ebus, Vaillant and tapping into the bus data

[Why Not Indeed]

Yes, so long as you've saved the file you can restart the service. It's not necessary to exit the editor.

Could you try starting the ebusd service instead of just running ebusd? Ie,

systemctl restart ebusd

In another terminal you could be running

tail -f /var/log/ebusd.log

as well, to watch the log output in real time.

esp-ebus.local did work, now doesn't ping, pinging 192.168.1.152 always works, never ever fails.

As you've set a static IP then no need to worry about why the hostname doesn't work.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

OK, and thanks for that, and maybe some progress.

I've retried a few of the configurations, and they seem to produce differing real time log outputs, but all produce exactly the same result when typing ebusd at the prompt.


This is the configuration I used..... Note the only things in the file I have edited, are the 'scanconfig' lines. I read something, unclear to me, about inserting something, somewhere for the system the ebus was working with, in my case Vaillant - but I haven't added anything, anywhere.

...which produced this....

.....and this. This does seem as if it is reading actual data, from the ebus. The lines in the log, fly by at a speed, and stop, if I disconnect the interface from the ebus.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

as well, to watch the log output in real time.

Thanks, and some more progress...

The log output, seems to be the valid data. It mentions the temperature of the cylinder, water,water, and I can see it heat up, mentions 'V65' the controller in the airing cupboard, heat,heat and what might be a room temperature, though I cannot relate it to deg C, plus it's system time, which is a few minutes out, by real time.

What's the next step, please?

 

[Why Not Indeed]

OK, a stab at what has been happening here...if you just run "ebusd" with no arguments it's not going to read /etc/default/ebusd so what's in there makes no difference. But if you run ebusd as a service then it does read that config file, and it has probably been working fine the whole time and it's only now by looking at the log that you're seeing this. Bit of reading between the lines here.

What's the next step, please?

What do you want to do? I have mine connected to Home Assistant, for example, and that was easier than getting ebusd working.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

OK, a stab at what has been happening here...if you just run "ebusd" with no arguments it's not going to read /etc/default/ebusd so what's in there makes no difference. But if you run ebusd as a service then it does read that config file, and it has probably been working fine the whole time and it's only now by looking at the log that you're seeing this. Bit of reading between the lines here.

Yes, you are probably correct - I was going round, and round in circles, not really knowing what to expect. Add to that, my experiments, managed to crash the boiler control a couple of times, something it has never done before, and it ran absolutely flat out, with no control, until I realised, and rebooted it.

It is very obviously working now, because I am managing to interrogate the controls, for values, using 'read'.

What do you want to do? I have mine connected to Home Assistant, for example, and that was easier than getting ebusd working.

I was mostly interested in being able to just keep an eye on the heating system, have it produce some neat graphs, but being able to controlling remotely, via my Iphone would be a bonus. So I'm fancying giving HA a go.... At the moment, I have no spare SD cards, though a couple on order - plan is to leave this one with a working copy of EBUSD, try setting up HA on a new card, add EBUSD to it. Then see if can add the weather station too, so it runs all three, on the same Rpi.

I also need to spend some time, reading up on Linux. I ran scared from it, much of my life..

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I just like to give a big thanks to everyone, in helping me get this going, and a bit of an update...

First, and don't understand why - When all I could do was read the data stream via telnet, the data flow would come to a stop, and the interface's Uptime would regularly reset, at random intervals, powered via the ebus. Powered via the USB, it would work just fine.

Since then, using ebusd to read and decode the data stream, I thought to once again see if ebus powering alone, would work, and it has worked 100%. With it self-powering via the ebus, it makes for a much tidier job, in that it fits neatly inside the VR65 case, without the need for the USB PSU adaptor.

The sheer amount of data which can be called up to be read, from my heating system, is absolutely tremendous. Far more detailed than I expected, the boiler even logs how much energy it has used, since it was first installed, how many hours it has run for, serving CH, and separately HW.