Help with Python Library and Loxberry

[Tico]

I have a pool chlorinator and heat pump by Zodiac. The devices are controlled by a service called iAqualink that is accessed through either an iOS or Android app. The manufacturer has provided no public API for interfacing with 3rd party systems.

I wish to integrate them into Loxone for energy management.

I have discovered a developer that has created an asynchronous library for the iAqualink service. It was created to be reusable by other python projects.

https://github.com/flz/iaqualink-py

I am happy to create a job with a service like Freelancer.com to code the necessary interface. But here I lack the coding experience to define what I want done with the existing library...

Some options I think might work -

1. Library to MQTT server - I'm very familiar with the MQTT Gateway by Christian Fenzl . This would seem a simple option for both monitoring and control and no ongoing software maintenance.

2. Loxberry Plugin - The learning curve required for the Loxberry SDK brings in complexity and thereafter software maintenance overheads.

3. Node-Red node - I'm not well-versed in the back-end of Node-Red, but I believe it's not compatible with a Python library (Node.js)?

If anyone would mind looking at the link above and provide guidance on what direction is preferrable, it would be very appreciated.

[Christian Fenzl]

Hi Tico,

I don’t know the Node-Red programmers interface, I only really can talk about 1. and 2.

In the MQTT case WITH LoxBerry plugin, 1 and 2 are two independent parts.

1. For MQTT to be async in both directions, you open both a Python MQTT listener and Aqualink listener.
MQTT lib eg. paho-mqtt.
Design your service, that it can read it’s configuration from command line parameters, or a json config file.
With that, you have a ready working independent mqtt gateway.

2. Now as your Aqualink mqtt Interface can run independent, most effort for a LoxBerry plugin is to install the required Python libs, and a starting script.
The LoxBerry WebIf can be made very easy in Perl and PHP with some fields required to connect to Aqualink.
The MQTT credentials of MQTT Gateway can be directly read from two jsons (https://www.loxwiki.eu/display/LOXBE...on,Node.js,etc.))
In your start script for your gateway, you parse these json files from bash (jq) and start your gateway with these parameters.

Christian

[Tico]

Thanks Christian. I'm writing a project description and that helps a lot.