Converting a MAX! Cube to CUL/CUN to use with Home Assistant

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115

disconnect you nanoCUL first, than connect to your hass.io with ssh

ssh root@<hassio ip> -p 22222

after connecting type login plugin your nanoCUL and type dmesg now you should see somthing like that:

[111207.346002] usb 1-1.2: USB disconnect, device number 4
[111211.738648] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 6 using dwc_otg
[111211.910604] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=03eb, idProduct=6119
[111211.911971] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[111211.914515] usb 1-1.2: Product: AT91USBSerial1
[111211.924130] cdc_acm 1-1.2:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device

the last line show you that the CUL is on ttyACM0.

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I’am not able to login via port 22222. But when i plugin nanoCUL and press hardware in HASS.io it show that its connected on ttyUSB0. Which i put in the max.conf. But when i scan for my max thermostats and put them in parring mode. Nothing shows up. What am i doing wrong?

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I am not able to connect to the RPC consol. It says that the requestet URL is not found on this server. So i can’t see if anything is showing up in homegear. Please help. Thanks

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Pleas try the new version 0.70.4, proubably this should fix the issue.

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I am now able to open RPC. But not the administration.

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Current support in this thread: Homegear Add-on for Hassio please!

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@swifty - Did you experience the cube rebooting at all? I’ve flashed both your (no credit) version and the latest from GitHub and the cube seems to reboot randomly - it does seem to be when it is asked to transmit/acknowledge data.

I’m not using Home Assistant but this seems to occur without any connection to FHEM just Max radio traffic…

I wonder if previous versions of a-culfw are more stable? Do you have a previous version with the no credit mod?

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No, I can’t say I’ve spotted the unit rebooting itself.

Have you tried a different USB power brick or cable ? - I have noticed the cube behaves oddly if there isn’t quite enough power.

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Yeah that solved it!

Using a 2amp power brick and it seems stable… The battery light actually means something it seems as now with a 2amp power brick it isn’t lit up at all where it did used to be!

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Hello everyone. First of all, thank you very much swifty for this very complete guide ! :+1:

My max!cube as lost its configuration once too often. Before flashing the cube (as it’s one way), I want to be sure that I will keep the same set of features I’m using right now.
I have 6 max! radiator thermostats and 2 wall thermostats. Each wall thermostat is linked to 2 differents radiator thermostats. I am using MAX! home automation for configuring schedules and of course Home assistant integration to controls the thermostats.

  1. As I understand, I will still be allowed to link wall thermostat to multiple radiator thermostats in order to send temperature change orders to the wall thermostat only, right ? Did someone test this ? Is the link between wall thermostat and radiator thermostats more reliable than with max!cube original firmware ? I have regular issues with this. Thermostats can desynchronize themselves and I have to factory reset them.

  2. AndrejDelany says that is still possible to store time tables of temperature directly in the thermostat. This feature is very important to me. That means that the thermostats will continue to be scheduled even if there is an homeassistant/homegear/max!cube failure.
    Is it easy to configure in homematic-manager (in german :disappointed_relieved: ) ? Could someone please post a screenshot of the timetable editor ?

  3. Is there a way to retrieve (and eventually set) the valve percentage of thermostats from Homegear into homeassistant ? Maybe using mqtt ?
    I am currently using some dirty python script to retrieve this values on max!cube and display them in grafana.

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  1. I linked one wall thermostat with one radiator thermostat. No problems.

  2. Yes, they work even with homegear offline.

    HM
    HM1266×953 155 KB

    (Wie du sehen kannst, ist die App teilweise auf deutsch. Du kannst damit die jeden Tag der Woche in bis zu 13 Abschnitte teilen, und für jeden Abschnitt eine Temperatur festlegen)

  3. I don’t think so.

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126

@Nuick if you are setting up from fresh I’d suggest deviating slightly from the setup I documented and enable mqtt in the homegear config.
This way you don’t need to use the homematic component for home assistant.
I switched mine over to Mqtt a while back and it seems much more reliable.

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Hi, after my nth unwanted MAX reset, I am ready to flash it, and hope not bricking the device. Coming weekend will do the hardware part.

For the software part I ran HASSIO 0.84.6 on a NUC,

Is your first post still working guide? Thanks for it anyway.

If I understoon correclty, you suggest to install Homegear HASSIo addon to be used with MQTT and do not install homematic, yes?

I managed to install the addon , I come to this menu, but clicking on ADMINISTRATION, it gives

# Not Found

The requested URL admin/ was not found on this server.

Homegear 0.8.0-2378 at Port 2001

Cattura
Cattura1072×591 46.7 KB

128

Hi,

Yes the guide should still be working, but as per earlier I’d suggest the following change:
Skip the step for configuring the homematic component of HomeAssistant and instead use MQTT as per @quasar66 excellent suggestion here; Converting a MAX! Cube to CUL/CUN to use with Home Assistant

All you should need to do is enable the MQTT options within Homegear, which are documented on their website.
If i find some time i’ll update the OP to include all steps for MQTT.

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129

You always need the Homegear addon. You can connect it via MQTT or via the Homematic component to Home Assistant.

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130

Hi, I did this, but I do not have thermostats but just the thermostatic valves: not sure we are talking about the same object (a thermostat is for me thge device that turns on and off the heater, the thrmostatic valve is the valve attached to the radiator that regulates the amount of water flowing in the radiator).

You know the mqtt commands to change values to the radiators?

https://www.eq-3.com/products/max/max-house-solution/max-radiator-thermostat.html

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if using MQTT as per above suggestions, will the programming still be stored in the thermostatic valves?

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Ohh I see I need to add a user, but how to add it in HASSIO?

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Only need that for using homematic - you shouldn’t need this if using the MQTT approach.

In answer to your other questions, yes using the HomeMatic Manager to store the timetables to the thermostats will work fine with MQTT (they are stored on the actual valve) - assuming you run in ‘Auto’ mode.

And yes, the MQTT post I linked works fine with the radiator valves themselves (ie. if you don’t use a wall thermostat) - it can set the target temperature and change mode etc… of the radiator valve.

134

I see, great, one additional step solved.

Now the missing part is which are the correct topic for changing things. For each VALVE I should do something like the below code, but which are the topics for my 11 valves …? Basically how do I link a vbalve to a topic … sorry I am … confused :smiley:

 - platform: mqtt
   name: Office Thermostat
   retain: false
   send_it_off: true
   current_temperature_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/ACTUAL_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_state_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   temperature_command_topic: service/homegear/8347/set/1/1/SET_TEMPERATURE
   min_temp: 10
   max_temp: 30
   temp_step: 0.5
   modes: ["auto","manual","party","boost"]
   mode_state_topic: service/homegear/8347/plain/1/1/CONTROL_MODE
   mode_state_template:  >-
      {% set values = { '0':'auto', '1':'manual', '3':'boost'} %}
      {{ values[value] if value in values.keys() else 'off' }}