New plugin for UniPi board - pimatic-unipi-evok

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I am happy to announce the availability of pimatic-unipi-evok for the UniPi board.

The board features many components such as

• twelve (+2) digital inputs with LED signalization,
• two 0-10V analog inputs,
• one 0-10V analog output,
• eight changeover relays,
• a single channel 1wire master controller and
• a real-time clock module.

I have been experimenting with the board for two months now and I believe it is good choice for pimatic users who are not familiar with hardware tinkering and who need a robust baseline for their projects. The plugin implements all the necessary device types to drive relays, inputs, outputs, and the one-wire thermostat. For more information on the plugin see the README.

@leader21 @sweetpi

It would be great if we can do a short announcement on FB as well and add the plugin to the list of plugins.

sure, i’ll take care of the facebook part

edit : done

@mwittig
what about introducing the plugin at the UniPi Forum
http://unipi.technology/forum/

@mwittig I run into a problem updating the website. The plugin tarball (http://registry.npmjs.org/pimatic-unipi-evok/-/pimatic-unipi-evok-0.1.0.tgz) is missing the README.md file and my publish script needs it. The only other plugin this happens is the pimatic-openweather plugin. Both are published by you. Do you have an idea why the readme file is missing?

@sweetpi said:

Do you have an idea why the readme file is missing?

I have just double-checked it. The README.md is included in the “files” section. The npm doc even states the README (and its variants) will be included without “files” settings. EDIT: npm is sick! I have changed the order of entries in “files” and this did the trick. Probably related to https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5082

Sounds really strange. I did check the package.json files array, too. I can confirm it was already there. Anyway, updated the website

@leader21 Thanks for adding the FB post. Regarding the UniPi Forum I’ll ask UniPi if they will announce it on the Forum Board (possibly with a new forum group).

@sweetpi Thanks! I’ll keep an eye on the missing file problem.

Dear mwittig,

Do you have experience with more UniPi boards interconnected to have more IO-s?
Can you please explain me how can be this done? (hardware and software)
Perhaps i need 3 UniPI-s. One must be a master, and 2 in slave mode or something similar? I need one single web interface - in this case pimatic - to control all the IO ports from the 3 boards. The Mervis software is a need, or UniPi can be configured without?

Thank you

@Zoltán said:

Do you have experience with more UniPi boards interconnected to have more IO-s?

No, I only have a single board for testing, but generally it would be possible to drive multiple boards through pimatic. The interaction between pimatic-unipi and the UniPi board is based on IP (using WebSockets and HTTP(s)).

Note, however, the current version of the pimatic-unipi plugin can only handle a single unipi board.

Another option for you may be to use an extension board for UniPi base board, e.g. the Relay add-on This option should be supported by pimatic-unipi. Keep also in mind you can have more input/ouputs via the I2C and the 1wire serial busses. You should be able to handle up to 16 devices on each bus. Theoretically you can do more, but you may electrical issues with the lines (Capacitance of the lines, essentially) with long cables, in particular. See the following article on cable length for 1wire.

Can you please explain me how can be this done? (hardware and software)

Assuming an extended version of the pimatic-unipi plugin to handle multiple UniPi boards a setup could be as follows:

• two UniPi boards where each boards has its own Raspi hooked on top of it. The Raspis will be connected to the LAN (or WLAN) and run the Evok software - https://github.com/UniPiTechnology/evok
• one of the Raspis may host Pimatic with the pimatic-unipi plugin to drive both boards through pimatic. This will also work for more than two UniPis and, of course, it is also possible to setup pimatic on a seperate Raspi.

Perhaps i need 3 UniPI-s. One must be a master, and 2 in slave mode or something similar?

see above

I need one single web interface - in this case pimatic - to control all the IO ports from the 3 boards. The Mervis software is a need, or UniPi can be configured without?

You don’t need Mervis. The pimatic-unipi plugin is based on Evok - https://github.com/UniPiTechnology/evok which is open source. Evok is fairly easy to install.

Hello,

Is there any update on supporting more than one unipi board?
I found out about pimatic two days ago, and it is absolutely amazing
But I have multiple unipi boards in my house and I want to control them from one interface…

Thank you!

@jirkaehm Unfortunately, this is not yet supported.

I am happy to add this feature, but it will take some time as I am very busy at the moment. Perhaps I can add a simple sollution for manually setting up devices for multiple boards in the short term and add the full monty sollution with auto-discovery at a later stage.

@mwittig Any way would be great, even if it is hard to configure. In final setup I will use two pimatic installations on each unipi board for automation rules. But it would be nice If I could watch temperatures and relay status from one user interface

Well if I think about it, your reply from another post could propably solve this … https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/2015/relay-status-through-api I will try it and get results back here.

HI
I see the topic is very old any news or work on get unipi-evok whit more then one board Iam new on pimatic and playing a liitle whit s103+xs50 / unipi v1.1 .
Regards from Austria