Raspberry PI: EIB/KNX IP Gateway and Router

The Software part

Update: eibd is no longer under development please install knxd.
Install Raspbian as operating system for Rasperry Pi. All developing tools to compile the eibd daemon are already included. For the current version you need a SD card with at least 4GB. The installation of rapbian is described here in detail. Its simple:-)

When your operating system is up, login as user pi and set a static IP Address to ensure the gateway is always reachable at the same IP Address.

For Debian 7 Wheezy edit the following files with your favorite editor. For me its vi :-). For Debian 8 and systemd based network configuration scroll down.

comment the following line

# iface eth0 inet dhcp

insert your static TCP/IP parameter.

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.2.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.2.1

On Debian 8 Jessie also add the route to the eibnet mulicast address (in debian wheezy this is set by the init script) and set the interface eth0 from “allow-hotplug” to “auto” so it will not be handled by systemd, to activate the old style debian network config.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.2.150
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.2.1
post-up route add -net 224.0.23.12 netmask 255.255.255.255 eth0
pre-down route del -net 224.0.23.12 netmask 255.255.255.255 eth0


adjust address, subnetmask and gateway. Open /etc/resolv.conf to set a DNS Server. In home environments this is usually the DSL Router.


nameserver 192.168.2.1

Reboot your device and login again. I preferred a remote login over ssh from my workstation.
I wrote a script install_eibd.sh which compiles and installs the eibd daemon. You can download it below. The script needs an active internet connection. Check the connection

Create new file /etc/systemd/network/eth0.network. Name is not importend, just the prefix network.

[Match]
# You can also use wildcards. Maybe you want enable dhcp
# an all eth* NICs
Name=eth0
[Network]
#DHCP=v4
# static IP
# 192.168.100.2 netmask 255.255.255.0
Address=192.168.100.2/24
Gateway=192.168.100.1
DNS=192.168.100.1
# Route for Multicast Address EIB/KNX
[Route]
Destination=224.0.23.12/32


Disable the old way to configure the network, enable systemd based network configuration, enable systemd generated resolve.conf (DNS resolution) and disable dhcpcd.

Set an link from the system wide resolve.conf to systemd

Reboot to get the config active

Note: Some rasbian version has a bug that the permissions for /bin/ping were not set correctly. The following error occurs: “ping: icmp open socket: Operation not permitted”. The setuid on /bin/ping is missing, because only root can open sockets.

Installing eibd
The script must be run as root because some files are copied and modified in locations where only root have the appropriate permissions.

What the script does:

• Check for root permissions
• Download and compile pthsem
• Download bcusdk, but compile eibd only
• installing eibd binaries to /usr/local/bin
• create a init script /etc/init.d/eibd
• Add a user eibd with group membership dialout (to access serial device /dev/ttyAMA0)
• Disable bootmessages on serial interface /dev/ttyAMA0
• Disable console on serial interface /dev/ttyAMA0
• Disable console on serial interface /dev/ttyAMA0
• On Raspberry Pi 3 it disable the bluetooth module because its uses ttyAMA0 by default

On a Raspberry Pi 3 it is strongly recommended to update to the latest Kernel to addressing some issues with the serial device ttyAMA0

Start a root shell, get the script.

The highlighted eibd features are enabled. Alter the script if you need additional features.
–enable-ft12         enable FT1.2 backend
–enable-pei16        enable BCU1 kernel driver backend
–enable-tpuart       enable TPUART kernel driver backend (deprecated)
–enable-pei16s       enable BCU1 user driver backend (very experimental)
–enable-tpuarts      enable TPUART user driver backend
–enable-eibnetip     enable EIBnet/IP routing backend
–enable-eibnetiptunnel       enable EIBnet/IP tunneling backend
–enable-usb                  enable USB backend
–enable-eibnetipserver       enable EIBnet/IP server frontend
–enable-groupcache           enable Group Cache (default: yes)
–enable-java         build java client library

Start the script. This should be run about 20 minutes. Do not execute update-rc.d on debian jessie.

After the script has finished. eibd, vbusmonitor2, groupwrite and some other stuff should be installed at /usr/local/bin, the init script eibd in /etc/init.d and the startup links in /etc/rc3.d must exists. At the end of the script a warning message “insserv: warning: script ‘mathkernel’ missing LSB tags and overrides” is shown. This can be ignored.

Reboot your device

The eibd options and features are defined at variable EIBD_OPTIONS in file /etc/init.d/eibd. Currently are defined:

• EIB Busaddress of the daemon 1.1.128
• EIBnet/IP server
• EIBnet/IP Routing
• EIBnet/IP Tunneling
• Answer discovery and description requests
• Listen on UNIX domain socket /tmp/eib
• Listen on TCP port, default 6720

This gets a detail list of command line parameter

After the reboot and if your Raspberry KNX Board is connected the eibd should running

If the process is running. Check if you see EIB packets on wire.

Thats it. Comments are welcome!

I’ve writted another post if you want to use Raspberry Pi and eibd with a KNX USB Interface.

Update 09.06.2016: I’ve added the first release of a script to compile and install knxd. knxd is a fork of eibd. Any comments are welcome. Configfile is /etc/default/knxd, Socket /tmp/knx. See this EIB/KNX Router with knxd