Downloading and Installing eRVin Configuration Files

Now that you have the eRVin hardware built,ย the image installed and have it connected to your RV, the first thing you will want to do is download and install the proper configuration for your RV.

eRVin OS v0.5 or later adds the ability for you to easily download and install new or updated configuration files via a simple tap or click operation from the eRVin “app” (aka “dashboard”). No complicated computer knowledge needed!

A few configuration files are already baked into the eRVin OS Image (v0.5 or newer) for assorted Entegra models, however as new configurations are developed and/or older configurations updated, they can now be very easily installed. This post explains how.

Changelog:

The changelog lists updates, changes and fixes for both eRVin OS and the eRVin configuration files (flows).

Configuration Files – Important Entegra Notes:

From an eRVin configuration standpoint there are three main categories of Entegra coaches:

  • Vegatouch coaches – 2017 and up
  • Non-Vegatouch coaches 2017 and up
  • Non-Vegatouch coaches 2016 and older

If a configuration file is not yet available for your exact year/floorplan, you may choose one that is from a coach in the same category as yours and some things might still work.

WARNING: DO NOT try to use a config file from a different category!ย  Absolutely do not run a 2017 and newer config file on a 2016 or older coach, or run a Vegatouch configuration on a non-Vegatouch coach or vice-versa. This could enable dimmer controls on relay channels which potentially could damage your Firefly panel.

Note: Due to breaking changes (mainly involving Alexa) between eRVinOS v0.5 and eRVinOS v0.6, only use v0.6x configuration files with eRVinOS v0.6x and v0.5x configuration files with eRVinOS v0.5.

If you have an Entegra motorhome for which there is currently not an exact configuration yet, stay tuned, I will be adding new posts that explain how to modify a configuration file to make at least lighting work with your floorplan. Note however that I will not be actively developing configurations for a coach I do not possess or have access to, so I’m hoping a few owners will be able to contribute back.

Configuration Files – Important Notes Regarding Other RV Brands:

With one exception (Pleasure Way Lexor), no owner developed eRVin configurations have been submitted back to me for inclusion on this site. However, for those of you with other coach brands, all is not lost. With a little work you can use an existing image and configuration, then follow the posts explaining how to modify a configuration file to match the layout of your coach (at least for lighting) and add Alexa control. You can probably pick any of the 2017 and newer Entegra models to use as a baseline configuration, probably the Anthem/Cornerstone version would be best for recent (2018 and up) models. Note: Do not expect any of the lights or other items to work with an Entegra image, most certainly the “instances” will be different and modifications will be needed.

WARNING – it is very important that you do not try to operate any lights until you have made the required changes! It is possible you could damage your Firefly panel (for instance if you try to dim a relay channel).

Download and Install a New Configuration File

From the eRVin “app” (aka “Dashboard”) tap on the hamburger icon (three stacked horizontal dashes) in the upper left corner, select the System tab and scroll down towards the bottom. First you will want to download the latest file from the eRVin server so navigate to the Download Configuration Files group.

 

If the group is collapsed like shown above, tap or click the little blue arrow to the right to expand it, then tap the List Online Config Files button to fetch the currently available files from the eRVin server:

 

Click the checkbox for the configuration you need. If the configuration file already exists you will see a message like the following:

 

It is OK to overwrite it, there may be updates in the new downloaded file, click Overwrite. If the file does not already exist you won’t see the above message and it will automatically be downloaded to your eRVin system, during the download you should see a brief message indicating the status.

Now that the configuration file had been downloaded, the next step is to install it. From the system tab open the Install Configuration File group.

Click the Select RV Model dropdown, then tap the configuration you want.

 

Now click the Install Configuration button as shown below:

Just in case, you’ll have a chance to cancel, but otherwise click the Restart button. At this point the new configuration files will be installed and the eRVin system will be restarted. It can take up to 5 minutes for the new system to fully load:

 

Next you should review the video below about using the eRVin “app”. This is from a much older version of eRVin but will give you the basic idea:

OK, now you will probably want to configure your Alexa account to work with eRVin (for v0.6x and up eRVinOS and configurations only)

 

27 Comments to Downloading and Installing eRVin Configuration Files

  1. Sylvain Bigras says:

    Hi Rob,

    I have a 2021 VanLeigh/Tiffin Beacon fifth wheel controled by a Spyder Control System. I’ve been playing with coachproxy OS for a couple weeks and got pretty much all the lights, fans, awnings, ACs, furnace, heat pumps working. All the coach specific configuration items are in the features.json file. How do I covert this into your environment.

    I would be more then willing to share my configuration file.

    Cheers

  2. Scott Wright says:

    This is great work. I spent the last hour going through the blog posts. I have been using CoachProxy with my Tiffin for a while but that code is basically dead. I am really interested in integrating the RV-C with Home Assistant. The obvious method to do that would be MQTT. However it does not appear that you can publish an MQTT message to initiate a command. I can do it by running the pearl from the command line. Is there anyway to send a command through MQTT?

    Also, I would like to take advantage of some of your improvements but it is not clear if you have kept the Tiffin configurations that are in CoachProxy or if I have to rebuild the configuration in ervin.

    Thanks

    • Rob says:

      Scott, I don’t use HA myself but I know of others that have integrated to coachproxy or eRVin with it. A big chunk of what coachproxy (and eRVin) does is an RV-C to MQTT gateway. Coachproxy listens to the RV-C (/coachproxy/bin/rvc2mqtt.pl) and gateways everything it knows about from the coachproxy/etc/rvc-spec.yml file (which is a map of the RV-C spec) to MQTT. So MQTT is publishing on your local LAN with any available RV-C DGN’s.
      If you want to go the other way, from MQTT to RV-C you are right, the coachproxy perl scripts need to be directly accessed. I don’t know how that would work from HA, but if you can get your command into node-red then you can just use an EXEC node to pass the command to the perl script. You could also possibly do that by installing the SocketCAN contrib in node-red and passing the info to the RV-C that way, but you would need to know how to format the CAN packets. I know people are doing it with HA but not sure how, if I find out I’ll let you know. If you google “node-red home assistant” there seems to be a lot of info out there. Report back if you find a solution.

      I am working on (well trying to) a Tiffin version of eRVin. I keep getting interrupted with life issues so progress is slow.

      However, what you could do for now is a partial solution that goes something like this:

      1) Install the open source coachproxy on SD card #1.
      2) Generate the config for your coach.
      3) Copy the Node-Red config file that gets built. To do that, you will need to plug in a monitor and keyboard, or SSH in to the Pi. The file you want is the node-red “flow” at this path: /coachproxy/home/pi/.node-red/flows_coachproxy.json
      4) Create SD card #2 with an eRVin image.
      5) Replace the Node-Red config file in eRVin, with the one you copied in step 3.

      An untested alternative to the above would be to install eRVin v0.5x (won’t work with v6.x), then VNC (or SSH) in to the Pi, open a terminal window and type sudo /coachproxy/configurator/cp_config.pl. A reboot might be required at this point. Then connect to the pi with a browser and you should see the Tiffin configuration pages. I haven’t tested this.

      Either of the above will retain the full Raspian OS (not the “lite” version), updated node-red, GPSd and other OS updates in eRVin. But any eRVin updates done in Node-Red will be overwritten. However, you could export/import flow snippets from an eRVin image if desired. I am learning the node-red API and have an idea of creating a library of “tabs” (actually node-red flows) that can be installed and updated from the dashboard to add various enhancements. For example a GPS tab would install all the GPS node-red flow mods from eRVin into any node-red flow.

  3. Tim says:

    Hello, I’ve got the installation working on my 2020 Tiffin Phaeton. Of course the configuration file is incorrect, so I need to change many of the instance names and other parts of the configuration. What is the best way to accomplish this? I’ve done some of the online Node Red tutorials and have downloaded a copy of the RV-C protocol standard but I’m unsure how to figure out what specific DGN’s are on my coach. Any suggestions you have would be appreciated!

    • Rob says:

      Hi Tim, yeah something I have been meaning to do a tutorial about for a while. I’m going to email you what is more or less a draft of the tutorial I intend to post at some point that addresses your question.

  4. Bob Boltner says:

    If I am installing a configuration for a 2015 Anthem, should I use the V051 image file vs the V062 image file?

    • Rob says:

      Bob, use the v051, I don’t have any floorplans for pre-2017 for v0.6x.

      What is your floorplan btw?

      What version Pi do you have? If it’s a Pi4 0.51 won’t work as is, I need to recompile the image. I can probably get to that this weekend tho, let me know.

      Also be aware Alexa functions in 0.51 are unlikely to work duecto Amazon backend changes, although there are some fixes that I can point you toward if you feel up to it.

      Rob

      • Bob Boltner says:

        Rob,
        I have a 2015 Anthem DEQ. I am using a Pi 3B+.
        as for the Alexa, please send your fixes, I can give it a try, but I’m new to Raspberry Pi.
        Is there a planned upgrade to v0.6X for this platform?
        Thanks for the fast response.
        Bob

  5. Richard Nelson says:

    Is there a list of config files anywhere other than the app? Interested in Renegade

  6. Andy says:

    I have a 2016 Entegra Anthem 44B. I can get some functionality from the DEQ config file but wondered if you could point me in the direction of modifying an existing config file to match what is in my 44B Floorplan.

    Cheers

    – Andy

    • Rob says:

      Hi Andy, I do intend to publish some posts on how to make mods to the configuration when I have some free time. For now, I can tell you that you will need to become familiar with Node-Red. One place to start is this post:
      https://myervin.com/accessing-node-red-flows

      You may also want to become familiar with accessing the RPi OS for other mods that may eventually be required, see this post:
      https://myervin.com/accessing-the-raspberry-pi

      I do have a short video that walks you thru changing the name of a light switch on the eRVin dashboard:
      https://youtu.be/cmP5na234II

      This is part of what you will need to do to get the lights modified in the DEQ configuration to work on your B. What I don’t get into in that video is changing the instance numbers or how to set up a dimmer vs a non-dimner channel. The instance numbers are the numbers printed on your Firefly panel next to each light. Those modifications will be done in the same nodes shown in the video above. I will try and do a quick video in the next week or so that explains exactly what to change.

  7. Mark Gaulin says:

    Hi. I have a van that is not listed, but I know a friend who created a config file for the same brand as mine (PleasureWay). I think he did it with a version older than 0.5, which has the configs baked in. How/where can I create and edit configs that are not listed? Where are the listed configs stored, so I can learn from them? – Thanks!

    • Rob says:

      Hi, Bob Pough posted a config file many weeks ago for a Pleasure-Way Lexor TS. If you install eRVin and go to the “List Online Configuration Files” in the System tab it will be one of the choices. Sorry I am bit otherwise occupied by life events so not much more I can offer at this time, perhaps contacting Bob will help sort things out.

      • Mark Gaulin says:

        Thanks, I’m sorted out now… my pi didn’t have internet access (and Bob is helped me). This is very cool! Thanks for making this possible!

  8. Mike Dugas says:

    I’m deeply intrigued by this ๐Ÿ™‚ Is there something out there that will integrate with the Precision Circuits systems (Power Control, PrecisionPlex and DigiLevel) systems in my 2019 Fleetwood Bounder? We also have a Magnum charge controller that I assume can be accessed as well.

    These systems are not currently deeply as integrated as they are in the newer Fleetwood models.

    • Rob says:

      Mike, not sure. The core function of eRVin is a RV-C to MQTT gateway. The Firefly panels are native RV-C which is a CAN protocol. eRVin takes the RV-C traffic, converts it to MQTT then processes the info using Node-Red. It does a similar process to send commands back to the RV-C devices.

      So,the devices you mentioned would need to have an RV-C interface and support the RV-C protocol. More and more suppliers are embracing RV-C, for example Garnet SeeLevel, Surge Guard Transfer Switches, Aquahot and yes Magnum. I believe at least the higher end Magnums come with RV-C built in, but a standalone gateway (ME-RVC) is also available. Having said that eRVin does not currently support the Magnum gateway, but does directly support the RV-C version of the SeeLevel gauges as well as the Surge Guard voltage and current reporting. One way to get to a more connected coach is by replacing subsystems with RV-C compliant versions, although that can get very expensive.

      My uncle’s 2018 Discovery has a full RV-C deployment, so perhaps your bounder has some of that tech as well.

      The other option since eRVin is MQTT based is to use that to communicate with devices directly. However, I am not aware of any commercial products that inherently support MQTT, so you would need to develop your own interfaces. I am planning to use MQTT along with an ESP8266 module (cheap wifi) running MQTT to interface simple things like temperature and battery voltage sensing around the coach. This could also be used to control things like the water pump, locks, or even lights and be able to track things like generator hours.

      Getting familiar with node-red would be necessary to roll your own interfaces.

      Hope that gives you some idea what to look for, let me know what you find out!

      Rob

      • Mike Dugas says:

        Thanks Rob. Looks like the Disco uses the Firefly system, mine uses the Precision Circuits IllumaPlex system–I’ve reached out to Precision to ask some questions but so far, no response ๐Ÿ™

      • Mike Dugas says:

        Got my answer from Precision:
        Hello Mike, the Illuma Plex system uses a Lin communication that is proprietary to Precision Circuits and does not support RV-C. Let me know if you have any other questions.

  9. Thomas Saavedra says:

    I have created a Configuration File for my Thor Miramar 34.2. It required making some changes to the rvc.yaml file and the generator.pl file so installing the configuration file will not result in a completely working configuration. I made extensive modifications to the user interface to give it more of the look and feel of the Vegatouch Mira App. I also added propane tank level and slide-out and bunk controls. I would like to integrate it into your eRVin project but it would probably require an image rather than a configuration file. Let me know if you want to make it a part of your project.

    • John says:

      I have a 2020 Thor Hurricane, I’d love to get these configurations from you as a basis for my own work! Are they available somewhere?

      • Rob says:

        Hi, I don’t have configurations for any of the Thor models, no one has taken on that task yet, or if they have they haven’s shared it. You would need to take one of the existing configurations from some other brand and modify it for your coach. Are you able or willing to try to do some “graphical” programming in Node-Red? If so, let me know a little more about your coach and maybe send me some photos of your firefly/spyder equipment an I’ll try and recommend something.

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  11. […] for specific RV Year/Brand/Model/Floorplan direct from the eRVin app. Next you will want to review this post to install a compatible configuration […]

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