Connecting eRVin to your RV

At this point you should have assembled the eRVin hardware then downloaded and flashed the eRVin OS image. This tutorial assumes you have an existing wifi network aboard your RV, preferably with full time internet access.

Connecting eRVin to your RV-C Network

Step 1 – connect your eRVin system to the RV-C network on your RV. The easiest and most accessible place to do this is on the front of a Firefly panel. You may have more than one Firefly panel, choose one that is in a well protected and easily accessible area. If you have just one Firefly panel it is usually located in the bathroom. Simply plug the black 4 pin plug from eRVin into the Net Port on the Firefly panel. The connector is keyed with a locking tab so there is only one way to plug it in. Click here for a video of the procedure.
 
There are other hidden places to plug in this system that vary by RV brand, model and floorplan which are discussed in another post.
 
 
Step 2 – After plugging in, the red LED on the eRVin hardware will light up solid and the green LED will flicker. ***Wait about 10 minutes*** – when loading a newly flashed image for the first time, it boots up then runs a script to expand the filesystem to fit your SD card, then reboots itself again, this takes some time. Your wifi info should have already been pre-loaded when you flashed the image and eRVin should connect to your network automatically. If your wifi info was not pre-loaded correctly, or does not work for some reason, please see this post for how to change it.
 
Step 3 – Now you can connect to eRVin from any device that has a web browser – any laptop, desktop, tablet or smartphone. It can be a Windows, MacOS, Android or iOS device, or even something else as long as it has a web browser compliant with modern standards. You can even connect to eRVin from multiple devices at the same time! My preferred device is my smartphone (Samsung Android) using the Chrome browser, so the screenshots that follow will reflect that, your screens may look different.


To connect to eRVin, make sure your device is connected to the same wifi network as eRVin. Then open a browser window and type “coachproxyos” (without the quotes).

Step 4 – You should get a screen that looks something like the image below. Again, this is the screen on my phone, the screen will look different for you depending on the screen size of your device. If you don’t get connected, you will need to find eRVin’s IP address – click here for help on how to do that, then proceed to Step 5.

Step 5 – Once you have the coachproxyos link working, or an IP address, on a Mac or PC you can set a bookmark, but on a smartphone or tablet, ideally you now want to turn the eRVin web page into a quickly accessible “app” by making a shortcut of it. This will make it super easy to access eRVin by creating a dedicated icon that will take you directly to eRVin with just one tap. From Android this is very easy to do and I believe the process is similar for IOS.

For Android Chrome, tap the 3 dots in the upper right corner, this will bring up a list of options, as shown below look for Add to Home Screen or something similar and select it.

This will create an icon shortcut on the Home screen or desktop that will take you directly to eRVin, so there will be no need to open the browser and type the URL or IP address.

Do the same process to create shortcuts for your other devices as desired.

IMPORTANT – eRVin Powerdown Procedure

Now that your eRVin is up and running, please watch the short video below which discusses the proper power shutdown procedure. Failure to shutdown before removing power can possibly cause corruption to the SD card.

 

Loading a Configuration File

Next you will want to load a compatible configuration file.

 

16 Comments to Connecting eRVin to your RV

  1. […]   Proceed back to Step 4 of Connecting eRVin to Your RV. […]

  2. Marc W says:

    Is this still a viable option? I have left a couple of messages here and they appear to be gone.
    If the Alexa option is still broken could someone let me know?
    Thank you!

  3. Marc says:

    I tried to contact you but received an error. Is that no longer working?
    Thanks

  4. Scott says:

    Hello,

    With significant hand-holding from the excellent Bob Pogue, I have installed eRVin on an RPi and plugged it into my 2018 Pleasureway Plateau TS. And it mostly is working like gang-busters! I have really enjoyed playing with the hardware, and am starting to learn node-red.

    TLDR: I am having problems getting admin security to work to protect my flows. I tried updating Rasbian, NodeJS, and now I am considering upgrading to the latest node-red (v2+). Will this break the existing coach-proxy and my own flows?

    I do have a few questions. For example, I have noticed the node-red admin security system is a bit weird on my install. Specifically, if I turn on the admin security options to password protect my flows, I see some strange behavior. Under Safari, after entering my password, it will load the flows, progressing to about 80%, and then freeze. If I try FireFox, it does the same thing, but then asks for the password again. It makes a little more progress, and asks again. It will do this ad-infinitum. However, in the password request window, at any point, I can hit cancel, and it will immediately open the flows. So essentially no security. I have turned on logging to the highest level, yet nothing really stands out as to the problem. It occasionally says it is flushing the localfilesystem context scope global, and sometimes seems to reference the computer I am contacting it from. Example log below:

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [audit] {“event”:”nodes.list.get”,”level”:98,”user”:{“username”:”admin”,”permissions”:”*”},”path”:”/nodes”,”ip”:”192.168.0.10″,”timestamp”:1642124294022}

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [audit] {“event”:”comms.open”,”level”:98,”timestamp”:1642124294068}

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [trace] comms.open ritlx5jo9mNc2ScXQkyLGiX8L5sihPLM42jFabt2eo0=

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [audit] {“event”:”nodes.icons.get”,”level”:98,”user”:{“username”:”admin”,”permissions”:”*”},”path”:”/icons”,”ip”:”192.168.0.10″,”timestamp”:1642124294076}

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [audit] {“event”:”comms.auth”,”user”:{“username”:”admin”,”permissions”:”*”},”level”:98,”timestamp”:1642124294082}

    13 Jan 18:38:14 – [audit] {“event”:”nodes.configs.get”,”level”:98,”user”:{“username”:”admin”,”permissions”:”*”},”path”:”/nodes”,”ip”:”192.168.0.10″,”timestamp”:1642124294092}

    13 Jan 18:38:25 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.rss”,”value”:86548480,”timestamp”:1642124305205}

    13 Jan 18:38:25 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.heapTotal”,”value”:42536960,”timestamp”:1642124305206}

    13 Jan 18:38:25 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.heapUsed”,”value”:40427420,”timestamp”:1642124305206}

    13 Jan 18:38:40 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.rss”,”value”:86548480,”timestamp”:1642124320208}

    13 Jan 18:38:40 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.heapTotal”,”value”:42536960,”timestamp”:1642124320209}

    13 Jan 18:38:40 – [metric] {“level”:99,”event”:”runtime.memory.heapUsed”,”value”:40433404,”timestamp”:1642124320209}

    I tried updating Rasbian, NodeJS, and now I am considering upgrading to the latest node-red (v2+). Will this break the existing coach-proxy flows?

    My sincere thanks,

    Scott

  5. Randy Lust says:

    Rob,

    This new version looks great! Well done.

    Trying to make the changes for my new Entegra 2022 Aspire floorpan W. Today I found a compartment in the PS 4th bay behind the power breakers Inside is an open CAN port and just outside is an ethernet port on the Wifi router. This make installing the MyERVIN pi a breeze.

    Where is the best place to modify the flows for the layout for my coach?

    Thanks

  6. Pete Gass says:

    I have used my Macbook Pro to download the eRVin 0.5 image as well as the text file for the SSID and the password. Flashed onto SanDisk micro SD. Was able to look at file directory and open the text files on the micro SD.

    Unable to get eRVin to connect to my Entegra. Cannot see it on myfi via Fing, also checked directly on my router. Checked the micro SD on the Macbook and the wpa_supplicant.conf is still present on the SD. From what I read here, this file should have been deleted in the boot up process.

    Any guidance would be appreciated.

    Thanks for all your work here, very impressive.

    • Rob says:

      There is a common problem with the wpa.supplicant.conf file where the CR/LF format is not Linux compatible. I don’t have a mac so I’m not sure how it handles that. Being that it is Linux based you would think it would be ok, but I don’t really know. If you don’t mind sending me your wifi SSID and password I can try and configure a wpa.supplicant.conf file for you. This has worked in many other cases.

      Aside from that, if you can’t see the Pi on your local wifi either the image isn’t loading or there is something amiss with the Pi. If you happen to have a USB or wireless keyboard and mouse you can plug those into the Pi, and connect it to a TV via an HDMI cable so you can see what’s going on, then join your local wifi using the Pi Desktop (similar to windows). The wifi icon is in the upper right hand corner of the screen. This will also work if it is a corrupted wpa.supplicant.conf, once the wifi is correctly configured you should be good to go.

      • Pete Gass says:

        Thanks Rob. I was able to connect the Pi via the HDMI and got to the desktop and connected the wifi. Then restarted connected to the coach. Installed configuration file 0.51 which is the 2017 Anthem 44B. Most stuff is working. Thanks.

  7. Bill Ramsey says:

    Thank you for the amazing work you have done on this project. I have installed eRVin 0.5 in my 2018 Entegra Aspire (same config as 2017 Aspire) and almost everything, including dataplicity, is working great.

    One problem is that I can’t get Alexa to find eRVin. I get a message in the Alexa app: “Alexa is looking for devices to connect…” and then “No new devices found”.

    I do not have an Echo device.
    I have other devices on my home network that work fine with Alexa.
    I noticed that there are two IP addresseses for eRVin: one called coachproxyos and the other is Unnamed device. Both work from my computer.

    I searched every article on your site and didn’t come up with anything to help. Any thoughts?

    • Rob says:

      Hi, yes Alexa is broken in this version due to some data structure changes Amazon made this past Spring. The eRVin .5 version uses the same HABridge software that coachproxy did and that’s what broke. I haven’t followed up lately with HABridge but as of this past spring there was no reliable fix. There were tweaks that worked for some and not for others. I have started implementing an entirely different Alexa interface (a Node-Red contrib) by a different developer that is more reliable (and more capable) but will take more effort on the end users part to configure (you will need to enter your Amazon account info for each device). I have it running on my coach and it has been very solid. I have had to put eRVin aside until November or so, but at that point I’ll release a new version and start updating the config files.

      Yes the Raspberry Pi claims two ip addresses, usually they are sequential. Not really sure why. I think either will work for Dataplicity or other connections.

      • Bill Ramsey says:

        I found a workaround. I have a Harmony hub that recognizes HABridge on eRVin and is easy to set up. I can control everything through the Harmony from Alexa or Google assistant. Thanks for all your work on this project.

        • Randy Lust says:

          Bill great idea with the Harmony Hub. If you are into home automation check out Homeassistant. They have a Phillips Hue integration that found all the lights.

          I have a new 2022 Aspire W that I need to configure the flows for.

          Any tips on that?

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