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What is velserver?

Velbus is domotica hardware build by Velleman, a Belgium company. It has no built-in option for communication with the rest of the world. You can buy https://www.velbus.eu/products/view?id=409732, but I find it rather expensive. Luckily the protocol is well documented and publicly available.

So I wrote 'velserver' to monitor the messages on the Velbus bus. I integrated the OpenHAB REST API in my code so changes and updates are forwarded in real time to OpenHAB. I also wrote a small webservice that can be used by OpenHAB or other software to put commands on the bus.

Features and other stuff

How it works

• written in perl
• daemon (logger.pl) that monitors the messages on the bus:
  • all messages are logged in mysql (preferable) or built-in SQLite database (slower)
  • changes are forwarded to openHAB (temperature, buttons, dimmers, relays, counters, ...)
• basic web interface and command line utility line to:
  • scan the bus
  • get status and settings of the connected modules
  • generate OpenHAB items file
  • put current date and time on the bus
• web service
  • used by openHAB (or other software) to poll for the status of channels
  • used by openHAB (or other software) to put commands on the bus to control the module channels
  • this can be implemented as an apache cgi-bin script (preferable) or via a built-in mini webserver

What works / features:

• trigger a scan of all modules on the bus
• discover the modules on the bus caused by a scan
• get the name of the channels and the modules
• get status of relays, temperature sensors, dimmers, shutters, counters
• put date & time on the bus (handy to sync the clock in case of a power failure or daylight saving time changes)
• process all messages on the bus and push the changes to openHAB via REST API
  • TODO: make list of what's pushed to openHAB
• control relays, dimmers, shutters, heater mode and/or desired temperature
• webservice for integration with openHAB or other software
• generate Velbus items file for openHAB
• auto process the Velbus protocol files and extract the needed information

TODO:

• in the list of discovered modules: print a warning for not-supported modules, check the firmware level
• document openHAB graphs and other 'nice to know'
• XML output for webservice (currently only json since this works for openHAB)
• installation script (needed for library include path, mysql initialisation)
• merge information from http://www.docum.org/drupal/content/velbus-software
• improve logging
• improve security by running scripts as a non-root user

Velbus bugs

I found some bugs in the code of Velbus.

• The third part of the name of the second blind channel is not correct, it returns the third part of the name of the first channel. There is a new firmware for this issue.
• Channel names are truncated to 15 characters. There is a new velbuslink software release for this issue.

Requirements: what do I need?

• Linux server (also tested on Windows), can be a cheap PI
• Working Velbus setup
• TCP server for velbus, see https://github.com/StefCoene/velserver/wiki/TCP-server-for-Velbus
• mysql database (optional: you can use built-in SQLite database, but makes the scripts slower)
• apache with perl module (optional: you can use a built-in mini webserver, but that's slower)
• openHAB with the http binding

Install path

The scripts are developed with /home/velbus/velserver as install directory. If you want to place the scripts somewhere else, you need to update these files and change all occurrences of /home/velbus/velserver in the following files:

• bin/commands.pl
• bin/logger.pl
• bin/webserver.pl
• etc/apache-velserver.conf
• www/index.pl
• www/service.pl