Evohome controlling

[mschut]

Hi,

I am having some issues with the controlling of my Evohome devices. Whats the situation?

I have a evohome system with mulriple valves. Domotocz running on a Pi. HGI80 connected. Somehow, when I connect the HGI80 and con nect to the Evohome I get a Controller "switch" and I am able to contol my heatin g by this device. E.g. setting it to Away, Auto etc. it reacts immidiately. But, after some time, it just stops reacting. Chganging my domoticz switch to Away if it is in Auto, nothing happens.

Furthermore, one of the main reasons to start using Evohome was the ability to connect it wioth Domoticz, and be able to switch it to Away if Domoticz was set to Holiday.Simply said, I want to be able to set my light switches AND my heating on a away option. So I am trying with a swich or a Blocky event to control my Evohome. I did look up the json script. If I configure the json script to set Evohome to Away, and back to auto, and paste this in my browser, it does reacr immidiately. However, using this url in a blocky evcent, or even in a switch, nothing happens.

Is the compatability of Evohome just not reliable enoug, or could I try something to get my connection more stable. Anyone some ideas?

Very much appreciated,

Regards

[DanD]

Hi,

Could you give a few more details? How long after restarting your Pi and Domoticz does your Evohome system stop responding to the commands sent via Domoticz and the HGI80? Does the Domoticz interface still respond OK and you can switch OK between menus (I'm trying to work out if it's just the Evohome part of Domoticz that's the problem or whether the Domoticz service might have crashed)? Are there any error messages in the Domoticz log?

I've not tried using blocky with Evohome so can't help with this, but I find the reliability of monitoring and controlling my Evohome system via Domoticz and a HGI80 to be very good and it seems to run without any problems (you can just set it up and forget about it). I've been contributing to the development of the Evohome code in Domoticz over the last few months so I understand the code and functionality pretty well. I'll have a look at blocky and see if it works OK to control my Evohome system.

PS if you are still running v2.3267 (from your profile), I suggest updating to the most recent stable version as there have been quite a few Evohome fixes and new functionality over the last few months and this might also help.

Dan

[mschut]

Hi Dan,

Thank for the reply. Hearing your experience of a very stable connection between Domoticz and Evohome sounds very promising for me. Good to know, and gives hope to find some issues in my setup. First, no I am not running on v2.3267. I am updating regularly, now on v3.5613. I did notice some new functions, stated to try all over again with the Evohome controlling, but found again that the connection of controlling my Evohome control unit did freeze. And of course I am willing to provide any more detailled information needed, just have to find out what is relevant,m and how to provide.

Some more info. I am running on a Pi (Pi B). I also try to switch to Synology, but having issues with the drivers of the HGI-80. I would prefer Synology, but without the HGI-80 is useless for me.

Also have a RFXCOM trx and a Z-wave+ stick connected.

Besides the issues with Evohome I do not notivce any other interruptions. The system is working as normal, so it is clearky something special with the Evohome HGI-80 connection.
How long after? I cannot say, probably depending on my trials in the way it works. I know is even does stop working if I leave it alone, but sooner or later I want to use it. I would say between a few hours and a few days.
Domoticz interface is working nicely, no issues there.
Error messages. I wpould say there is a message in the log. I justupdates howeverm, when it occurs I will post it. Something with a unknown message or something. Will let you know.

It would be awesome to have it run smoothly and reliable. Now itś not certain that the status in Domoticz and the status of the Evohome itself are the same, which is killing of course.

I must admit I do carry with me a backup of Domoticz quite a while now. If there is a way to perform a really "clean installtion" of the HGI-80 / Evohome, It am willing to perform. I do not mind loosing the history collected, having a stable setup is worth more.

Regards,

Maarten

edit: The error message: WARNING unrecognised message structure - possible corrupt message '000000' (3)

edit2: Tried a bit. Deleted the Evohome device. Restarted, Added id again. It did work like a charm. However, receive loads of errors (evohome: WARNING unrecognised message structure - possible corrupt message). Within a few minutes its niot working anymore, quite quick With not working, I meadn: I cannot change the setting of the controller, i.e. from Auto to Away for example. And just before I want to finish, it does work again. Getting weird. No errors in the log, and the controller mode is wordking again. Euhm.... The outside temp was showing all the time, uin case that would provide any information.... Will leave it for now, and see what tomorrow brings....

[DanD]

Hi Maarten,

Thanks for all the additional info. I've done a little testing on my system this morning and I think I've managed to re-create the problem too. When you hit the problem on your system does the Evohome controller in the Domoticz dashboard show the mode that you've set, but the individual zone temperature devices in the temperature tab show the actual controller mode? It looks like the problem may be due to the HGI80 ignoring the message as its buffer is overloaded, but the code thinks it has successfully sent the command. I'll do some further testing to confirm this and see if I can work out what's causing the buffer overload. Also, it might be a good idea to add to the code a confirmation request from the controller to acknowledge the mode to catch this type of error.

The 'WARNING unrecognised message structure...' are sometime just due to message corruption due to noise around the home and a few are expected. However, I've seen similar problems during my code development and testing where a large stream of these messages are received, sometimes for many hours. I think these are due to too many messages being sent/received by the HGI80 causing a buffer overload, but I not 100% certain.

I'll let you know how I get on with my testing later this week.

Dan

[mschut]

I did some more "passive testing". The connection installed, working. I left it rest for a few days, and tried again (changing Auto to Away through Domoticz. But, no response anymore. So it seems that even without triggering it by using the connection, it ceases to work for me.

[DanD]

Hi,

Thanks for the update. I'm seeing exactly the same problem in my testing, but I've not managed to track down the cause yet. After a while all JSON commands fail to be correctly received by the Evohome controller, but non-JSON control continues to work OK. I'll continue with my testing and see if I can track down the problem.

Dan

[DanD]

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for your reply and picking up on this discussion. I was thinking of sending you a PM to get your thoughts as I don't understand how/where Domoticz code processes JSON requests. I can see where the messages are parsed, but I don't understand how the commands get passed back to the relevant device module e.g. Evohome.cpp.

I gather such timed requests for current state are not done when using the HGI80?

Yes, that's correct. I don't think the Evohome code at all queries the controller before sending any state change requests. The code maintains what it believes is the current state based upon a combination of the last command and any periodic status messages from each device. Specifically for the overall Evohome controller mode (Normal, Off etc) this causes problems as the controller does not send a periodic status message for its mode and the code wrongly assumes that the last command was successful. It's even more messed up as each device maintains this mode state too and if they are set to Off the Domoticz interface prevents override commands from being sent .

Dan

[DanD]

Excellent! Thanks for the pointer, it really helps.

I'll carry on my hunting to track down what's causing the Evohome JSON requests to fail after a few hours.

[DanD]

Good idea about taking at look at dmesg and I'll check this. The strange thing is that the HGI80 serial device is definitely still connected and communicating as it continues to correctly receive and decode all Evohome wireless traffic. It seems to be a problem related to sending messages from the HGI80 as I've detected a similar problem with a sequence of commands which should run every 5mins, but seem to fail after a few hours and I've not managed to fix this yet.

[AlexW]

Hi I'am new here, but I have something like the same issue. I can see all the messages and devices from the evohome system (temperature, etc). Directly after a restart I can control them too, but after some time (minutes until hours) I can't control them anymore.

The individual zones have the status: Heating Off, so I can't enter a new value. The controller can by changes to ECO, or something else but it the evohome doesn't receive that status.

I have a rpi 3, HGI80 with domoticz 3.4834 installed and a evohome (1 B/W) with firmware 23 installed.

Does anyone know how I can solve this issue?

[DanD]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for posting the details of your problem. There's a few of us who seem to be having the same problem with the Evohome commands failing after a few hours. I'm trying to track down the cause in the code, but not having much luck so far. I can't identify any changes in the Evohome code nor Mainworker which might be causing the problem and I'm thinking that the problem must lie somewhere else. However, during my testing I've had so many problems getting back to a stable state that I decided to start again and update to the most recent beta (v3.5641 compiled from source code). The good news is that it's been running for the last 20hours and it's still responding to commands perfectly. So I may end up abandoning my attempt to track down the cause if the latest beta seems to be trouble-free.

Dan

[AlexW]

Hi Dan,

Thank you for your fast response. Yesterday I have installed (completely from scratch) the beta version (v.3641). I have installed the compiled version (so not compiled by myself). Unfortunately I have the same issues as described. Directly after a restart everything is working fine. After some minutes the zones can't control anymore (they have the status: Heating off). The Controller is functioning at that moment (and after using the controller the zones can be controlled for a couple of minutes). But after several time the controller stops functioning (and at that moment I can't control anything anymore).

Within the log of domoticz I see several warnings like this one: evohome: WARNING unrecognised message structure - possible corrupt message '30C9'
and many more.

So maybe is it possible that the problem is in the usb firmware? I have downloaded a version of the ti_3419.fw before the HGI80 was recognitioned. I don't know if it is the most recent one.

I looked into the code, but saw it was all c-code (I'm a java developper), so I don't have a working develoment environment for this code. So if you have something to look at, maybe I can help

Alex.

[DanD]

Hi Alex,

Thanks for trying the latest beta to see if it fixes your problem. Did you install the beta over your previous install by using './updatebeta' or did you install in a new directory? The reason I ask is that I compiled and installed the new beta in a new directory on my PI so I actually changed a few other things which seem to have fixed my problem e.g. I only have the Evohome devices currently set-up in Domoticz. It's been running OK for about 3 days now so I'm hoping that it's fixed my problem. I have no idea what the cause was though. I still get the 'WARNING unrecognised message structure .....' messages, but the Domoticz Evohome controls all work OK.

The drivers for the ti_3419 are a real pain and I can't even remember how I managed to successfully install them on my Pi . I think I managed to grab them from a Debian install package, but I was so frustrated I didn't keep a record of how I achieved it. Note: I haven't made any changes to my ti_3419 driver install since originally installing them about 6 months ago. I also have Domoticz running on Windows 7 & 10 for testing purposes (the ti_3419 driver was a little easier to install under Windows ) and I see the same HGI80 problems with the earlier version of Domoticz. I only have 1 HGI80 so it will be some time until I can test out the latest beta fully under Windows as I want to test it out for at least a week on the Pi.

I'll let you know if I manage to come up with any explanation of what might have fixed the problem.

Dan

[AlexW]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your response. I installed the beta domoticz on a completely new SD-card. So first only raspbian and after that the precompiled domoticz beta, so everything was real new.

I shall try to install the beta by compiling the sources this weekend, maybe that will make any difference (I don't know why, but you will never know).

Alex.

[DanD]

Another update on my Evohome testing.

Unfortunately, my set-up stopped responding to commands yesterday . However, this was after I'd started adding additional hardware devices in Domoticz, specifically Weather Underground (I think I got a little over-confident). It ran for about 4 days without problems and then failed a few hours after I added the Weather Underground devices. I've restarted my testing again with just Evohome devices and I'll see how long it will run for until it stops responding.
Dan

[mschut]

Somehow I don't seem to be able to reconnect to my Evohome anymore. I did a delete of the Evohome hardware in Domoticz, restarted Domoticz, added the Evohome again and looked in the log/devices tab. A few (very few) devices appeared again, definitely not all. Trying to connect my Evohome controller to Domoticz by connecting a internet module does not work. I keep getting a time out in Domoticz.

Having said this, I am glad to see I am not the only one having issues getting the Evohoime setup stable. I am more than willing to test when the time is there to do so, at this moment in the proces I will wait patiently, since I have the feeling that others have more expertise in debugging this issue.

Much thanks in advance!

[DanD]

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at the memory usage and see if there's any indication of a problem. I'm really stumped at the moment as to what's causing just the Evohome send messages to fail while the received messages continue to be correctly decoded. It definitely looks like a problem outside of the Evohome.cpp module and possibly outside of Mainworker too as the debug traces I've added indicate that neither of these processes function as expected once the commands start failing.

Thanks,

Dan

[mschut]

Someone any progress on the subject?

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[DanD]

Hi,

No progress to report yet, sorry. I'm still at the troubleshooting stage, trying to identify which Domoticz process is failing. It takes about 5-7 days on my current system to begin to see the problem. I'll keep on looking.

Dan

[mschut]

No problem, just curious and not patient enough

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