one I was trying to
> ascertain the differences in the various USB interfaces, have you any
info
> on this ?
>
> A xAP connector would be great, and help people integrate HouseHeat
with
> most of the leading HA software applications.  Once I get my parts
I'll be
> happy to be a beta tester, or offer any help that I can...
>
>  Cheers Kevin
>
> --- In xap_automation@xxxxxxx, "Martyn Wendon"
<martynwendon@...>
> wrote:
>>
>> Did anybody here end up trying out any HouseHeat products
>> (http://www.house-intelligence.co.uk/)?
>>
>> A couple of months back I got a single Thermostat Control and Rad
>> Actuator
>> and was pretty impressed with it.
>>
>> I'm now up to 4 Thermostat Controls / Rad Actuators and have just
>> received
>> the PC Connect hardware (FHZ1300PC) which allows control from a
PC.
>>
>> The supplied software is pretty cr*p so I've been investigating
>> alternatives, which are pretty thin on the ground.  There's a DLL
>> available
>> for developing your own but it relies on the original software
being
>> installed which the DLL then "controls" via Windows API
calls.....pretty
>> cr*p too!!
>>
>>
>> Happily though I've discovered http://www.koeniglich.de/fhem/fhem.html
>> which
>> I've managed to get working with the hardware.  FHEM is a pretty
basic
>> piece
>> of HA software, but it seems to work very well with the FHZ
hardware and
>> allows full control / event reporting of the Thermostat Controls,
not to
>> mention many other bits of kit that use the FHZ protocol.
>>
>> There's a TCP/IP interface available to FHEM so I'm going to code
up a
>> xAP
>> or xPL gateway to it, which should open the HouseHeat stuff being
>> controllable from a whole host of other software.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Martyn
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>




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