[OpenTRV-interest] OpenTRV-interest Digest, Vol 4, Issue 5

[Damon Hart-Davis]

Hi,

On 28 Mar 2014, at 10:25, Alasdair Macdonald <EMAIL ADDRESS HIDDEN> wrote:

> Hmm, how did I not spot the micro USB socket?
> 
> My FTDI cable arrived and I've successfully connected to both my boards.
> 
> I think that the instructions at http://sourceforge.net/p/opentrv/wiki/Arduino/ could be clarified:
> 
> > 5 Plug in the FTDI cable to your OpenTRV controller. Note which pin is 5V and which is GND
> 
> On the FTDI cable supplied by RS, black is ground. If this is standard (colouring), it would be helpful to add it to the wiki. If it's not standard, perhaps it shouldn't …

I think that that is fairly standard and I do mention it elsewhere in our sprawling documentation…  Search on this page for “black”:

http://www.earth.org.uk/OpenTRV-archive.html

Maybe that info should be copied to the Arduino Wiki page?  But it would be good for the user to double-check what is right on their connector at least the first time!

> 
> I notice that my regular sorceforge account appears to allow me editing rights to the wiki. I'm happy to contribute; just need suggestions as to what areas would be most useful.

That would be lovely!

Maybe fill in the biggest gaps that you found, ie stuff that we should have put there but didn’t.

And/or create a new tinkerers’ start page that we can link to from the main site and with all the relevant outgoing links?  I would also link to it from the earth.org.uk ‘geeky’ page.


> Next questions:
> 
> 1. Boot text informs:
> > ? at CLI prompt for help
> 
> I don't seem to be able to send this command from the Arduino IDE. Should I be able to, or can the command be sent in a different way?

How are you trying to ‘send’?

Put a ? in the text box on the serial monitor, wait until the monent you see the ‘>’ appear (NOT the following CR!) and press the send button.  You only have a failry short time, may 100ms to 500ms, depending on what else the unit has to do on that cycle.

If you can’t get any response at all evening with lightning fast reflexes it is possible that there is a short on the RX line as we had one one other board in this batch so far.

> 
> 2. wiki page states "Any time you plug in the FTDI cable or close and reopen the Arduino IDE serial monitor window, the board will reset and display the POST sequence again".
> 
> I am NOT getting a reboot / POST by simply closing and re-opening the serial monitor window. Is the wiki incorrect on this point?

You should.  Again it is possible that there is a board fault around the serial connector area.  We can follow this up if other things don’t work.

> 
> 3. Is what we are seeing in the console (other than the boot text) a copy of broadcast messages? And if so, are those standard(ish) FS20 messages as hinted at on the wiki:

No.

I think that the system will still tell you each time that it does a FHT8V TX, but not its content.

The status lines starting with ‘=‘ have as an item early on which is the % open of the valve as due to be sent to the valve on the next transmission (if not updated again first), ie is the internal model of the desired valve position.

> https://sourceforge.net/p/opentrv/wiki/FHT%20Protocol/
> 
> Or, is this a separate debug conversation?
> 
> Damon wrote that a status message begins with a "="; I have observed that these are being output every 4 minutes.

When the system is active, eg in WARM mode, these will be sent more frequently.


> 
> And ... 4. what next?

According to the Slashdot meme…

* ???

* Profit!

apparently!

Rgds

Damon