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: openzw...@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 <openzw...@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 _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list Hardwarehacking@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
