node-red-contrib-loxone 0.10.13

Connecting the Loxone Miniserver to node-red via Websocket API

npm install node-red-contrib-loxone

node-red-contrib-loxone

As of verison 0.10.4 please make sure, that your system has the git command installed, as the needed library are currently pulled from github. Otherwise you will get an undefined ls-remote-Error.

This node connects the Loxone Miniserver to node-red. It uses node-lox-ws-api by Ladislav Dokulil based on Loxone's documenation for the Websocket API.

It enables you to connect the Loxone Miniserver directly to node-red and work with the data on occuring events. As this uses the official Websocket, you will only see controls that are visualized in Loxone-Config.

You will get the data from Loxone's websocket as is. There is and will be no abstraction layer!

So please know how to handle the data according to the structure file or the webservice documenation.

As of Loxone V9 the new token based authentification should be used. If you are still using V8 or earlier, please use AES-256-CBC or Hash. The "old" authentification methods will be supported by Loxone in version 9 till March 2018.

Keepalive is handled via node-lox-ws-api and token based authentication is used if available.

As I don't have an own Loxone installation, I can't do a "real world" test. Gladly have an own miniserver through the mentioned crowdfunding campaign. Again, thank you all!

Tested with loxone-config V11.0.5.5, node-red 1.0.6, nodeJS 12.13.1 LTS

Help, pull requests and feedback in general are very welcome!

Nodes

• Miniserver: Configure a miniserver connection used by every other node.
• Control-In: Select a control and a state to hook an event which then gets passed to node-red on occurence.
• Control-Out: Select a control and feed it commands according to the structure file
• Webservice: Send direct webservice calls through the existing websocket, see the webservice documenation. Please use URI's in form of jdev/sps/io/foo (no leading /), simply replace dev/ from the documentation with jdev/. The returned value will be in msg.payload.
• Stream-In: Receive all (!) occuring events from a selected room and/or category. Could be handy to put every temperature (e.g.) into a database or something - see the node for more info.
• Stream-All: Receive EVERY occuring event. USE THIS WITH CAUTION!!
• Online: Emit's true/false for the state of the connection to the selected miniserver. Be careful as every failed connection attempt sends a false over and over again till a connection could be established.
• Keepalive: outputs the current time (in ms) from the keepalive request done by the underlying library (node-lox-ws-api) every x seconds (as configured in the connection). See page 17 of the Loxone webservice documentation. The response time can be used to measssure connection quality.

The information used comes from the structure file, which can be retrieved from your miniserver via http://<miniserver>/data/LoxAPP3.json.

msg.payload holds the value retrieved. The msg-object also has some additional information. In general you will find the arrived data in msg.payload, but have a look at the complete msg-object of each node.

Added in 0.9.0 you will also have the miniserver information from the structure file in msg.msInfo. It is present in all nodes except the online-node, as the the structure file is not yet parsed when it emits it's state.

You will also have lastModified, which is the Date/Time when the program of the miniserver was uploaded.

Here's example of the complete msg-object from a switch:

{
   "payload":1,
   "topic":"SchalterWZ",
   "state":"active",
   "room":"Wohnzimmer",
   "category":"Beleuchtung",
   "details":null,
   "type":"Switch",
   "isFavorite":null,
   "isSecured":null,
   "uuid":"10965a26-0124-4b62-ffff90eb033172c2",
   "msInfo":{
      "serialNr":"xxx",
      "msName":"Loxone Miniserver",
      "projectName":"nodelox",
      "localUrl":"192.168.xx.xx",
      "remoteUrl":"",
      "tempUnit":0,
      "currency":"€",
      "squareMeasure":"m²",
      "location":"xxx",
      "languageCode":"DEU",
      "heatPeriodStart":"10-01",
      "heatPeriodEnd":"04-30",
      "coolPeriodStart":"05-01",
      "coolPeriodEnd":"09-30",
      "catTitle":"Kategorie",
      "roomTitle":"Raum",
      "miniserverType":0,
      "sortByRating":false,
      "currentUser":{
         "name":"admin",
         "uuid":"0b734138-03da-047e-ffff403fb0c34b9e",
         "isAdmin":true,
         "changePassword":true,
         "userRights":2047
      }
   },
   "lastModified":"2017-11-30 21:13:58",
   "_msgid":"f21030d7.2b112"
}

On the webservice-node there will also be msg.data if there is data other than value which is present in payload. For example if you request jdev/sps/io/<element>/All:

{
   "payload":"0",
   "topic":"dev/sps/io/Automatikjalousie/All",
   "code":200,
   "data":{
      "StateUp":0,
      "StateDown":0,
      "StatePos":1,
      "StateShade":1,
      "StateAutoShade":0,
      "StateSafety":0,
      "value":"0"
   },
   "msInfo":{ ... }
   "lastModified":"2017-11-30 21:13:58",
   "_msgid":"752341c2.6eddd"
}

Examples

Here's a small video of the controls above with the Loxone Webinterface on the left, Loxone-Config with LiveView enabled in the middle and node-red with node-red-dashboard on the right: https://cloud.codm.de/index.php/s/hNO2hIgnGIDWGqM

Another example: Reading the current used bandwith of a FritzBox-Router and display this data in the visualisation of the Miniserver: https://cloud.codm.de/index.php/s/5XoNoMLilinpU4v

The flow itself could be found here: http://flows.nodered.org/flow/0b3c81b3361027ce4064d4e934f23685

The webservice node allows you to directly call webservice URI's through the already established websocket connection.

You can choose to automaticly append the incoming msg.payload to the set URI. This is handy to add dynamic content to the webservice call, for example DownOn or DownOff.

As the UpDownDigital (etc.) virtual input has no state where the control-out node can put it's data, I've switched it as an example via the webservice-node. See a short video here: https://cloud.codm.de/index.php/s/IttSURIGl8OkUBf

Caveats

Only controls and msInfo are parsed, no mediaServer, weatherServer, etc. Is this enough?

Events can only be generated by control-in and the controls have to be visible to show up in the node. Well, this is not a caveat as it lays in the design of Loxone's websocket. We can only come around this if Loxone add's a "websocket" checkmark to the controls in Loxone-Config. Also controls will not be shown if you put them in room "unused" and category "unused", albeit they are marked "visible".

I've discovered that a switch element emits its current state (active) two times with the same value. The first one when the trigger-button is pressed and second one when the button is released - so take care of this as it might give you unexpected results. This could be catched with a delay node. Also keep in mind, that this element sends 1/0 but expects to be fed with On/Off/Pulse.

nodeJS

I advice you to use the latest LTS version of nodeJS.

If you realy can not update to a supported version of nodeJS, the last version of node-red-contrib-loxone running with nodeJS < 4.5 is 0.4.0 which can be installed with:

cd ~/.node-red
npm install [email protected]

ToDo

• Convenience / Testing!
• better logging, more failsaveness, more user info
• See TODO comments in the code
• ...

Installation

Install the usual way. Either

cd ~/.node-red/
npm install node-red-contrib-loxone

or via node-red's Manage palette.

Contributing

1. Fork it!
2. Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
3. Commit your changes: git commit -am 'Add some feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
5. Submit a pull request :D

Credits

Patrik Mayer with great help from Ladislav Dokulil without whom this could not be possible, 2017

Many thanks to Nick O'Leary, Dave Conway-Jones and everyone else from the node-red Slack-Channel.

Also the people from the ever helpful LoxForum have to be mentioned.

I'm not affiliated with Loxone in any way.

License

MIT