Socat

Want to have a RaspberryPi Zero, or other $5 computer, sitting by your pool equipment while the main code runs elsewhere on your network? Or want to help get involved with the project and debug in an app like Netbeans?

@arrmo was super slick in getting this to run.

There are two options:

1. Run socat each time to enable the pipe
2. Setup a daemon to automatically start socat

The "run it each time" method

Run these commands on the remote machine

1. sudo apt-get install socat to install socat
2. /usr/bin/socat TCP-LISTEN:9801,fork,reuseaddr FILE:/dev/ttyUSB0,b9600,raw
3. Setup the app parameters (below)

The "run under a daemon" method

Run these commands on the remote machine

1. sudo apt-get install socat to install socat
2. sudo apt-get install daemon to install daemon
3. Copy the poolTTY file (in /scripts directory) to your remote machine directory /etc/init.d
4. Run the following command to make the daemon run the socat upon startup: sudo update-rc.d poolTTY defaults
5. Setup the app parameters (below)

Another alternative method

Note: The init.d method below is outdated. For modern systems, use a systemd service or the Docker socat example from the Docker page instead.

Props to @antamy. Another approach to an etc/init.d script. The script is runAtBoot.sh. See https://github.com/chovy/node-startup for instructions to use this script.

Systemd method (recommended)

Create /etc/systemd/system/socat-pool.service:

[Unit]
Description=Socat RS485 to TCP bridge
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat TCP-LISTEN:9801,fork,reuseaddr FILE:/dev/ttyUSB0,b9600,raw
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then enable and start:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable socat-pool
sudo systemctl start socat-pool

See also the Docker socat example for a containerized approach.