Support for Velbus Home Automation

Cereal2nd · October 10, 2023, 4:00am

i never played with the feedback leds.
i just toggle the state of the relay/button i do nothing more.

so in your setup you created a feedback led on a module X, and you want to show the state of channel Z on module Y?
Via hass you toggle Y/Z via the gui and you expect the feedback-led to lght up?

is this your scenario?

wlcrs · October 10, 2023, 6:26am

The Edgelit lights are quite complex to fit inside the model of Home Assistant. I’ve tried a few approaches, but none were satisfactory. A custom service call would be the easiest solution, but I’m quite wary about it getting through the code review stage of HA.

Some of the problems I remember:

you cannot request the current state of the edgelit lights
the colors you can set are a hardcoded list. How do we map to those from the RGB(A) space that HA allows you to choose from?
how do you represent the 4 sides of an edgelit module: if I create 4 separate entities in HA, this is bound to give problems if you want all 2 or more sides to blink at the same time, etc.

Maybe I’ll be able to take this feature back up in the coming winter months, but I’ll need some input from @Cereal2nd on what the best approach will be.

MDAR · October 10, 2023, 10:35am

@wlcrs @Cereal2nd @robbed

I don’t know enough about how the cogs work within HA, but I do know a thing or two about Velbus

Correct, these should never be seen as something that can report a state or be polled.
Especially the Ambient colour options.
Feedback state is probably the same, certainly when you consider that a Velbus panel is monitoring the state changes on (potentially) many modules, to derive the correct Feedback state.
If intending to solely use HA for Feedback state, it is probably best NOT to have that button affected directly by any Velbus activity.
(Which is fine if using that button action for Media Player control, outside of Velbus for example)

To a point they are.
In so much as there are a number of palette presets that are configured with VelbusLink for each Edge Lit panel.

A Velbus action simply calls that Palette number with the required function.

I’m not sure that would ever be possible on any platform.
The Control4 solution is to offer a list of palette presets for the C4 programmer to choose from.

That is a very good point.

There is also the very serious issue of “writing to the memory block too many times” and potentially damaging it.
Because, to set the Ambient or feedback colour value, the state must be written to the memory map, followed by a “reset” command.
I have this working in a Node-RED flow, for use on my demo unit on the understanding that I am risking bricking (or at least damaging) my demo modules.

I would refer everyone back to my previous comment, regarding creating the required colour effects / actions within Velbuslink against “spare” button or relay channels, then trigger the change from HA…
(I know that mimicking button events is now possible in openHAB and Control4, as it always has been with OpenRemote)

This way you can change as many or as few sides as you wish, with or without flashing effect, with one event from HA.

I hope this helps.

As always, feel free to remotely connect to a unit here if you want to do some testing.
I would much rather you “brick” one of my demo units, than a module in your own home/s.

1aranzant · October 11, 2023, 9:17pm

Hello all, I was just wondering if there was some kind of implementation in HA for the dual mode functioning of push and touch buttons (e.g. for double press).
For instance, if I set a button in Velbuslink to dual mode, will it create corresponding virtual buttons in HA? or something similar?
Thank you !

MDAR · October 12, 2023, 6:04am

Hi

What are you trying to achieve?

Because it’s possible to monitor all button events, whether they are physical buttons or virtual, the only thing that hides these things is Velbuslink, but then it only hides them within Velbuslink.

Do you mean you want a Dual Mode button within a HA interface?

Cereal2nd · October 12, 2023, 6:42am

Indeed,

the correct way of doing this (and i do it like this at home) is create a spare button, let this trigger the correct colour effect on the correct panels and then trigger this button via HA.

I’m not in favor of writing the memory from the valbusaio lib.

1aranzant · October 12, 2023, 8:37am

Yes basically my question is whether it is possible to trigger an automation with a longpress in HA. If so, how?

robbed · October 12, 2023, 8:38am

No, what I was trying to achieve was to have a “night light” for my kid, so having the feedback leds glow softly in the night.

What I needed to do was to enable the feedback leds in VelbusLink, after that it worked as expected.

Thanks everyone for your input! I will need to dive a little bit more into VelbusLink to learn how everything is linked toghether.

Cereal2nd · October 12, 2023, 9:31am

simple answer: No

longer answer: No but it can be build, we already support longpress on the bus so should be possible.

MDAR · October 12, 2023, 9:54am

Initially you mentioned

Which option do you need?

Dual mode is simply triggering a second (Non-physical) Velbus button channel, whereas Long_Press of the same Velbus protocol button (physical button) is something else.

1aranzant · October 12, 2023, 12:46pm

any option is fine as long as it does not trigger a short press before the long one.

with the Trigrr software that I have at home, their method of triggering a long press first triggers a short press, so that’s not good…
In Velbuslink you can trigger a longpress with dual mode, which is nice as it doesn’t trigger a short press.

So my question is, is there a way to also do that on HA?
Thx !

MDAR · October 12, 2023, 1:36pm

I understand where you are now.

There is a little confusion.

Dual mode IS NOT creating a “Long_Press” event for the button.

Let me explain.

Take a single button Glass panel for example (This is the same for ALL Velbus hardware)

By default, it only has 1 button active.

To create a “Dual Mode”, we have to activate a second “Virtual” button

Which is then used in the Button Mode tab

No doubt, you have seen the “Long Press Time”, which is what might be causing the confusion here.

What happens with Dual Mode is this.

If you press the (only) physical button on the panel and release it, a “Press” (followed by a “release”) event for Button 1 is put on the bus.

However, if you press and hold that physical button, what actually happens is a “Press” (followed by a “release”) event for Button 2 is put on the bus.

(Long_press events just don’t happen when a button is in “Dual Mode”)

So if you are asking “how do I mimic the Dual Mode”, what you are actually looking for is a Button event for “Button 2”

However, are you asking for a way to create a “HA UI Long Press converted into a different event” within HA, which I think would be a very different question.

Sorry for going around in circles a bit, we just need to be clear on what behaviour you have from your Velbus hardware and what you want to do in HA.

Just for absolute clarity, that is exactly how the Velbus protocol works.
It’s the output device within Velbus that has to know to ignore the Press event and wait for a Long_Press.

That said, it’s fine if you ONLY put a Long_Press event onto the bus, as long as it is followed by a Release, at some stage.

1aranzant · October 13, 2023, 2:10pm

Interesting I see, thanks for the write up !

Bubli · October 28, 2023, 2:12pm

Hi @MDAR , @Cereal2nd ,

First of all: appreciate all the effort you put in this Velbus support!

Since a few versions ago , I’ve had some issues when restarting HA.
The log is spammed with the following error:

Logger: root
Source: deps/lib/python3.11/site-packages/velbusaio/raw_message.py:68
First occurred: 4:08:01 PM (377 occurrences)
Last logged: 4:08:55 PM

Could not parse the message b'0ffb050802008bca7f0000010000'. Truncating invalid data.
Could not parse the message b'0ffb0508ec02110002008bca7f00'. Truncating invalid data.
Could not parse the message b'0ffb0508ec021100806400000000'. Truncating invalid data.
Could not parse the message b'0ffb0508ec021100806400000200'. Truncating invalid data.
Could not parse the message b'0ffb02008bca0ffb0508ec021100'. Truncating invalid data.

Not sure what to do with this.
When I restart HA a few times, when I’m lucky it stops and it functions normally.
When I then restart or update HA again after a while, this returns.

Not sure why it’s happening and why it’s fixed randomly after a few restarts (seems like I just need to be lucky when restarting, sometimes it happens, sometimes it’s fine).

Any ideas?
(I’ve just updated to 2023.10.5)

MDAR · October 29, 2023, 7:54am

Hi

This really is a question that only @Cereal2nd can help with.

Anyone that’s seen my code writing skills will know that I’m not the man to ask.

Cereal2nd · October 29, 2023, 6:08pm

this looks like a bug in the parser.

Is there a posibility that i login onto your bus via a tcp/ip connection to debug this?

1aranzant · November 2, 2023, 2:35pm

Hey all ! I am just wondering what your start-up times are, my Velbus integration takes the most time by really far (78 devices, 1132 entities)

I am using the VMBUSBIP, would using another gateway speed up anything? thx !
(running HAOS on lenovo M710q)

Cereal2nd · November 2, 2023, 2:56pm

no, this is the nature of velbus.

The scan and full read-out takes a long time, so there is no way to speed this up. The initial (first) startup time can be really long, the later startups should be faster (for me its almost 180 seconds for 30 devices)

Begie1605 · December 7, 2023, 10:51am

Hey,
i am trying to implement velbus into home assistant.
I can install automation, link it etc…but whatever i do i don’t see any entities …
If i go in the log file…i see a lot of communication to velbus.

I found some info here…
I tried to clear cache of velbus, reloaded integration…
This is what i see in the log…
2023-12-07 11:39:47.543 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.575 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.603 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.604 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.628 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.binary_sensor] Setup of binary_sensor platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.628 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.button] Setup of button platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.629 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.climate] Setup of climate platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.629 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.cover] Setup of cover platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.629 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.light] Setup of light platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.629 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.select] Setup of select platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.631 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.sensor] Setup of sensor platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.632 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.switch] Setup of switch platform velbus is taking over 10 seconds.

2023-12-07 11:39:47.639 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.664 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.664 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.696 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.725 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.725 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.759 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.787 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.788 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.823 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.849 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.849 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:47.878 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:47.911 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

then i go this
2023-12-07 11:39:53.353 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.353 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.354 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.355 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.356 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.357 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

and after some time i get this
2023-12-07 11:39:53.419 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.419 ERROR (MainThread) [velbus] Not all modules are loaded within a timeout of 600 seconds, continuing with the loaded modules

2023-12-07 11:39:53.419 WARNING (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] EOF received from Velbus

2023-12-07 11:39:53.419 DEBUG (MainThread) [velbus] Reconnecting to transport

2023-12-07 11:39:53.452 INFO (MainThread) [velbus-protocol] Connection established to Velbus

nothing regarding velbus after this…but no entities

Is there something else i can try?
i’m on a rasbery pi, with these versions

Core2023.12.0
Supervisor2023.11.6
Operating System11.1
Frontend20231206.0

Cereal2nd · December 7, 2023, 11:22am

enable the debug log for this integration, it will give you a lot more info.

How are you connecting to the bus? what connection string?