RFXCOM Gateway

Description

This devices allows communication between various RF protocols as supported by RFXCOM devices. Just to name a few: X10 RF, Homeeasy, Oregon Scientific, Harrison curtain rails. I primarily use a few Homeasy dimmers, some Homeeasy buttons and the Harrison curtain rails.

What I do not like about these protocols is that they can be very unreliable. In the future I will be replacing this hardware with more reliable items.

Gateway Hardware

I use an older product from RFXCOM which is a LAN interface which has 2 ports, one for a receiver and one for the transmitter. This immediately poses a problem for the vera device characteristics due to the nature of a luup device having only one communication port. In a luup implementation file events are raised when data arrives. Because of this the read port of RFXCOM is the default port. For any sending that needs to be done a scoket connection is made.

Setup device

Use create device on the developer button. Now select D_RFXCOM.xml and enter the ipaddress of the device. The default configuration uses the 10001 port for reading with the device and the 100002 for writing.

Click create and vera will reset leaving a new RFXCOM device. When a message is received it should show on the device.

Configure Harrison Curtain

This is the first device that I have implemented. Go to the settings page for the RFXCOM device. Each Harrison curtain remote has a number coded in hexadecimal. The codes can be found by opening the remote. You can see 8 dip switches with an up, middle and down position. Each position gives 2 bits, with 8 switches this gives 16 binary numbers, when split up into 4 segments give 4 hex numbers.

Dip switch in down position gives binary code 00, dip switch in upper position gives 11 and in the middle position gives 10. When you look at my remote, the code found is: 00 00, 11 11, 00 10, 10 10. In hex this gives 0F2A.

Enter this code and click add.

You will now have an additional Harrison device which can be opened, closed or stopped mid action.