Home Assistant OS not detecting CM15A

[entirelynutz]

This is not related to your application, I am looking for suggestions as to why Home Assistant is not detecting my X10 CM15A. I have tried both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. I have tried with two different CM15A modules. I have even tried using different usb wires. I have also tried USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 powered hubs. Both CM15A modules are readily detected on two different Windows laptops. My Zooz 800 Z-stick is immediately detected by HAOS. Any ideas or suggestions you may have are greatly appreciated.

I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this.

[FloridaMan7588]

I hate to sound like that type of tech, but have you tried rebooting with the CM15A plugged in? When I ran my HAOS in a VM, even with a USB controller passed through I'd still need a reboot when I attached a serial device to the port. It should appear right away like your Zooz USB but you never know.

[entirelynutz]

Yes I rebooted several times. Are there some kind of linux drivers required for the CM15A like in Windows? Are you using a VM running from a Windows machine? My operating system is Home Assistant OS running on a Raspberry Pi 4

[FloridaMan7588]

I no longer run my HA in a VM (use a Pi 4 now), but I ran it on a Proxmox host and HAOS would pick up the CM15A after a reboot. My current Pi detects my CM15A is detected when plugged in. Perhaps it could be you don't have advance options enabled? Go to your HA profile and look for 'Advanced Mode' and make sure it's enabled. If you have advanced mode enabled, I'd check if your OS has updates available and check your system health or the HA observer (ha-ip:4357).

ETA: if your system is unhealthy this is an HA issue, if it is unsupported it is an issue with how you've installed (shouldn't be unsupported)

[entirelynutz]

I installed Virtual Box on a Windows 10 laptop and set up HA version 10.3. I see the CM15A in device manager in Windows. I do not see it in HA settings -> system -> hardware -> All Hardware.

I am actually running HA O/S 10.3 on a Raspberry Pi 4B. The lsusb command before and after plugging in the CM15A shows it seen as device Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bc7:0001. Unfortunately it does not appear in HA under All Hardware. After plugging it in to a powered USB 2.0 hub I did a shutdown of HA and powered off the Raspberry Pi. After turning on power and booting up the CM15A is still not known to HA O/S.

I do have advanced mode enabled and my current version of HA is Home Assistant 2023.7.3 Supervisor 2023.07.1 Operating System 10.3 Frontend 20230705.1 - latest

Is there something else I need to look at and or set? I have tried this with two different CM15A's in both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. I am perplexed since it appears we have the same configurations but yours works and mine does not.

[schmuttis]

While husband, entirelynutz, was working with you I was defining our switches and lights in yaml files. Even though the CM15a doesn't show up in hardware it is able to send commands to the X10 modules. All of the modules are seen as entities but have no ID (which I think is normal). I have the devices scheduled to go on and off using automation and all is working well that way. The problem I have is that HA receives no status change if a motion flood light or eagle eye motion sensor is triggered. I'm assuming that this is due to the fact that HA still doesn't see the CM15a. If an X10 module is physically turned on not using HA, the device doesn't show as turned on in HA. So it seems as if all of our communication with the X10 modules is one-way from HA: outgoing. Is this because the CM15a is not see as hardware or is this a limitation of Mochad in HA?

We have posted about our CM15a hardware problem in the HA community but no one has been able to give us any suggestion to fix this problem. I have attached the Mochad log file.

185c312f_mochad_2023-08-12T14-01-08.065Z.log

We do get this error consistently: Logger: homeassistant.components.switch
Source: helpers/entity_platform.py:267
Integration: Switch (documentation, issues)
First occurred: August 11, 2023 at 11:01:53 PM (1 occurrences)
Last logged: August 11, 2023 at 11:01:53 PM

Setup of platform mochad is taking longer than 60 seconds. Startup will proceed without waiting any longer.

[FloridaMan7588]

I believe this is a limitation of the home assistant integration for mochad, but I don't have a deep enough understanding of home assistant's internals to know for sure. It is also quite strange that your CM15A still isn't detected in HA but you can connect to it through the addon. I do want to improve upon the integration (and addon), or perhaps create my own, but as I said, I don't have that deep of an understanding on HA's internals. I'm also not that good of a real 'programmer' :P. Perhaps I'll look into improving HA's implementation through a custom addon, but it's rather late at the moment so I'll look into that another day. Glad it works alright enough for y'all though, even without seeing the device in HA.

[schmuttis]

@FloridaMan7588 if you have created or have been working on the code for the X10/CM15a interface you are indeed a programmer. Few programmers worth their snuff would ever admit they don't have a list of many things they would still like to learn.

I just wanted to check on what you were saying about the Mochad interface. I'm assuming you are also using it with your HA setup. Are you able to see the state change of your X10 devices in HA if they are turned on by a non-HA source? I was really hoping that the state changes weren't showing in HA for us was due to HA not "seeing" the CM15a as "hardware".

I have a lot of AHK scripts that control our X10 modules that we call verbally from Google and Alexa that I still wanted to use until I had the time to switch everything over to HA. Unfortunately, HA never senses that these devices have been turned on or off this way. I was hoping that there would be some type of polling done by Mochad to "know" the status of the modules. If this is not part of Mochad, is there any possibility that it might be included in the future?

[FloridaMan7588]

Man I have been so sooooo busy lately I hardly even remember working on this project. I've just started High School, well a few months ago now, and I've just had so much to do in terms of school projects, as well as balancing it all with a rather busy social life.

I am happy to know this project is or ever was used by someone. I haven't looked into the integration source code for Mochad in HA so I don't know if this is just a polling issue or not. I remember back when I was working on this I wanted to revamp the integration in a custom HACS integration but never got to it. If I remember to do so, I will look into the source of both Mochad and the HA Integration and see if the polling issue can be fixed.

I will leave this issue open for the mean time, but I may close it in the future if I feel like this is too much for me to work with. Thanks for being a supporter of FOSS.