Need Help: Node for elero shutter usb stick

Developing Nodes
1

Hello community,

i need help to create a node for a elero shutter system.

This is my first request to the community. I am more a user than a developer.
Hopefully someone can help me.

This is the elero usb transmitter stick.
elero
The shutters will be manually paired to that Stick.

If you connect it to the RPi3 it will react on serial commands, like AA054C000140C4.

There are already guys who implemented this device into Homematic, FHEM,openhab and home-assistence.

home-assistence

homematic:
https://homematic-forum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26066 (german)

openhab:

Maybe somebody can help me to get this working in node-red

Examples for sending commands.
AA054C000140C4

0xAA … Startbyte

0x05 … Length of Data

0x4C … send command

0x00 … channel bits for Channel 9 to 15 (8 (0x00,channel1-8, 0x01-channel9, 0x02-channel10, 0x04- channel11, 0x08-channel12, 0x10-channel13, 0x20-channel14, 0x40-channel15)

0x01 … channel bits for Channel 1 to 8 (0x00,channel9-15, 0x01-channel1, 0x02-channel2, 0x04-channel3, 0x08-channel4, 0x10-channel5, 0x20-channel6, 0x40-channel7, 0x80-channel8)

0x40 … action (0x20 .. up, 0x44 … intermediate position, 0x24 … tilt/ventilation, 0x40 … down, 0x10 … stop)

0xC4 …Checksum (Sum of all bytes == 0x00)

Example for requesting status
aa044e000103

0xAA ... Startbyte

4D ... Read Status

00001 ... Channel 1

01 ... actual Status of channel 1

02 ... checksum

the return will be the satus of the fist shutter.

Thanks

2

I have Elero shutters, they are working great, but I do not have the USB stick

When you connect the stick to the RPi, what do you see when you type lsusb in a terminal?

Have you tried to use the serial node in Node-RED?

3

I will try that on the weekend or on Monday.
How did you get your Elero shutters to work with node-red?
Did you dismantle a elero remote like a Vario Tel?

4

Yes, exactly, I connected/soldered some wireless relay contacts across the button contact areas to control up/down from Node-RED. This works for me since I have 4 engines on the same channel but if you need more, I guess the stick is a much better solution.

In Node-RED I have designed a rather advanced automatic control flow taking into consideration light intensity from sun, time of day, months of year and weather forecasts.

Having an Elero rain sensor is useless since then it is too late anyway, you already have rain on the awnings so you need to let them dry before you roll them up. What you need is a better pre-warning and it has proved that measuring the sun light intensity was the correct way. For this I use a 1-wire light sensor but there are other possibilities today, like a Z-Wave sensor. I have had my solution running for a couple of years now, works perfect

The Elero wind sensor I have as well, and this can operate the Elero engines directly for safety reason, if the wind would be too strong and Node-RED would fail (but it has never happened yet)