View single post by mattbrain
 Posted: Thursday Feb 8th, 2018 06:16 pm
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mattbrain



Joined: Tuesday Jun 12th, 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 185
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Following up on this thread, I'd like to share with you the progress we are making.

We have identified a couple of small hardware issues with the first prototype and are working to resolve them. We have managed to overcome these issues on the prototype with a little creative thinking and I am now working on the software.

As a result of the SD card issues on the RPi solution, we have decided to lock to filesystem to readonly mode. This will mean that installation specific information needs to be stored elsewhere. I have 2 solutions in mind:

1. Store the site specific information on a server which is downloaded to the device at startup. This data will be locked to the device and encrypted using a key generate on the device at first boot. It will however require the UCM to have internet access at all times.

2. Store the site specific information on a separate partition on the device which is only mounted when it is needed to be read or written to. This negates the need for the internet connection for this purpose (although there are other benefits) but does increase the change of the data becoming corrupted if the power is interrupted during this window of read/write.

I'm also going to use this opportunity to change the backend architecture and ST integration. MQTT will now form the core backbone of interprocess communications allowing modules to be loaded, configured and updated without losing functionality and allowing new modules to be added on demand. Secure MQTT will also be used to send telemetry data and receive updates to our central server (and if 1 were used as above, this is how config data would be sent and received).

SmartThings will now be configured separately to the core comms module (as it may not always be required) and will allow each element to be configured according to its purpose (for example, a zone may be exposed as a PIR or Door to make it clearer in ST).

I plan to make this functionality available in Beta form for those of you wishing to try it on your existing hardware but it will require completely reinstalling both the RPi and ST components as they are going to be completely overhauled - and unfortunately won't benefit from some of the UCM specific features such as hardware monitoring.

Finally, as a little teaser, here is a photo of the prototype UCM.

Thanks,

Matt


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