integrate with #thethingsystem

[mrose17]

hi. i just pushed an update to the repo for the steward that has the scaffolding you should need. i believe you can focus on the file gateway-zigbee-xstick.js

i think we need to work this in two steps:

step 1: add more scaffolding to that module so that it's ready to make calls to the internal steward APIs saying "i discovered this device" or "this device has updated its parameters"

step 2: i'll write a driver for one of these devices and hook it into the scaffolding. at that point, we can go through the list of devices that you have and i can show you how to do a driver. it's not that complicated.

ok, here's how the gateway-zigbee-xstick.js file works:

the start() function is invoked after the module is loaded. this defines the prototype function for /device/gateway/zigbee/xstick2-zb and then starts a function called scan that runs every 30 seconds.

the scan() function looks for USB devices matching a set of "fingerprints" that correspond to the digi stick. when a new one is found, it call invokes a callback within scan() that calls the internal API to discover a new device (in this case, the stick).

this results in the Gateway() function being new()'d to create an instance of the device driver. first, we have a bunch of instance assignments, then the driver subscribes to the 'actors' channel which is used to convey information about perform requests (among other things). if a perform request comes in for this particular device, then the perform() method is called.

both the validate_perform function and the perform() method are driven by Gateway.operations, an associative array. if the thing to be performed is a 'set', then this is handled internally, with devices.validate_perform, and the super method devices.perform(). otherwise, operations{} indicates how to proceed.

so, that's the scaffolding, now the part i'm clueless on. in the bottom half of the Gateway() function, there is a chained list of self.xstick.on() and self.xstick.zbee.on() handlers. this is where you need to add code that will figure out that zigbee devices are available, what kind of devices they are, and then get ready to invoke the internal API in the steward to create the corresponding instance.

does that make sense?

thanks!

[antamy]

Thanks for the update! I've been working on another project and put this on the back burner, but will take a look at these updates later this week.

[stormboy]

Great. I'll look at it over the next few days.

[antamy]

So I got this installed on the Pi and it finds the digi-stick. mrose17 had that working previously, so not sure if I'm supposed to see something different. Where is gateway-zigbee-xstick.js? I've searched in your node-zbee repository and in the one for the Thing System and can't find it.

It would be handy to see what a driver looks like. My devices will all be custom built, so I was hoping there was a framework that they could be plugged into - specify their addresses and capabilities in a file and off you go.

[mrose17]

the file is in the steward repository, vIz.,

     cd steward
     git pull upstream master
     cd steward
     npm -l install

in terms of a driver, I need to see what happens in step 1...

[antamy]

So are you going to be focusing on Zigbee HA devices? As far as I know, devices that use that standard are the ones where you can query their capabilities. Or are you going to support arbitrary devices where a config file tells you the capabilities, and the scaffolding just tells you whether it can connect to the device or not?

I was just looking for the latter, and then be able to write a simple driver that interfaces with the actual device via the digi stick.

I'll pull down the code and take a look. Maybe I misunderstand github - I though I could just go to github and search all repositories for the code, but that doesn't find anything.

[mrose17]

once it is running, you'll be able to register arbitrary devices based on characteristics. it will look something like the code in gateway-openwave-usb.js and switch-zwave-onoff.js

[mrose17]

@stormboy - hi! any motion on this? just checking!

[stormboy]

@mrose17 I'm going over this today. Having problems installing the node modules for the steward. noble fails compilation on Mac (Mavericks). I've tried making sure Macports gcc is used instead of clang.

CXX(target) Release/obj.target/binding/src/XpcConnection.o
cc1plus: error: argument to '-O' should be a non-negative integer, 'g', 's' or 'fast'

[mrose17]

@stormboy - thanks very much, i appreciate you making the cycles available.

also, meet @sandeepmistry, the author of the noble package.

sandeep - could i ask you to help @stormboy get noble compiled on his mavericks system… he's doing the zigbee platform, which i am very much looking forward to.

[stormboy]

Weird thing is I can do this:

git clone git://github.com/sandeepmistry/noble.git
cd noble
node-gyp.js rebuild

But I cannot do this:

npm install noble@git://github.com/sandeepmistry/noble.git

It might actually be xpc-connection that is the problem:

> xpc-connection@0.0.3 install /Users/stormboy/src/steward/steward/node_modules/noble/node_modules/xpc-connection
> node-gyp rebuild

  CXX(target) Release/obj.target/binding/src/XpcConnection.o
cc1plus: error: argument to '-O' should be a non-negative integer, 'g', 's' or 'fast'
make: *** [Release/obj.target/binding/src/XpcConnection.o] Error 1

[stormboy]

OK, looks like this module is assuming clang on Mac. I've removed gcc and g++ from the path and it compiles.

[stormboy]

Now I am getting this when running the steward:

Assertion failed: (handle->InternalFieldCount() > 0), function Unwrap, file ../src/node_object_wrap.h, line 61.
./run.sh: line 102: 26247 Abort trap: 6           node index.js
Press ^C to exit or wait 10 seconds to restart

[mrose17]

crikey! let me see if i can reproduce that… i haven't seen it, but someone else has...

[mrose17]

well, i brought the steward up on mavericks and didn't get the assertion failure.

let's try an experiment: move all of the files in devices-climate and devices-lighting somewhere else and try run.sh again. let's see if that avoids the issue. (i'm searching in google to see if i can find something…)