Oceanic Binding

This binding integrates the Oceanic water softener and management system (www.oceanic.be (opens new window), but also distributed by Syr in Germany (www.syr.de (opens new window))). The binding supports the Limex IQ and Limex Pro water softeners and require the optional CAN-Serial gateway has to be installed

Supported Things

• serial - A water softener connected to the openHAB host by means of a serial port
• network - A water softener that can be reached through a TCP proxy. See Known Issues below as when to use this kind of configuration

Thing Configuration

The serial Thing configuration requires the name of the serial port that is used to connect openHAB with the Oceanic unit, and the interval period in seconds to poll the Oceanic unit

The network Thing configuration requires the hostname or ip address of the proxy, the TCP port number to connect to, and the interval period in seconds to poll the Oceanic unit

Channels

All things support the following channels (non-exhaustive):

Channel Type ID	Item Type	Description
alarm	String	Current alarm description, if any
alert	String	Current alert description, if any, to notify a shortage of salt
totalflow	Number	Current flow in l/min
maxflow	Number	Maximum flow recorded, in l/min
reserve	Number	Water reserve in l before regeneration has to start
cycle	String	Indicates the stage of the regeneration cycle
endofcycle	String	Indicates the time to the end of the current cycle
endofgeneration	String	Indicates the time to the end of the current generation
inlethardness	Number	Water hardness at the inlet
outlethardness	Number	Water hardness at the outlet
salt	String	Volume of salt remaining, in kg
consumption(today)(currentweek)(...)	String	Water consumption, in l, for that period
regeneratenow	Switch	Start an immediate regeneration
regeneratelater	Switch	Start a delayed regeneration
lastgeneration	DateTime	Date and Time of the last regeneration cycle
pressure	Number	Water pressure, in bar
minpressure	Number	Minimum water pressure recorded, in bar
maxpressure	Number	Maximum water pressure recorded, in bar
normalregenerations	Number	Number of regenerations completed
serviceregenerations	Number	Number of service regenerations completed
incompleteregenerations	Number	Number of incomplete regenerations
allregenerations	Number	Number of all regenerations

Full Example

.things

Thing oceanic:serial:s1 [ port="/dev/tty.usbserial-FTWGX64N", interval=60]
Thing oceanic:network:s2 [ ipAddress="192.168.0.6", portNumber=9000, interval=60]

.items

Number oceanicVolume "volume [%d]" (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:totalflow"}
String oceanicAlarm "alarm: [%s]" (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:alarm"}
String oceanicAlert "alert: [%s]" (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:alert"}
Number oceanicReserve (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:reserve"}
String oceanicCycle (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:cycle"}
String oceanicEOC (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:endofcycle"}
String oceanicEOG (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:endofgeneration"}
String oceanicHU (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:hardnessunit"}
Number oceanicInletHardness (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:inlethardness"}
Number oceanicOutletHardness (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:outlethardness"}
String oceanicCylState (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:cylinderstate"}
Number oceanicSalt (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:salt"}
Number oceanicConsToday "volume today is [%d]" (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptiontoday"}
Number oceanicConsYday "volume yesterday was [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptionyesterday"}
Number oceanicPressure (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:pressure"}
DateTime oceanicLastGeneration (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:lastgeneration"}
Number oceanicAllGen (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:allregenerations"}
Number oceanicMaxFlow (oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:maxflow"}
Number oceanicConsThisWk "volume this week is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptioncurrentweek"}
Number oceanicConsThisMnth "volume this month is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptioncurrentmonth"}
Number oceanicConsLastMnth "volume last month is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptionlastmonth"}
Number oceanicConsComplete "volume all time is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptioncomplete"}
Number oceanicConsUntreated "volume untreated is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptionuntreated"}
Number oceanicConsLastWk "volume last week is [%d]"(oceanic) {channel="oceanic:serial:s1:consumptionlastweek"}

Known issues

The Oceanic binding makes use of the nrjavaserial library, and unfortunately java and serial ports never have been a great marriage.

Although some work is being done to improve things (https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome/issues/4465 (opens new window)), the best thing is to avoid serial ports as much as possible, as some issues (https://github.com/NeuronRobotics/nrjavaserial/issues/96 (opens new window)) are not resolved.

For example, On Ubuntu 17.10 nrjavaserial seems to return only HEX 00 characters through the InputStream of the SerialPort.

Within the Oceanic binding two routes are provided:

1. Connect to the Oceanic softener over a serial port that is outside the scope of the Java Virtual Machine, setup a TCP "proxy" on the host that is connected to the softener, and make openHAB connect to that proxy over a plain TCP connection. This can be achieved with socat:

   /usr/bin/socat -v TCP-LISTEN:9000 /dev/ttyUSB0,raw,echo=0           
   

   In the above example, the name of the host running socat, and the TCP port number 9000, will be part of the network Thing configuration

2. Connect to the Oceanic softener over a serial port on the openHAB host and use socat to pipe the data from that serial port to a pseudo tty, which has to be manipulated in a CommPortIdentifier.PORT_RAW manner.

   /usr/bin/socat -v /dev/ttyUSB0,raw,echo=0 pty,link=/dev/ttyS1,raw,echo=0            
   

Both workarounds can be implemented using a systemd system manager script, for example:

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target   

[Service]
#Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat -v /dev/ttyUSB0,raw,echo=0 pty,link=/dev/ttyS1,raw,echo=0
#PIDFile=/var/run/socat.pid
User=root
Restart=always
RestartSec=10             

However, in order to fix permissions at the OS level, one has to issue following commands in order to make /dev/ttyS1 accessible by the 'openhab' system user (that is used to start up the openHAB runtime), and to make the tty both readable and writable.

sudo useradd  -G dialout openhab
sudo chgrp dialout /dev/ttyS1
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyS1 

Alternatively, these commands can be executed through a script that is attached to the systemd system manager script.

Caught a mistake or want to contribute to the documentation? Edit this page on GitHub (opens new window)