i am not a software developer, is it possible to use something like the above to send / recieve open / close commands for things like sprinklers, alarm systems, 24v smoke alarms, dampers, flashers etc…
ok, i have been looking around on here for info on how you would use a PLC with openhab, it seems there are a few people doing it with rasberry pi, or other ARM software. i have a server set up in my house with windows. that is the same server i run openHAB on. are some PLCs better than others? what is the best one for my setup? I am brand new to this whole scene. please help.
It’s a little bit hard to give a good answer without knowing more about the PLC that you are pointing to, or what you want to use it for.
That said, it looks like the PLC has an RS232 port that is presumably used for programming the device. Once the PLC is programmed and running your code, I guess the port can be used for general purpose communication, so I suppose you could write your PLC code to interact with openHAB using a simple message-based protocol over RS232, and then use the Serial binding of openHAB to tie it all together.
Going back to what you want to achieve;
Why do you want to have a PLC in your setup? Is it because you want a separate unit that can run logic to control devices on it’s own without openHAB being involved?
I guess another way to look at this is to drop the PLC and use openHAB to control your devices directly. In that case you simply need some kind of bridge to give you relay general-purpose I/O (relays) - if that is what you will use to connect your devices.
Although not a direct answer to your question, I hope this gives you a starting point at least.
Why not use something that already works? I use several PoKeys57E boards for I/O over modbus, I think it is much cleaner then serial.
Sorry i can’t help, but many thanks for this really interesting links.
Especially @sipvoip - can you give further information on your hardware and software setup?
Sure, i have a PoKeys 57E for my water room, that measures PPM of water coming in, temp, well pump status, well head depth, and RO membrane out PPM. I then have one for each floor in the house that connects to all the door, window, motion sensors. For things like garage doors where I need relays I use low cost relay boards from eBay connected to PoKeys 57E outputs. The boards have 55 pins that can be used for all sorts of things. I read everything over modbus TCP.
You control via openHAB using the standard Modbus binding? Sounds great.
Correct