replacement CM11a firmware available

- D
- Dan Lanciani
  
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posted
13 years ago

Mon, Feb 7, 2011 6:07 AM

I have made available on

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source for replacement firmware for the CM11a along with a unix daemon that provides my standard tcp/ip interface.

The replacement firmware is in no way compatible with the OEM firmware and also requires certain pins to be rerouted between the PIC and CM11a board.

The firmware provides a low-level interface to the power line. Received bits are grouped 6 at a time and sent to the host. The host transmits by specifying a bit string and a repeat count. All encoding/decoding is done in the host. Normally once the host has seen 7 or more zero bits further zeroes are suppressed, but for full real-time analysis a flag is provided to force all bits to be transferred. An additional flag is available to disable three-phase transmission support and the supplied daemon sets this flag by default.

I've been running this code for a few days but it should of course be considered preliminary. Further documentation will be available depending on the level of interest...

Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com

- D
- Dave Houston
  
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posted
13 years ago

Mon, Feb 7, 2011 4:28 PM

Dan,

About 3 years back, I persuaded Dom Kinzer of ZBasic to add low level X-10 functions implemented in the background and buffered a la a software UART. It automatically handles all I/O, setting flags to signal a reception, etc. and filling a bit array as a signal is received. For output you merely fill a bit array and bits are sent automatically at ZC. It even incorporates the extra AGC signals needed with a CM15A should you want to play with it.

The cheapest ZBasic chip is the ZX-328n (DIP-28) at $10 or the ZX-32n (TQFP-32) at $15. Both have a bootloader preloaded. The ZBasic software is free. It compiles to native Atmel machine code for the 'n' version of the chips.

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I have made available on

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source for replacement

- J
- Jeff Volp
  
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posted
13 years ago

Thu, Feb 10, 2011 7:46 PM

Since a lot of people still use the discontinued CM11A as the powerline interface for PC-based automation software, I've been working on a XTB version with a RS232 interface. It is based on the new PIC16F1823, and will emulate the "real-time" CM11A command protocol. It will not include timers, macros, or any other "controller" functions.

Jeff