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GE Green Bean open source smart appliance adapter.

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lapoltba:
This is not an advertisement or a product plug, just a combination of a request for help/info/rant on open source.

I just purchased a new hybrid water heater, specifically the GE GEH80DFEJSR found here: http://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-specs/GEH80DFEJSR

I am interested in using their ConnectPlus, or the "Open Source" Green Bean maker module: http://market.firstbuild.com/products/greenbean to automate some energy saving controls I would like to do.

My issues are:

1.  The application that works with ConnectPlus, including IFTTT do not support the functions I want to use.
2.  The protocol and API does not seem to be readily available.
3.  The Green Bean device is supposed to be "open source" but includes ZERO hardware information.
4.  The Green Bean uses node.js which I have no desire to learn how to use and I can't seem to get even a basic example running on my windoze box.
5.  Same as #2 but for the Green Bean.

The Green Bean is touted as GEs offering to the open source community to allow development of smart capabilities for older products that do not have the native functionality.  Limited support (from 2 years ago) for some appliances and zero development leads me to believe they really don't give a damn about open source.  They released just enough to make it look open, when in reality they left out all the useful information that would allow someone to do something really nifty and useful.  From what I can see the node.js commands are for the most part completely locked down and read only.  The only thing you can do with them is change basic operating modes and temperatures.  Hardware documentation is non-existant and obviously was purposely omitted.  I feel like they threw the OS community a bone in order to get some good publicity and since they got their hurahs the project dies a slow silent death.  You can't call something OS and then withhold information, that is exactly the opposite of what the movement is about.

Does anyone know of any hacking/sniffing that has been done to figure out what the RJ45 interface on these water heaters actually is?  I can't imagine it's more complicated than a RS232/RS422/RS485 communication port. I get that this is a consumer product, but if you're going to call something open source, it should all be open source at least up to the guts of the water heater itself.

I'm an automation/controls engineer, and I play with stuff like this every day.  If I know the communication protocol, memory addresses, command set, and communication protocol doing what I want would be a cake walk.  I'm sure just about any Arduino could handle the job. 

JonnyBoats:
I just purchased one of the now discontinued GE GeoSpring 50-Gallon Electric Water Heater with Hybrid Heat Pump from Lowes here in the USA. It was a great deal because my state (Maine) gives a $750 energy rebate so the net cost is less than a regular water heater. Anyway I too would like to use the Green Bean interface and would like to know if anyone has more information on this.

lapoltba:
Give up. I was in touch with the "developers" around the time I wrote that post and didn't get any further than what you can find on Google. The Api is fore Nodejm and basically useless to me as I do not have time to learn another language. If it was python or something else it would be workable. I couldn't even get info on the raw communication protocol so I could just talk directly to the WH. I suspect it is probably RS485. UT even if I could sniff it, it is probably encrypted somehow and I wouldn't even know the structure of the data registers and what they do.

TLDR: Green Bean  seems to have been a half hearted attempt by GE to throw the OS community a bone and now that they have discontinued their line, there is little chance for expanded support for it. I love the water heater but I have better things to do with my time than connecting it to the Internet of poorly secured things.

mwalker:
Seems like there is a fair bit of info on the protocol for water heaters in this file:

https://github.com/GEMakers/gea-plugin-water-heater/blob/master/hewh-interface.docx

As for the node.js stuff, it is just JavaScript, if you know python you would be able to make sense of it. That said all it seems to be doing is opening up  USB HID device with a specific vendor and product id and passing strings back and forth. The packet format is fairly well documented in:

https://github.com/GEMakers/gea-adapter-usb/blob/master/index.js

Based on comments there seems to be a micro controller in the Green Bean device so I reckon I would go with that rather than work out how to reverse engineer the wire protocol.

lapoltba:
Well, I can put my foot in my mouth now.  I did not find that document when I was looking.  I must not have been looking that hard.  :-//

I would bet those are transmitted directly to the WH and the green bean is just a serial converter.  Although, the picture of it shows a PIC24F microcontroller, so it may be more complicated than that.  Worst case the module is only $20 so it isn't worth screwing around with trying to figure out the exact protocol.  If the GB module enumerates as a serial port, that is easy enough to play around with in Realterm to see if the WH will respond to a status command.

Now to set it up with a Raspberry pi and USBIP so I don't have to go down to my basement to fiddle with it.

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