Launching Mochad in Raspbian Jessie/Stretch-Need some help please

[petera]

Hi all. My first post since registering so please be patient..........

I was curious to know if Mochad was still being worked on. The reason I ask is I was trying to run it on a copy of Raspbian Jessie or Stretch and it seems that Systemd has been a real game changer when it comes to running Mochad.

I used the rc.local method on Raspbian Wheezy but it appears that this is no longer an option. It seems that when using Mochad with the Systemd method it will launch and run for sometime then shutdown. From what I understand Mochad needs to be run as a daemon in the background and not a service in the foreground. Also Udev rules need to be created/amended in conjunction with this.

Again there are a lot of posts on this subject on the web but very few if any seem to have a working solution.

I'd really appreciate any help or guidance on the above. Also what is the latest version of Mochad available.

[Brian H]

I don't use the program but found mochad-0.1.17.tar.gz on Sound Forge.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mochad/files/

[petera]

I have Mochad 0.1.17 installed already. There's even Mochad 0.1.18 out there. I believe the creator of Mochad originally posted his work on this site but stopped posting some time ago. The program is very helpful. Is he still developing the program.

[Brian H]

I don't have any more information on Mochad.
Users of the program will probably give you more information and help.

[petera]

Thanks Brian H.

Does anyone know if mmauka is still about on this forum. I was reading about his work on Mochad but unfortunately he stopped posting. Does he still maintain Mochad.

[dhouston]

Does anyone know if mmauka is still about on this forum.

From his profile it appears he last posted here in mid-2011.
http://forums.x10.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19383

[petera]

Yes I noticed that dhoustan. Thanks

I was hoping he was still contributing to the forum. I've a number of questions I'd like to ask him about Mochad. As I mentioned above, the way Mochad is launched on Jessie/Stretch has changed somewhat since Wheezy and most of the solutions are Wheezy based and seem to be around 2015 or earlier.

The solution to my problem is having Mochad run as a daemon in the background which will respond to a command when required. Instead using Systemd it runs as a service and hangs either through inactivity or for some other reason.

Again I suppose I will only get a possible solution from the author or someone who is familiar with Mochad and it's workings.

My HA system is Raspberry Pi based using a CM15 unit so no Windows solutions will apply here. If anyone could point me in the right direction I would be eternally grateful.

[Tuicemen]

In the thread started here mmauka stated to post Questions to that thread http://forums.x10.com/index.php?topic=22045.0
or Sound Forge discussion https://sourceforge.net/p/mochad/discussion/?source=navbar
If they haven't changed their email they will get notification of a post to their thread.
They will not get notifications of a new thread on this forum

[petera]

Thanks Tuiceman. I've checked that one out too. Very little activity there either.

Quite a few people are asking questions about Mochad on the web probably down to the fact that it is a very usable program on the likes of the Raspberry running x10 under Linux. It's a great Lille program for HA too.

I'll keep a watch out for any updates on Mochad and hopefully mmauka will return at some stage.

[Brian H]

I did a search on the Cocoontech Forum for Mochad.
I didn't see much activity there either.

Found this but it also looks dated.
http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_mochad-x10

GitHub also didn't look like anything recent.
https://github.com/SensorFlare/mochad

I hope you can find your assistance and that the author or some other person. Still is supporting it.

[petera]

That's the problem Brian H. All the chatter is quite dated and tailed off around the end of 2015. Quite a few similar queries to mine on other sites since then but very few working solutions.

Maybe the author is otherwise occupied as most of us are. Again I'll report back here if I make any further progress. It was a great piece of work and still is and gave me the opportunity to extend the use of my x10 equipment beyond AHP and integrate it into the world of Linux.

If what I am reading recently is correct, MS are aiming their future development solely at a cloud based solution and I dont think I'll want to go down that road for obvious reasons.

[Brian H]

Well Mochad is still being asked about.
I found a new thread started today on CocoonTech Forums.
Maybe you may want to keep an eye on it and see what develops.
http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/30726-x10-mochad-usb-wheezy-and-jessie-and-ubuntu-1404-and-ubuntu-1604/

[petera]

Thanks for that Brian H. I'll keep an eye on it and see how it develops 

[petera]

Just to update my OP. I remembered I had an old MS13a RF sensor located in the house and the batteries were still active. I removed the batteries and it looks like my problem is now solved. It appears that the RF signal from the sensor each time it was tripped was locking up the CM15 via Mochad.

From what I'm reading it is advised that the CM15 should be connected up to AHP and the macros and the monitored house code cleared from memory in order to avoid this. I'm a little curious as to why this might be the case.

[docbell]

I'm new to this group and coming late to this thread, but I can offer encouragement to potential mochad users. I am running mochad 0.1.17 under Raspian Stretch on couple of Raspberry Pi's connected to CM19A interfaces. Systemd can be annoying, but the latest releases of Raspian have smoothed most of the wrinkles, and it handles essentially all my background services (web server, mochad, vnc, etc.) without complaint. My control software is based on node-RED, so I can't say anything about AHP or the CM15A, but I will be happy to help as far as my experience permits.