Baytech-inc

Projects
Participants	Axello, Meridion, Voidz0r, Wizzup
Skills	Electronics, scripting, RS-232
Status	Active
Niche	Electronics
Purpose	Infrastructure

There are three Baytech RPC28A powerbars which can be used for fun and infrastructure projects. Each RPC contains 21 IEC 'C13' connectors, the same as you can find on the end of a standard computer cable. We can either hack one RPC to use 'kroonsteentjes', or get some C14 connectors or cables.

Arduino and python code to interface with the thingamagic on github

Unfortunately, the RJ-45 is totally incompatible with the standard blue Cisco cable. So, in the absence of spare DE-9 connectors, I have been trying to make a working serial cable out of junk parts: not handy.

In the end, when you know which wires to connect, it is very easy to make a cable to connect a DE-9 serial plug to the RJ-45 on the powerbar. The schematic is below

We can either use standard long ethernet wires with a DE-9 to RJ45 socket, which is handy if we would have an infrastructure with a patchpanel, or a dedicated RJ-45 to DE-9 cable. I made the latter. This cable has no RTS/CTS or DTR/DCD control, as that didn't seem to work.

Cable layout (using TIA568A wiring)

RJ-45	Colour	Pin	DE-9
4	blue	TX	2
5	blue/white	RX	3
7	brown/white	GND	5

There is the problem of the initial user + password on the baytechs we got from the Coloclue. There is a separate page to Reset Baytech to Defaults.

Settings for the serial port are 9600 8N1

Implementation

Suggested is to use a Nanode (network-enabled arduino) with SoftSerial library and MAX232 (or MAX3222) chips (both have been sourced).

A (ip) whitelist could be composed to restrict access to the system (or parts of the system) to particular nodes on the network.

Some ideas about the eventual system have been worked out at Cut/ElectricityManagement.

Documentation

• Quick Start
• BayTech_RPC3_Manual

Status

[Last updated by Wizzup, December 03, 2013 Gotten it to work with Python + USB serial + MAX232. Flow control does not work, but some special tricks with read and write make it block nicely until it finishes an operation. So it is quite functional. Now we just need to write a frontend / API / system around it.

I plan to use a cubieboard and attach all three powerbars to it. Then we can spread them throughout the space and control ALL THE THINGS.

Proposal

Hardware wise:

• Cubieboard
• Cables that fit the powerbar sockets.

Software wise:

• Protected ports
• HTTP (simple protocol), GET/1/1 (Bar 1, Port 1)
• Groups. Each port by default has its own group, but they can be part of larger groups.
• Permissions per group, port... [Don't touch, etc]
• Presets