[HH] Raspberry Pi for home automation

[Tom Metro]

As expected, we're starting to see reports of the Raspberry Pi being
used as a home automation controller. (See messages below.)

One company has even made an RPi-specific Z-Wave interface, the RaZberry:

http://razberry.zwave.me/hardware.php
http://razberry.zwave.me/faq.php
  RaZberry turns your Raspberry Pi platform into full featured Z-Wave
  Home Controller. A little daughter board module is just plugged on the
  GPIO of the Rasberry PI board (not blocking a USB port). The Z-Wave
  software Z-Way comes on top of it.

store:
http://www.zwaveproducts.com/Zwave-Controllers/All-In-One-Zwave-Gateways/Z-Wave-Razberry-Pi-GPIO-Daughter-Card.html

It sells for $70. The above daughter card does free up your USB port, as
it connects via the GPIO connector, and sits on top of the Pi, so makes
for a neater packaged solution. Aside from that, it isn't clear what
advantage it offers over more common USB Z-Wave dongles, which also
reportedly work with the Pi.

The downside is that building your network of devices is probably harder
with this daughter card than with an Aeon Labs Z-Wave Z-Stick USB Dongle
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003MWQ30E/), which can be removed from the
home automation controller and carried to the device you want to add to
the network. (When Z-Wave devices are in learn mode, they have reduced
transmission power for security reasons, and thus require close physical
proximity.)

All of these dongles pretty much use the same Sigma Designs chips and
supplied firmware. The RaZberry's manufacturer claims they've enhanced
the stock firmware to include some new features:
http://razberry.zwave.me/software.php

They don't include a UI layer, but do include a Z-Wave middleware layer,
which turns the Pi into a Z-Wave "Smart Home Gateway" so other home
automation controllers can access the Z-Wave devices connected to the Pi.

I'd more more inclined to use the open source OpenZwave middleware,
which, according to the messages below, supports this device.

(On a side note, the open source Z-Wave community still seems to be
needlessly held back by Sigma Designs locking down their information
under NDAs. I thought maybe by now they would have wised up, and
recognized the benefits of open documentation outweigh the perceived
costs, but apparently not.)

 -Tom

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [openzwave] Re: OpenZWave on Raspberry Pi with a RaZberry
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:00:07 -0700 (PDT)
To: openzwave at googlegroups.com

Marcello Gallucci wrote:
> Cristian Zatonyl wrote:
>> Quick question, is OpenZWave able to control a RaZberry?
>> (http://razberry.zwave.me/hardware.php)
>> or is it only for USB Z-wave sticks?
>
> I'm trying to do that. but with no success. Anybody with experience on
> the topic?

@Marcello,

Are you having any particular problems?

Although I have not done it I can confirm that Razberry is using the
standard ZWave serial protocol and OpenZWave should work just fine. The
trickiest part maybe setting up the COM port. The chip uses a baud rate
of 115200. If you did this
"wget -q -O - http://razberry.z-wave.me/install | sudo bash"
the port will already be setup for you. That script will set the
port up as "/dev/ttyAMA0". You can refer to that script for how to do it
manually if you don't want to install ZWay server.

Not to hijack the conversation but on a related note:

If anyone is interested I have been keeping notes about the things I
have learned about ZWave and Razberry. I've referenced OpenZWave a lot
to understand how certain things work.

Here are the notes:
   - https://github.com/yepher/RaZBerry - The full project
   - https://github.com/yepher/RaZBerry/blob/master/README.md - Razberry
and ZWave overview
   - Sample decode binarySwitchSamples.md, BinaryMotionSensorSamples.md,
OtherSample.md
   - Less thank complete documentation about command
classes: CommandClasses.md

For those of you who more familiar with how ZWave works I would love any
critical feedback about errors in my notes.

I hope that a better set of ZWave documentation can help all of us DIY
folks who are enjoying ZWave and that this is in some small way a
contribution to a great project like OpenZWave.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [openzwave] Raspberry PI version of Control Panel available
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:01:25 -0600
From: Greg Satz
To: OpenZWave <openzwave at googlegroups.com>

A version of the OpenZWave Control Panel for the ARM processor is
available from the Google Code Control Panel web page. This version will
work and has been tested with the RaZberry TTL adapter, an HID interface
and the Aeon Labs Z-stick. It is statically compiled so should work on
any ARM distribution.

Thanks,
Greg