RFXtrx433 connect via network

General
1

Hi,
Being extremely new to NodeRed I may ask for help on a topic which is obvious for the knowledgable, however I've not been able to find the solution on the availabel forums.

I have a raspberry on which I've connected a RFXtrx433, and ser2net installed. On another server I've installed NodeRed. In the NodeRed admin interface I can catch some information (TCP in -> debug) sent by the RFXtrx433 in the format of eg. "[ 16, 1, 27, 66, 3, 0, 80 ]". This could mean that the RFXtrx433 does send some information through the rasperry which is caught buy node-red.

My question is, how can I use the information which is sent by the RFXtrx433, in a meaningful way (eg: identify the source and extract the value: device xxx = ON). And even more, how can I sent information to the RFXtrx433 to act on any of my devices?

Looking forward for any help

2

just plug the Rfxtrx433 into the same pi as you are running Node-RED on and use the rfxcom node

3

The very best way to use a distributed RFXtrx433 as a shared resource is to:

  • connect the RFXtrx433 to the RPi
  • install NR, node-red-contrib-rfxcom and the mosquitto MQTT broker
  • configure NR so that it accepts commands to the RFXtrx433 via MQTT
  • configure NR so that it receives events from the RFXtrx433 and publishes them to MQTT

Now you have a shared RFXtrx433, similar to a shared printer, that can be used by all your clients on the network just by using MQTT

Just think about to design your MQTT topic structure in a good way

Simple, fast, reliable

4

Unfortunately that's not the solution. The server on which I run my 'central' node-red, which needs to communicate with the rfxtrx is physically bound to another place as where I have best 433MHz reach.
In the past I used the RFXLan for communication but unfortunately that device is no longer maintained and there is no information on how to use it under node-red

5

I'll try that.
Thanks for the suggestion

6

I don't think this is going to work, as node-red-contrib-rfxcom is looking for a 'real' serial device. I don't think ser2net can make a serial port on the remote machine appear to be (a real serial port) on the local machine.

Maybe you might have another instance of ser2net on the NodeRED machine and an actual physical link between two serial ports (one used by NodeRED, one by ser2net) But I'm not sure if ser2net can be set up to establish a serial-port-to-serial-port link like that: I've never used it

7

After I managed to get the RFXtrx connecting, I set up the node-red MQTT broker and forwarded all topics to my MQTT broker on my main node-red server. This works like a charm (as krambriw suggested).
Thanks for your help and suggestions!

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