RF12Input

Change log:
- 2013-07-23 v0.1.2 - Added missing UDP Listener.

Overview

RF12Input is installed by loading the RF12Input briq from the HouseMon admin screen. Version 0.1.0 has no additional configuration within the Admin panel.

RF12Input is an implementation of an RF12Registry service. In installs four simple input handlers to allow you to send information into HouseMon to be processed by the RF12Registry and ultimately sent to a listening RF12Demo-readwrite compatible service.

The following Input Handlers are are installed by this Briq:

• A web page to allow you to enter and submit data manually.
• A UDP Listener on Port 3334
• A TCP Listener on Port 3334
• A Unix domain socket listener for /tmp/rf12input.sock

The RF12Input web page is fairly self explanitory. You enter the required parameters for ‘Band’, ‘Group’, ‘NodeID’ (Source Node), ‘Header’ (Destination node), and ‘Data’ the bytes to send in the format specific to your driver (this is most probably comma delimited data for simple RF12Demo devices)
When you press send, you will see a numerical ‘result’ to the left of the send button if your request found its way to a listening service that handles writes for those parameters you entered.

If you do not see a numerical result, you have probably not registered the correct information in your RF12Demo-readwrite service. More information can be found here

Additionally you will see a log panel below the send button. This will show all requests that passed through the RF12Registry you are connected to since you loaded the page. The list contains the most recent 20 write requests.

To use the other three mechanisms (TCP/UDP/UDS) you will need some integration tools. You can write your own tools/scripts or you can use something as simple as netcat (on linux).

You will want a version of netcat that supports both TCP,UDP AND Unix domain sockets. A good debian package is netcat-openbsd, as this supports all three.

Using netcat (nc) against RF12Input is very simle. Using the examples we have been following, sending the digit 6 to nodeid 4 on network 868/100, we would issue the following from the command prompt:

Unix Domain socket example

$ printf "send 868 100 0 68 6\n" | nc -U /tmp/rf12input.sock

UDP IPv4 socket example

$ printf "send 868 100 0 68 6\n" | nc -4u -q1 localhost 3334

TCP IPv4 socket example

$ printf "send 868 100 0 68 6\n" | nc -4 -q1 localhost 3334

You can of course use something other than ‘printf’ to send your data. You could use ‘echo’ but check your use of arguments (-n, or \c at end of string) depending upon platform YMMV and the device you are talking to. NB: the RF12Input requires the terminating newline character (\n)

Using simple tools like 'nc' combined with scripts in Python, Perl, PHP, Node.js, bash etc allow easy control over your devices.
I make great use of simple bash scripts and cron to send data to my Jeenodes and compatible devices at predefined times.

Additional RF12Input customisation

It is possible to alter the TCP, UDP and Domain Socket binding paramaters using the ‘briqs.json’ configuration file by using any/all of the following parameters within the config section:

"rf12input":{"DomainSocket":"/tmp/rf12input.sock", "Port":3334, "UDPPort": 3334 }

(shown are the default values)