Homeduino Plugin, Error installing / pimatic 0.9.46 / node 8.x.x / npm 6.x.x

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Hello,
i installed a new pimatic 0.9.46 on my second RasPi. The installation worked without any problems. Many thanks for the great work! I am really glad that it will go on and pimatic comes to an end.
I want to exchange the SD card with my productive system when it is ready. So I installed all the plugins I need. Without finishing configuring them. This will later make config.json from my running pimatic.
Unfortunately I have problems with the installation of the Homduino plugin. All plugins could be installed without problems. Except Homeduino.
On my second RasPi the following is installed:

pi@raspberrypi:~/pimatic-app $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 4.14.98-v7+ #1200 SMP Tue Feb 12 20:27:48 GMT 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux
pi@raspberrypi:~/pimatic-app $ npm -v
6.4.1
pi@raspberrypi:~/pimatic-app $ node -v
v8.15.0

The Homeduino installation gives me the following (it is only a part of the output):

gyp ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/npm/nodemodules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "build" "--fallback-to-build" "--module=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm/serialport.node" "modulename=serialport" "modulepath=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm"
gyp ERR! cwd /home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/node_modules/serialport
gyp ERR! node -v v8.11.1
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v3.6.0
gyp ERR! not ok
node-pre-gyp ERR! build error
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack Error: Failed to execute '/usr/bin/node /home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/npm/nodemodules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js build --fallback-to-build --module=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm/serialport.node modulename=serialport modulepath=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm' (1)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/nodemodules/node-pre-gyp/lib/util/compile.js:83:29)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack     at emitTwo (events.js:126:13)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:214:7)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack     at maybeClose (internal/child_process.js:925:16)
node-pre-gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess.handle.onexit (internal/childprocess.js:209:5)
node-pre-gyp ERR! System Linux 4.14.98-v7+
node-pre-gyp ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/nodemodules/.bin/node-pre-gyp" "install" "--fallback-to-build"
node-pre-gyp ERR! cwd /home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/node_modules/serialport
node-pre-gyp ERR! node -v v8.11.1
node-pre-gyp ERR! node-pre-gyp -v v0.6.18
node-pre-gyp ERR! not ok
Failed to execute '/usr/bin/node /home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/npm/nodemodules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js build --fallback-to-build --module=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm/serialport.node modulename=serialport modulepath=/home/pi/pimatic-app/nodemodules/pimatic-homeduino/nodemodules/homeduino/nodemodules/serialport/build/Release/node-v57-linux-arm' (1)
npm WARN This failure might be due to the use of legacy binary "node"
npm WARN For further explanations, please read
/usr/share/doc/nodejs/README.Debian

npm ERR! serialport@2.0.6 install: `node-pre-gyp install --fallback-to-build`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the serialport@2.0.6 install script.
npm ERR! This is most likely a problem with the serialport package,
npm ERR! not with npm itself.
npm ERR! Tell the author that this fails on your system:
npm ERR!     node-pre-gyp install --fallback-to-build
npm ERR! You can get their info via:
npm ERR!     npm owner ls serialport
npm ERR! There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! System Linux 4.14.98-v7+
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "pimatic-homeduino" "--unsafe-perm"
npm ERR! cwd /home/pi/pimatic-app
npm ERR! node -v v8.11.1
npm ERR! npm -v 1.4.21
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR!     /home/pi/pimatic-app/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0

Do I have to switch back to node 4… and npm 2… to install Homeduino?

@thrusty said in Homeduino Plugin, Error installing / pimatic 0.9.46 / node 8.x.x / npm 6.x.x:

Do I have to switch back to node 4… and npm 2… to install Homeduino?

I’ll have a look at this. Most likely the version of "serialport2 we use is too old and not compatible with node-gyp used as part of node v6 onwards. I had already ported Homeduino to a newer version, but I never realized because I notice stability problems. I’ll get back to you on this in a few days. If you don’t want to wait node switching back v4 may be an option.

@mwittig
Okay, and thank you very much.
I’d rather wait a little.
My productive pimatic system runs stable with 0.9.42 and v4.
I want the second system to run with newer versions before I change the SD card.

@mwittig As there are many changes awaiting in the next version of homeduino (also some changes from me ), it would be great to solve these issues. Can you tell what the problems are?

@michbeck100 said in Homeduino Plugin, Error installing / pimatic 0.9.46 / node 8.x.x / npm 6.x.x:

Can you tell what the problems are?

The main issue was a stability problem with serialport the last time I tested it. After about 30 minutes the communication between the plugin and the homeduino core on arduino got out of sync - lot’s of garbled symbols. I need to revisit this issue now with the a hopefully more stable version of serialport. Besides this some (buggy) protocols changed which might affect some users. However, we can release the protocol changes at a later point and focus on serialport stability for now.

Update: Some good new and bad news:

Good news: I have migrated the serialport driver to node-serialport@6 which supports node v4 to v8, at least.
https://github.com/pimatic/homeduinojs/commit/4d0cd1e1c5284a2116890c1e68cc6120446c10cd

Bad news: I still have the stability issue. Maybe it is just my Arduino running wild. Possibly, the Arduino sketch produces an overflow. It happens after about 6-7 hours! I need to do some more testing with modified Arduino sketeches to see what happens. The recovery procedure of the board driver does not work at all, btw. That’s another thing which needs fixture

I’ll prepare a version for testing soon
If you want to give at try the easiest way of doing this is to use the REPL-Client.

REPL-Client

git clone https://github.com/pimatic/homeduinojs && cd homeduinojs && npm install

Start the repl client:

sudo ./client.js /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

It will connect to the arduino and give you a prompt, where you can enter a javascript command:

connecting to /dev/ttyUSB0 with 115200
data: "ready"
connected
homeduino> board.rfControlStartReceiving(0)
data: "ACK"
undefined

The output is colorized by default. You can disable colors by starting the repl client with the option --no-color.