Hi all,
Before I attempt a first principles investigation, has anyone done any work on getting access to the Truma RV / Motor-home based heating and hot water systems?
We’ve got a Truma Combi 6e boiler and it does have app control via Bluetooth. Data connections are referred to as ‘TIM’ if that means anything to anyone…?
Thanks,
Hi did you make any progress with this? I’d like to do the same but haven’t found anything related to the TIN interface yet
Hi,
Sadly no, although I now suspect that TIN is an inhouse abbreviation for something like, “Truma Internal Network”, but they would be a complete guess.
I wish I had the skills to listen into the serial bus to workout the protocols in place. Attaching to the serial bus should not be too much of a problem, and I very much doubt it’s encrypted since it’s from a company that cut every penny in the name of profit…
I did come across a project to control the truma thermostat by tapping into the temperature sensor wire. It seemed like a good workaround to control the temperature via a raspberry pi, although it wasn’t a proper integration.
That sounds promising. But true, Not a proper solution, especially as I want to get access to the sensors in the system (there are several), system messages and binary control of the sub systems.
Are there any controls on the main board that could be controlled ?
Maybe reverse engineer the communication from heater and control panel.
The main panel is linked back to the boiler via some sort of serial data bus. The panel has mostly one control, a data encoding rotating knob that you push to set, there is a ‘back’ button and that’s about it. No discrete buttons as far as I can tell.
If I knew more about sniffing the serial data I’m sure there could be a way to read off sensor settings and inject commands.
Hi - A bit late to this topic. But just bought an iNet box and trying to get it working with Alde heating which it says is iNet ready but no joy then I found this thread. I do have the necessary skills to reverse engineer it but it seems so strange that there is nothing about it on the internet at all. For something that’s been around for quite a few years, there is not even a pinout. Interestingly Truma announced last week that due to the semiconductor shortage they were stopping production of iNet box with immediate effect. Just wondering if it is worth the effort of reverse-engineering the Tin bus protocol
Has anyone had any more info?
I had this problem, turns out that the iNet ready sticker is misleading, mine was solved by swapping out the main control panel with one on a higher FW version, I had to pay for that which was irritating.
If we’re lucky, the serial bus that the system operates on will be basic unencrypted serial data, I really can see Truma adding encryption since it’s a closed system.
But it’ll need someone that understands how to sniff serial data to reverse engineer the stream. I’ve not seen a list of codes for sensors or binary controls, and I don’t think Truma would be keen to offer up this anytime soon. But it might be possible to jam in an ESP8266 or an FTDI module to listen in to the traffic, then activate various known functions to try and determine what each one looks like on the bus. Would be quite easy to warm up the main space thermal sensor for example…?
How about attacking the problem thru Bluetooth in the iNet box ?
The manual claims that “it can connect to almost anything”.
I actually stumbled over this document Strom und Spannung im Wohnmobil: Berechnung, Erzeugung, Speicherung - Andreas Weingand - Google Bøger which explains that Truma’s TNIbus (and Schaudts SDTbus) are variants of the LINbus.
If only I had the skills to pull apart bluetooth
Ahh that’s a shame, I don’t speak/read German. Will research LINbus though… Thanks
Motorhome owner here equipped with an Alde 3010 and integrated also into the camper control panel using the proprietary https://selco.se/ bus
So +1 for having this integrated but what can we do? There’s some interested and none of the Alde partners are willing to share any details regarding the bus specifications…:
So this is the closest thing I was able to find
Well that’s certainly a start in the right direction.
Will take a closer look.
I think this might be because A: It’s expensive and not many sold, and B: Because their newer kit includes BT built into the main control panel so the iNet BT box will be legacy at this anyway. Many new vans/RV’s now come with connected and integrated control systems that also integrate the Truma/ALDE HVAC system thus there in many vans there is no longer a separate controller, rather controls are integrated into the main van control.
Either way, sniffing the TINbus should be possible as I very much doubt it’s encrypted.
we are not alone!!!
and here people found out how to sniff the LINbus - suspect the TINbus is just the Truma implementation of it:
By the way found out also this interesting project that would be just great to have a ready integration with HA
This is the one I’m following for now… It’s MQTT only but it’s quite advanced.
https://github.com/danielfett/inetbox.py
Hi,
please have a more detailed look at my solution as well. It is functionally no different from Daniel’s solution, but I already provide the HA entities and it runs on an ESP32 or an rp2 pico w GitHub - mc0110/inetbox2mqtt: communicate over mqtt protocol to simulate a…
Best regards
Magnus