Relay Equipment Manager (nodejs-poolController sister app) seems broken on latest RPI OS

davethomaspilot · Saturday at 7:44 PM

This year, I figured I update the RPIs on my pool automation. I LOVE nodejs-poolController and Relay Equipment Manager.

But, it seems that Relay Equipment Manager won't work on Bookworm OS, at least for the GPIO I'm using for the flow switch input, chlorine pump output, and acid pump output. The app (REM) crashes when I try to save a pin configuration.

I'm wondering if others have seen this issue?

I think the issue is due to the GPIO being at a different address space versus previous O.S. Initially I thought this was an RPI4 versus RPI3 (and earlier) hardware and found a file that did the address space mapping as a function of RPI version. In fact, I thought I'd fixed the issue by editing the mapping file, but later the issue returned.

At this point, I was clueless about what was going on. I posted an issue about several months on their github response. I got a reply from tag... that asked if @rstrouse had any insight on what's going.

@rstrouse never replied.

The last several days I've been trying to get it working on an RPI3 but I'm having the same issues if I use bookworm O.S. Both 32 bit and 64 bit have the same issue.

Everything works fine if I use the old Bullseye 32 bit version.

I'm thinking that support for REM is non-existent or at least minimal at this point. I think I could crawl deep into the code and figure out what's going on and get a fix. But, that would mean I'd have to apply the fix every time I want to get the latest code.

I expect to use the same stuff for a decade or more and need a "game plan" on how to proceed. I now have several SD cards with the Bullseye image that works and a dozen RPI3B (from other projects) on the shelf. So, I can just decide to forget about ever updating again.

So really this is a heads up to others or maybe there is something unique about my setup. Avoid using the latest RPI hardware and OS!

Katodude · Monday at 8:18 AM

I remember that it is recommended to only use the 32bit very often the Rpi OS.

There is no issue running on a RPi 4 my controller has been running on it just fine. I cant tell you what version it is running on, but it has to be over 8 months old.

davethomaspilot · Monday at 9:07 AM

Katodude said:
I remember that it is recommended to only use the 32bit very often the Rpi OS.

There is no issue running on a RPi 4 my controller has been running on it just fine. I cant tell you what version it is running on, but it has to be over 8 months old.

davethomaspilot · Monday at 9:14 AM

Pretty sure it's the OS, not the rpi hardware.

You can tell what version you're running by using the cmd

cat /etc/os-release

It works fine on Bullseye, not on Bookworm.

I think the way REM writes to GPIO is now obsolete--at least that's the way I interpret this thread:

Stop using /sys/class/gpio – it’s deprecated

which seems to say writing to /sys/class/gpio (like is done is onfof.js in REM) is obsolete.

I'm thinking about changing that code to use pigpio library to communicate with the GPIO. That would make the REM less vulnerable to hardware and OS changes--pigpio isolates the details from the application code.

I'm good at C and C++ but not nodejs stuff REM is using. I'm pretty sure I could figure it out, but I'd rather get the attention of the developers @rstrouse and at least get confirmation I'm going down the right path before I spend what will probably be a couple of days on it.

Katodude · Monday at 11:21 AM

I am using bullseye.

I would wait until we hear from @rstrouse before you go spending a lot of time. He may just be offline for a bit, but he is usually pretty responsive. If you dont hear in a few weeks @tagyoureit may know how to reach him.

davethomaspilot · Monday at 12:05 PM

Katodude said:
I am using bullseye.

I would wait until we hear from @rstrouse before you go spending a lot of time. He may just be offline for a bit, but he is usually pretty responsive. If you dont hear in a few weeks @tagyoureit may know how to reach him.

Tagyoureit said he was looking into way back Jan 16. He pinged @rstrouse for help. I haven't seen anything since then.

I posted again a couple days ago, still nothing. That's why I thought I'd try here.

davethomaspilot · Monday at 12:07 PM

tagyoureit
on Jan 14

Collaborator

I've been looking into this. I need to dig deeper. I'm not seeing why the gpio's are numbered the way they are. And it isn't clear to me if they will change between different hardware (I think it might) or not. @rstrouse if you have time, can you shed some light here?

Just knowing that they weren't going to address it would be helpful. I don't want to invest time if they plan to do it at some point. I'm working fine with Bullseye, so I'm not in a hurry.