search

rvdbreemen / OTGW-firmware

A ESP8266 devkit firmware for the Nodoshop version of the Opentherm Gateway (OTGW)
MIT License
145 stars 34 forks source link

Comparison with diyless hardware, firmware, library and other alternatives #146

Closed JeroenvdV closed 1 year ago

JeroenvdV commented 1 year ago

Hi,

I think it would be useful to expand the README.md and add some info comparing this firmware and its capabilities to alternatives. So far I have found the following:

A library to interface with OpenTherm: https://github.com/ihormelnyk/opentherm_library An Arduino-adapter for OpenTherm (seems simpler than the OTGW): http://ihormelnyk.com/opentherm_adapter An Arduino-sketch for the ESP8266 to use an OpenTherm Shield (based on the above adapter) with Home Assistant, and other variants: https://github.com/diyless/home-assistant-opentherm-thermostat

These are all parts of the same group of projects by Ihor Melnyk (@ihormelnyk), it seems. As far as I can currently tell, you can use both a stack of the above, and a stack with this OTGW-firmware + an OTGW device to do some of the same things:

However, there are also many differences I can see at first glance:

I'm not familiar with the history of each project and perhaps the influence of one on the other. As a prospective user I'd like some help understanding the differences, which is why I propose to add a comparison (by the author) to the README.

JeroenvdV commented 1 year ago

I also have a few open questions about the functionality of each system and how they could even work together.

DaniilMir commented 1 year ago

I also have a few open questions about the functionality of each system and how they could even work together.

  • This OTGW-firmware seems to be very full-featured. What software changes would be needed for this to work in conjunction with http://ihormelnyk.com/opentherm_adapter in place of the OTGW device and do away with the OTGW hardware entirely?
  • If I understand correctly, this firmware is taking over tasks that OTGW can also do itself. If so, which aspects are still the responsibility of the OTGW PIC firmware?

I just have the same question. I was playing around with Ihor Melnik's project and was thinking how to add there a webserial so I could integrate it with hasssio. It the end I found this project and did a Frankenstein. First NodeMCU is running opentherm adpater in a gateway mode and a second NodeMCU is running OTGW Firmware and tallking to first device via serial =)))) and yes, it works )

Running on just a single NodeMCU without need of programming PIC it would be a super nice thing.

rvdbreemen commented 1 year ago

Cool that it works. Link to your code base. So I can see if I could support it in the future. Thanks 🙏

DaniilMir commented 1 year ago

Here is the code. I used a default one without any changes. https://github.com/ihormelnyk/opentherm_library/blob/master/examples/OpenThermGatewayMonitor_Demo/OpenThermGatewayMonitor_Demo.ino

rvdbreemen commented 1 year ago

@DaniilMir could you explain a bit more what you did? I am not understanding it yet. So let me know.

DaniilMir commented 1 year ago

@rvdbreemen Sure.

  1. I took one NodeMCU board and flashed it with the "OpenThermGatewayMonitor_Demo.ino" sketch
  2. Connected this board to the DIY OpenTherm adapter based on the https://github.com/jpraus/arduino-opentherm schematic.
  3. Took the second NodeMCU board and flashed it with your OTGW Firmware.
  4. Connected serial ports of both Node MCU's together. So the first node MCU is providing serial output similar to PIC controller output from original OpenTherm adapter schematic. And the second one is parsing this output and talking to MQTT server )
rvdbreemen commented 1 year ago

Okay, that does make sense that my firmware, if the OT stream is similar to that of the OTGW PIC will decode it. This would mean if I integrate that directly I could support other hardware variants.

However that's not been my focus so far, and I have no plans to add this, unless there is a real demand for this. And if it would add value to my project. For now I will only support the hardware variant from NodoShop with the PIC controller, as that's a gateway implementation.

So maybe in the future, who knows.