Send and read data from mBus wireless device

Question

Hi,

I have bought an ConnectPort X2 Wireless M-Bus kit and I followed the started guide.
so I'm registered in iDigi Device Cloud and I added my X2 m-bus to the device list.
At the end I loaded to x2 the MBus_sample that I created with DigiPython that reads m-bus wirelless packet from network and send its to cloud server.

If I open the files that the program send to cloud server I see that data of the message is a string like this:
RKIFYCYAVAE3cmImAFSiBQAbTQAwBWfUfJMjPbVL9RGLu1jWPUh8x1ZwTPn9uBwEMICCvclzMV8yployQSf8mdyBLtl52A==

My doubt is.....what rappresent this string?? how I can translate it to read correct message??

Answer 1

Hello,

I am not sure but for me that looks like a base64 string. I think that when binary data is pushed from the X2 to iDigi, it is converted to Base64 to avoid data loss.

This is the binary data I get after decoding that string using base64:

44 a2 05 60 26 00 54 01 37 72 62 26 00 54 a2 05 00 1b 4d 00 30 05 67 d4 7c 93 23 3d b5 4b f5 11 8b bb 58 d6 3d 48 7c c7 56 70 4c f9 fd b8 1c 04 30 80 82 bd c9 73 31 5f 32 a6 5a 32 41 27 fc 99 dc 81 2e d9 79 d8

I don't know if this follows the mBus protocol, maybe you have now to interpret each byte (or I may be completly wrong and mbus uses a special data encryption and it is not base64!).

Answer 2

OK! it's corretc! Thanks!!

Do you know if it is possible comunicate with X2 in local network? with LAN connection for example??

Answer 3

Hello,

Glad it was helpful

Sure, you can communicate with the X2 in local network using sockets. You can implement the server/client protocol in 2 ways:

1.- You can create a server socket on the X2 listening for connections in a known port and then connect to that socket from the PC and ask for data.
2.- You can create the server socket on your PC listening for connections in a known port and make the X2 to connect to that socket each time you want to transmit data.

In both cases you will need to create a small communication protocol to transfer the data. This way you will know that a packet is received with a determinate lenght and data, something like this:

[MAGIC COOKIE/HEADER][DATA LENGTH][DATA]([CRC]optional)

[DATA] -> [COMMAND ID][PAYLOAD LENGTH][PAYLOAD]

Kind regards.

Answer 4

OK! thanks a lot for all!!
Bye bye