SmartHome/J TCP/UDP Binding

Automark · September 10, 2022, 10:28am

Hello,

I’ve been using openHAB 1.8 with the UDP-Binding successfully. Now I’ve been trying to migrate to the current version of openHAB and get the UDP-Binding to work, to no avail.

This is my setup:

Windows 10
Zulu Java 11
openHAB 3.3.0
SmartHome/J TCP/UDP Binding 3.2.14
Documentation: TCP/UDP Binding

The installation of the binding worked well, no errors.

The configuration was done completely textual:

The thing is configured to receive UDP data on port 4000 which is sent from my heating system.
The channel uses an address filter with the IP of the heating system.

Thing tcpudp:receiver:string "my UDP Thing" [ localAddress="0.0.0.0", port="4000", protocol="UDP" ] {
    Channels:
        Type receiver-string : udpChannel "my UDP Channel" [ addressFilter="192.168.178.201:*" ]
}

An item is created and linked to the UDP channel of the UDP thing. The channel-ID was copied from the openHAB configuration web site.

String udpItem "my UDP Item" {channel="tcpudp:receiver:string:udpChannel"}

Also I’ve created a sitemap to see the results:

sitemap udp label="UDP" {
    Frame label="UDP" {
        Text item=udpItem label="UDP-String [%s]"
    }

To check the result I use the openHAB → settings → things → channels → item web page (http://localhost:8080/settings/things/tcpudp:receiver:string/links/udpItem/udpChannel), the said sitemap and the log file.

All of them don’t show any update of the item. The log output doesn’t show any events. According to the openHAB web page its state is NULL.

The Windows firewall does not block incoming messages from the local network for Zulu Java 11.

I’m using Wireshark to check for messages from my heating system. And apparently the PC receives these messages:

Source: 192.168.178.201
Destination: 192.168.178.24
Protocol: UDP
Length: 401
Scr Port: 4002
Dst Port: 4000

Further I’ve installed another binding LuftDatenInfo to see if openHAB is receiving anything at all. This works well and the data from a randomly selected sensor is displayed and updated. This indicates that network traffic can be received by openHAB.

Now my question is why the UDP binding does not show any events or data.

I’d be very happy to get some insight about what’s wrong with my setup.

Thank you very much!

Cheers
Markus

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 10:41am

Did you try setting the binding to TRACE logging and see if something is received?

Automark · September 10, 2022, 12:11pm

Yes, I’ve increased the logging level of openhab.event and openhab.event.AddonEvents to TRACE. This does not show anything received.
I didn’t find a special log for the TCP/UDP-binding.

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 12:16pm

log:set TRACE org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp

Automark · September 10, 2022, 12:42pm

Thanks for this advice. I did that right now, restarted the whole thing and got a lot of output. I hope that this can be presented clearly here.

Each line starts with this:

[.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory] - bundle org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp:3.2.14 (240)[org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory(311)] :

Then comes the actual message. Here is the list of messages:

Activating component from state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Dependency not satisfied: $000
Dependency not satisfied: $001
Not all dependencies satisfied, cannot activate
dm $001 tracking 1 SingleStatic added {org.openhab.core.thing.type.DynamicStateDescriptionProvider, org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider}={service.id=479, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.impl.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProviderImpl, component.id=313} (enter)
ActivateInternal
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Activating component from state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Dependency not satisfied: $000
Not all dependencies satisfied, cannot activate
dm $001 tracking 1 SingleStatic added {org.openhab.core.thing.type.DynamicStateDescriptionProvider, org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider}={service.id=479, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.impl.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProviderImpl, component.id=313} (exit)
dm $000 tracking 2 SingleStatic added {org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider}={service.id=480, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.transform.internal.ValueTransformationProviderImpl, component.id=314} (enter)
ActivateInternal
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Activating component from state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Querying state unsatisfiedReference
Changed state from unsatisfiedReference to satisfied
registration change queue [registered]
Checking constructor public org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory(org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider,org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider)
getReferenceClass: Looking for interface class org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider through loader of org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory
getParameterClass: Found class org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider
getReferenceClass: Looking for interface class org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider through loader of org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory
getParameterClass: Found class org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider
Found constructor with 2 arguments : public org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory(org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider,org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider)
This thread collected dependencies
getService (single component manager) dependencies collected.
Querying state satisfied
Querying state satisfied
For dependency $000, optional: false; to bind: [[RefPair: ref: [{org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider}={service.id=480, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.transform.internal.ValueTransformationProviderImpl, component.id=314}] service: [null]]]
For dependency $001, optional: false; to bind: [[RefPair: ref: [{org.openhab.core.thing.type.DynamicStateDescriptionProvider, org.smarthomej.commons.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProvider}={service.id=479, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.impl.SimpleDynamicStateDescriptionProviderImpl, component.id=313}] service: [null]]]
getting activate: activate
Locating method activate in class org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory
Declared Method org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp.internal.TcpUdpHandlerFactory.activate([interface org.osgi.service.component.ComponentContext]) not found
Locating method activate in class org.openhab.core.thing.binding.BaseThingHandlerFactory
Found activate method: protected void org.openhab.core.thing.binding.BaseThingHandlerFactory.activate(org.osgi.service.component.ComponentContext)
invoking activate: activate: parameters [org.apache.felix.scr.impl.manager.ComponentContextImpl]
invoked activate: activate
Set implementation object for component
Changed state from satisfied to active
dm $000 tracking 2 SingleStatic added {org.smarthomej.commons.transform.ValueTransformationProvider}={service.id=480, service.bundleid=241, service.scope=bundle, component.name=org.smarthomej.commons.transform.internal.ValueTransformationProviderImpl, component.id=314} (exit)

I have numbered them, which is not the case in the original output.

There are a few lines that don’t seem quite right to me, e.g. No. 6 and 15. From No. 35 on it looks better in my opinion, No. 46 gives me hope that everything is OK.

Although I can see incoming UDP messages with Wireshark, no events are output in logging.

So is there a problem with the setup of the UDP binding or my thing / channel / item?

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 12:45pm

How did you install it? It seems that some dependencies are not satisfied, probably a bundle is missing. The recommended way is using the JSON 3rd party marketplace which will make sure everything necessary is installed.

Automark · September 10, 2022, 1:00pm

That’s how I did it (I wrote it down so in case it works I can easily transfer it to the Raspberry Pi):

Settings → System Services → JSON 3rd party addons → enter URL

URL: https://download.smarthomej.org/addons.json

Settings → Bindings → Other Add-Ons → install Smarthome/J TCP/UDP Binding

Might output No 40 be the problem?

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 1:04pm

My fault, I was looking with a mobile device and did only see the first messages. At the end every dependency is satisfied.

You do not see any log messages when data is received? Can you please configure the thing in UI so we can be sure that it’s not a configuration issue?

Automark · September 10, 2022, 2:26pm

No, there are not any log messages.
I’m not sure how to do the configuration in the UI. I’ll try again later. For now I’ve found this in the UI code section for the UDP thing:

UID: tcpudp:receiver:string
label: my UDP Thing
thingTypeUID: tcpudp:receiver
configuration:
  protocol: UDP
  port: "4000"
  localAddress: 0.0.0.0
  bufferSize: 2048
channels:
  - id: udpChannel
    channelTypeUID: tcpudp:receiver-string
    label: my UDP Channel
    description: null
    configuration:
      addressFilter: "*:4000"

The status of the UDP thing in the UI says “online”.

Reloading the configuration files gives this log output:

Rule engine started.
Loading model ‘udp.things’
Loading model ‘udp.items’
Item ‘udpItem’ changed from NULL to UNDEF
Loading model ‘udp.sitemap’

The state of the item in the UI is changed accordingly to UNDEF (deviating from the screenshot).

I’ll try to add screenshots of the thing, channel, item.

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 4:36pm

Why do you configure the address filter? If you do so, the SENDING UDP port is matched. Since that seems to be 4002 (according to the information in the first post), nothing will be received.

Automark · September 10, 2022, 5:10pm

To be hones I’ve done the configuration by copying and modifying the example from the documentation (very bottom of the page): TCP/UDP Binding

From the given explanation I understood that the address filter ist used to distinguish multiple devices that are sending out UDP messages to the same receiver (PC with openHAB) and to the same port.
The port of the sender is ignored due to the *.

So now I’ve tried these for the channel configuration of the UDP thing:

Thing tcpudp:receiver:string "my UDP Thing" [ localAddress="0.0.0.0", port="4000", protocol="UDP" ] {
Channels:
Type receiver-string : udpChannel "my UDP Channel" [ addressFilter="*:*" ]
}

and

Thing tcpudp:receiver:string "my UDP Thing" [ localAddress="0.0.0.0", port="4000", protocol="UDP" ] {
Channels:
Type receiver-string : udpChannel "my UDP Channel" [ ]
}

The thing file is loaded without warnings, no UDP messages are received.

Or did I get you wrong and I need to make other changes?

J-N-K · September 10, 2022, 6:13pm

Do you see a message in the log that something is received? I have another report that this only starts working after restarting the system (it could be that there is a bug in re-starting the receiver with a new configuration).

Automark · February 13, 2023, 10:53am

Hello again,
after a long time of inactivity I’ve started looking into this matter again. I’ve updated the installation to the latest versions:

Windows 10
Zulu Java 11
openHAB 3.4.1
SmartHome/J TCP/UDP Binding 3.2.15

I’ve enabled the debug output using this command in the karaf console:
log:set TRACE org.smarthomej.binding.tcpudp

There are no warning messages but still no UDP packets are received.
I’ve checked the network settings in the configuration panel (browser) and set the primary interface to the address used in the UDP-packets. Also, I’ve experimented with the advanced settings (single interface, disable IPv6) but this didn’t help either.

I’m kind of stuck now and hope that someone can point me to what I’ve been missing. Thank you very much!

Update:
I’ve found a different tool NetworkTrafficViewer for network analysis (NetworkTrafficView - Monitor the traffic on your network adapter). This tool also shows that there is incoming UDP traffic with the IP addresses and ports as in my very first post for this topic.

Somehow I get the feeling that the UDP packets do not reach this binding or the binding is not capable of picking them up even when start_debug.bat is started as admin.

Wolfgang_S · February 13, 2023, 7:12pm

is the target port listed in listening mode ?
does the network sniffer ( wireshark ) show that the UDP package is ‘delivered’ or is there any error message saying that the destination/port is not reachable ?

Automark · February 14, 2023, 9:22am

Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure how to check if the target port is in listening mode. Wireshark and NetworkTrafficView don’t show any errors.

In my desperation I’ve completely disabled the firewall of my PC. And voilà, the UDP packets are received by this binding. So the Windows firewall is blocking tha packets. I was not aware that the network monitoring tools somehow bypass the firewall and show the traffic before it is being filtered.

Now I’m not sure if this community is the right place to ask this question. I’ll try anyway:
How do I find the filter that is responsible for blocking the UDP traffic? How could I add an exception to the firewall?

I’ve already tried to add an exception for the known IP-addresses and ports to allow UDP. But even if I allow all UDP traffic from all IPs and any port this does not seem to work. Maybe there’s an higher-ranking rule that overwrites my exception? I’ll keep trying…

Wolfgang_S · February 14, 2023, 4:30pm

Is it the default Defender firewall or a different product ?

Automark · February 15, 2023, 7:39am

It is the Windows Defender Firewall.

What I’ve found is that the Zulu Java which is used to run openHAB an my Windows 10 PC has created a rule to block any UDP traffic (all addresses, all ports) for incoming traffic. When I disable this rule the UDP binding receives packets.

But I’m quite sure this rule is there for a reason. So the question now is how can I partially overwrite this rule with one that allows the specific UDP traffic for openHAB. I’ve set up such a rule but somehow it seems to be ignored. Is there a way to prioritize rules?

Automark · February 15, 2023, 9:12am

I’m not sure if that’s clean and a good solution but this works:

Change the Zulu UPD blocking rule to exclude the specific ports.
So it is not blocking all ports any more but just say 0-3999, 4001-65535 which allows port 4000 for the local port, similar for the remote one.
Add a new rule to allow UDP for the specific ports which would be 4000 for the local port.

Both rules are needed to get the UDP pakets to the binding.

Thanks for all your input and help!