First steps to start using the adapter

Depending on the variant, a few steps are necessary to put the adapter into operation:

  1. Configure adapter
  2. Install ebusd
  3. Configure ebusd
  4. Connect eBUS
  5. Receive / send eBUS messages

Configure adapter

In each variant, the jumpers J1 and J4 should be checked, even if they have usually already been set correctly by us, see the details of the variant.

You should also check whether the jumpers at J12 are correct, especially for the variant setting (pins 4-6) and enhanced protocol (pins 1-3 as well as 6-7 for high-speed).
We recommend using enhanced protocol in high-speed to get the lowest possible latency.

Now the adapter can be connected according to the variant, i.e. via USB connection J2 with USB and Ethernet, via the Wemos directly with the WIFI variant, or plugged onto the Raspberry Pi.

With the WIFI variant, the Wemos needs to be configured to your own WLAN and to using the adapter. The easiest way to do this is via the WIFI access point set up by Wemos with SSID “EBUS”, without a password and via the IP address “192.168.4.1”, see details here.

With the Ethernet variant, the adapter can be configured to a fixed IP address, see details here.

Install ebusd

If communication is to be taken over by ebusd, it has to be installed. This can be done either directly from the Debian package of the last release, as Docker container, or by compiling the sources,

Configure ebusd

Depending on the variant, the device string must be set. In addition, the enhanced mode is not yet set in the device string of a freshly installed ebusd. How this device string must look exactly can be found in the details of the variant.

With the Docker container, this is passed as an argument to ebusd in the compose file or in the docker run line and in case of an installation entered under /etc/default/ebusd. The following settings are available there by default:

EBUSD_OPTS="--scanconfig"

Without further information, ebusd uses /dev/ttyUSB0 as the device. Because of the enhanced mode and if the adapter is not connected via USB, the device string must be set. For USB it would look like this:

EBUSD_OPTS="--scanconfig -d enh:/dev/ttyUSB0"

And for WIFI or Ethernet it could e.g. look like this:

EBUSD_OPTS="--scanconfig -d enh:192.168.0.50:9999"

If ebusd is started now, the following lines should appear in the log file (/var/log/ebusd.log or Docker Logging, values in brackets depend on the respective configuration):

<DATE TIME> [main notice] ebusd <VERSION>> started with auto scan on enhanced device <DEVICE>
...
<DATE TIME> [bus notice] device status: resetting
...
<DATE TIME> [bus notice] device status: reset, supports info

Connect eBUS

Now the eBUS line can be connected to the adapter. The polarity does not need to be taken into account. Messages from other participants on the bus should then appear in the logging, for example as follows:

<DATE TIME> [update notice] received unknown MS cmd: 1050b505072b000100000000 / 00
...
<DATE TIME> [update notice] received read ehp Status QQ=10: 18.94;1.540;2.340;off;00

Receive / send eBUS messages

Before you take care of further integrations, the communication via ebusctl should be checked first. The best way to do this is to see which messages are available through the automatic scan process with ebusctl find.

The output list contains the message ID (circuit followed by name) and, after an equal sign, the data last received (within the last 5 minutes). For example, if the following entry is part of the list:

hwc Mode = no data stored

then this can be actively read out with the command ebusctl read hwc Mode, which might yield in the following result:

hwc Mode = 53;auto;disabled;hwc;00;day