Who wants to learn more about KIB?

[Suburbazine]

Oh the questions!! What does the daughter card look like? I assume it’s a HAT plugged into the 40 pin GPIO header? Do you know what pins it uses. Does it make sense to reverse engineer the HAT? build a compatible one? I already have a KIB remote solution, but willing to assist here. Actually let me know if you want to chat on the phone. Lots of questions. Can provide lots of insight.

Need to get a CH134 and dump the flash contents.

Not sure if it's better to reverse engineer, I am intrigued by the CAN pins which suggest the ability to signal on at least some automotive standard. Got the driver source code which might make it worthwhile to figure out how to drive independent of the KIB software.

It's designed with a converter onboard to power itself and the Pi from 12vdc. So extra circuitry which could be eliminated. It cannot be powered from the Pi, though the fan will run on Pi power.

The white connector is where everything connects, #1 V-Bus, #2 GND, #3 CAN L, #4 CAN H, #5 12Vdc. I couldn't get the correct harness so I use modified butt splices

 

[DavidL]

View attachment 17352View attachment 17353

Need to get a CH134 and dump the flash contents.

Not sure if it's better to reverse engineer, I am intrigued by the CAN pins which suggest the ability to signal on at least some automotive standard. Got the driver source code which might make it worthwhile to figure out how to drive independent of the KIB software.

It's designed with a converter onboard to power itself and the Pi from 12vdc. So extra circuitry which could be eliminated. It cannot be powered from the Pi, though the fan will run on Pi power.

The white connector is where everything connects, #1 V-Bus, #2 GND, #3 CAN L, #4 CAN H, #5 12Vdc. I couldn't get the correct harness so I use modified butt splices

Makes perfect sense that there are CAN pins. This is to get on a J1939 (powertrain) or RV-C (other than powertrain) networks in modern RVs. For example, most newer RVs, the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) is on the RV-C network. So, the CAN pins would allow the KIBNet box to monitor those sensors.

The only thing of potential interest (to me) is the KIB protocol. Everything else that box could potentially do, we already do in myServer 6. Including the CAN stuff...

 

[the_hern]

I got one of these off eBay months ago and didn’t have a chance to dig into it so I threw it in a bin in the basement. Just came across your post and it totally renewed my interests!!! I’ve already got a couple pi boxes running zigbee sensors but I never thought about popping the cover off this box to see it was just a familiar friend!!!!

We full time and my wife is not fully behind me ‘hacking’ the coach (I’ve over complicated things in our previous house by tinkering) so I need to tread carefully.

Getting onto the box and getting it connected to my network should be childsplay…been hacking Linux since Linus first released it.

My question is, where did you plug it into the KIB V-Bus? Move got a Dutch Star so my thought is to tie it into the lighting control system in the half bath but would love to hear what you did.

 

[Suburbazine]

I got one of these off eBay months ago and didn’t have a chance to dig into it so I threw it in a bin in the basement. Just came across your post and it totally renewed my interests!!! I’ve already got a couple pi boxes running zigbee sensors but I never thought about popping the cover off this box to see it was just a familiar friend!!!!

We full time and my wife is not fully behind me ‘hacking’ the coach (I’ve over complicated things in our previous house by tinkering) so I need to tread carefully.

Getting onto the box and getting it connected to my network should be childsplay…been hacking Linux since Linus first released it.

My question is, where did you plug it into the KIB V-Bus? Move got a Dutch Star so my thought is to tie it into the lighting control system in the half bath but would love to hear what you did.

I went in via the half bath switch, it already has a splitter harness on it. I made an adapter to the box using blue butt splices

Getting in is super easy with physical access, just edit a configuration on the SD card to force sbin at boot and the keys to the kingdom are yours. KIB used no mitigation techniques of any sort.

 

[the_hern]

I went in via the half bath switch, it already has a splitter harness on it. I made an adapter to the box using blue butt splices

Getting in is super easy with physical access, just edit a configuration on the SD card to force sbin at boot and the keys to the kingdom are yours. KIB used no mitigation techniques of any sort.

I'm in...got the wifi all configured but couldn't do too much more...all my pi power supples are pi4 with usbc. I'm not getting clean enough power out of my powered USB hub for this box...whenever I enable the wifi, it gets low power warnings and reboots.

Amazon has one on the way, but I won't get it until mid-next week! Once it comes in and I verify it is stable, I'll connect it up to the V-Bus!

 

[Suburbazine]

I'm in...got the wifi all configured but couldn't do too much more...all my pi power supples are pi4 with usbc. I'm not getting clean enough power out of my powered USB hub for this box...whenever I enable the wifi, it gets low power warnings and reboots.

Amazon has one on the way, but I won't get it until mid-next week! Once it comes in and I verify it is stable, I'll connect it up to the V-Bus!

It's designed to be powered from KIB 12v on the bus. USB is limited by the fan and hat power draw. It's got a 5v 1A fan in the bottom (tapped off the Pi power from the hat) and it maxes out the acceptable limits for the USB port on the Pi. I tried feeding mine with a 3A power supply and it was the Pi limiting power, not the brick.

 

[the_hern]

It's designed to be powered from KIB 12v on the bus. USB is limited by the fan and hat power draw. It's got a 5v 1A fan in the bottom (tapped off the Pi power from the hat) and it maxes out the acceptable limits for the USB port on the Pi. I tried feeding mine with a 3A power supply and it was the Pi limiting power, not the brick.

I'm in and up! Got held up because I normally setup everything manually and NetworkManager was messing with me (and I didnt know it).

I've got it connected to the V-Bus and am seeing the communications in the log file. Trying to get the app working on my phone...but having issues connecting. I can get bluetooth to pair directly w/ the phone, but it fails connecting...will play with this a bit to see if I can get it connected and start looking at the command info.

 

[the_hern]

Any new learnings from playing with this device? I'm settled for the winter and going to see what I might be able to do with it.

I've looked through the source for the app, and things are fairly straightforward, but as stated, the hosted web server does all the real work...not much good logic in the app. I was able to see how to detect the board and initialize communications with it over the pi serial. I've already built a python program I can send and receive commands from the board so I don't need to run the coach app anymore...that was all pretty easy. If I can figure out the commands, I'll be able to build my own interface and tie this into HomeAssistant and Homekit.

That said, I hooked it up to a ch341a, was able to detect the chip just fine (AT25QF641) and dump it...but it all came out as FF. Just did this tonight, so haven't tried to dig any further. I figure worse case, I can figure out what the onboard xmega microcontoller is up to and reverse engineer...unless someone has already figure out the commands for our Dutch Stars...

Anyway, wanted to post my success so far and see if anyone else had made any progress.

 

[flyboy013]

If you want to connect directly to the VBUS and communicate, the important things to know is that the VBUS communications is via J1850 protocol operating at 5V. For starters, you can use a Logic Analyzer to capture the signals and PulseView to decode them (it has a J1850 decoder).

 

[the_hern]

If you want to connect directly to the VBUS and communicate, the important things to know is that the VBUS communications is via J1850 protocol operating at 5V. For starters, you can use a Logic Analyzer to capture the signals and PulseView to decode them (it has a J1850 decoder).

I’m hoping to be able to just use the pi HAT from the Kibnet to handle all the v-bus side of things. That said, Amazon is delivering a Logic Analyzer for me tomorrow.