MOCHAD

mochad is a Linux TCP gateway daemon for the X10 CM15A RF (radio frequency) and PL (power line) and the CM19A RF controllers.

Why this fork ?

Changes were needed to the Neil Cherry (linuxha) fork to compile and install mochad on recent 64 bit versions of Linux with the systemd init system. Specifically these have been tested on

x86_64 GNU/Linux : Mint 20.1, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (focal), Linux 5.4.0-124
aarch64 GNU/Linux : Armbian 22.05.3, Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS (jammy), Linux 5.10.123-meson64
aarch64 GNU/Linux : Raspberry Pi OS 2022-04-04, Debian 11.4 (bullseye), Linux 5.15.32-v8+
aarch64 GNU/Linux : Raspberry Pi OS 2023-05-03, Debian 11.7 (bullseye), Linux 6.1.21-v8+

Need for Changes

Source

mochad could not be built because of the following linking errors

/usr/bin/ld: decode.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:31: multiple definition of `RfToRf16'; mochad.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:31: first defined here
/usr/bin/ld: decode.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:29: multiple definition of `RfToPl16'; mochad.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:29: first defined here
/usr/bin/ld: decode.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:26: multiple definition of `PollTimeOut'; mochad.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:26: first defined here
/usr/bin/ld: decode.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:25: multiple definition of `Cm19a'; mochad.o:/home/hestia/mochad-master/global.h:25: first defined here

The problem was solved by declaring those variables as extern in global.h and defining PollTimeOut in global.c.

Configuration

The mochad service was not installed properly in systemd and it would stop functioning with a

usb_claim_interface failed -6

error.

The solution was to restore the systemd and udev directories found in the original mochad-0.1.17 repository by mmauka. Modification of the Makefile.am was also necessary.

Patching version 0.1.17 by mmauka

Instead of installing this fork, one could apply a couple of small patches to version 0.1.17 of mochad from the original author mmauka. The patches and details are res directory.

If IPV6 support is needed then this fork will have to be installed as explained next.

Installation of `mochad`

FR: Il y a une traduction en français de ces instructions.

Prerequisite

$ sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev

On the Raspberry Pi it was also necessary to install autoconf

$ sudo apt install autoconf

While not strictly necessary, netcat is useful when testing the mochad deaemon. It was present on two of the test platforms but it had to be added on the Raspberry Pi.

$ sudo apt install netcat-openbsd

Getting the source

The source code on GitHub can be obtained with any one of the usual methods. Notably

by cloning the repository

$ git clone https://github.com/sigmdel/mochad.git
$ cd mochad

by downloading the archive

$ wget https://github.com/sigmdel/mochad/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
$ unzip master.zip
$ cd mochad-master

Enabling IPV6 support

By default, IPV6 is not enabled until the value of the IPV6 macro at the very start of mochad.c is changed.

  #define IPV6    1

I do not use IPV6 and have not tested that code at all. Any questions about that feature would have to be addressed to its author, Neil Cherry.

Compiling the source

While it should be, make sure that autogen.sh in the mochad-master directory is an executable

$ chmod +x autogen.sh

From within the directory, run the autogen script.

$ ./autogen.sh

This will create the Makefile, so now run make.

$ make

Installing the package

$ sudo make install

Again within the directory containing the source.

Installed files and cleanup

 /usr/local/bin/mochad
 /etc/udev/rules.d/91-usb-x10-controllers.rules

In systemd systems such as Raspberry Pi OS, the service file is also installed

 /etc/systemd/system/mochad.service

Once the installation is completed, all the other downloaded and generated files can be deleted if desired.

More information

The original README text file contains much more information.

The version of mochad.service found in this fork comes from Andreas's 2021-09-07 post on the flimsy grounds that the unit file looks more sophisticated. Compare it with another version by Eberhard Beilharz (ermshiperete).

Steve Porter provides a fork of the mmauka 0.0.17 version which he presents as mochad-0.1.21. It is a different solution to the compilation problem. See details here.

More information about this fork in excruciating details at Mochad on Recent Linux Distributions.

FR: Il a plus de détails au sujet de cette fourche dans un billet intitulé Mochad sur les distributions Linux récentes.

License

GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3) according to the original project page on SourceForge.

gharris999/mochad