Mountain, please provide source code for mk-blindcontrol firmware

#1

@Mountain, would you be so kind to provide the source code for your firmware? I have searched for it and according to your website you have released it under the GPL but I cannot find it anywhere.

There are many reasons that this would be good:

  1. Being able to inspect the source code of firmware gives much more peace of mind that it is safe to flash
  2. The community can help with merge requests for additional features
  3. It can be extended to work with other microcontrollers (e.g. ESP32)
  4. The community can learn from what you have done and it can help other projects
  5. If you are no longer able to support it others can take over

Thanks for the work you have done!

#2

@Mountain with all due respect, I have to say you not at least replying in any way to this request disappointed me.

What greatly alarmed me is that 4 days after my above request you just removed any mention of being released under the GPL and that was literally the only change to your website. I understand if you have objections to releasing your software code base and don’t honor your previous claim of supporting open source software, but ideally you would respond instead of just wiping it from your site.

Speaking of your website, it is clearly a Lorem Ipsum placeholder site, where menu items don’t go anywhere and fill-in-the-text paragraphs are all over the place. A large amount of images on your website appear to be lifted from other sites.

When searching for “Mountain Eagle Technology” the only search results that come up are for a company in Shenzhen, China, not Australia like stated on your website.

After I do more forensic analysis on network communication, I will be removing your software from the one device that I had sandboxed as it doesn’t appear like you want to address this.

I take security and that of the home automation community very seriously. I hope you have no nefarious intentions, but at this time I have no choice but to treat your actions as greatly suspect. If this is not the case, I apologize and please let me know what I have wrong.

#3

In reply to you message . my company is real and is not china, you should do a abn lookup, that is australia based and you will find a ABN number belonging to my company Mountain Eagle Technologies, I to pay GST and tax on my company to the ATO, Yes my website does contain images obtained from the web that I found that are great and was looking good in designing my own web site etc. And more work is required on web site.
Also note I have not charged the end user for this software… it is all free and released when I improve and release
I have removed the GPL from the software as it is not ready to be uploaded to github…I have had some issues to making this happen with github…Basically no one wants to help me in writing the required posting for it. …so I have given up on that avenue,as advised .
I will give you the code via my own means, it is available on my website already.

If you want to forensic analysis what I have developed then fine…
Yes I do take home security automation very seriously , that way I have removed all my home automation from the cloud and china based systems

I took the time in Australia to take this software to a new level, which I have done, it was needed…I have spent hours in research and development and writing code to bring it to this level, at no cost to the end user…its free because I believe in supplying a alternative to home automation that everyone can have access too , If you want to put me down the its your choice, and you want to remove the software from your platform then so be it.
This software has no virus or malware or hacking crap embedded…
I develop this software as a side line to my-business as IT consultant and Home automation enthusiast.

I needed the original firmware to do more for me, so I developed it and decided to share it freely to this forum, which others do use. and I still support and upgrade today…
V8 will is my final release

Look further in you Google search, not the 1st one you see which is china and and limited company.
try the next one which is scott street Shoalhaven Heads NSW Australia…

Remeber google’s not always correct.

this is my ABN 35 344 646 434
Look it up…in Australia
Also call the Australian Business Registrar and ASCIS

My website is in development as I am writing the site as I go…Why pay a company thousands !!!
I am having a go and sharing, and do support what I do…what more do you want!!!

I did seek legal advise on GPL since you raised it, advised to remove until I officially release it to GitHub or similar platform. Yes this advise did cost me money thats why it is removed from the help file.

My advise to you is re-flash to version 2 which is GPL under MK-SMATHOUSE and receive all upgrades and support from that site which is also includes source code as descriptive in my help file and disclosed fully as the original author of V2

#4

@mountain, first off, as I said previously I would apologize. I am sorry that I raised concern over what I perceived as a suspect situation. I honestly meant no personal offense and I am sorry if you felt that I was attacking you personally, that was not my goal. I have the best intention to keep this community and myself safe. Professionally I have had to defend against malicious foreign state actors and there are indications that throw flags when dealing with any kind of cybersecurity.

Further, I thank you for replying, I appreciate you engaging in this conversation. The other times I have seen people ask for the code it appeared the request has been ignored, which I feared would happen here, or it was waved away taking the conversation in a different direction. This is the reason I made this post to try and engage you directly. When you did not respond, but simply took away mention to the GPL with no other information it seemed odd to me and why I wrote my last message.

I hope that this conversation can be helpful and constructive for all. Also, please rest assured that I was not insulting your website, it did however show signs that are commonly used by sites that are thrown up in a way often employed by phishing expeditions.

I value the fact that you offer your software free of charge, at no cost to the end user. What I have seen of it, it looks very well done and with much more features than what was in the original firmware. It is one of the reasons I think opening up the source code could be great for all!

Like you I am a technologist as well, unlike you I am only just now starting to program microcontrollers and am just a hobbyist. Currently I am running firmware I wrote on my non-sandboxed ESP8266s. I have had quite a bit of experience using, releasing and supporting open source software. I am sorry you have not folks willing to help you post to Github. I would be more than happy to help you if you would allow me to do so.

I will understand if you don’t want to discuss any further but my hope is that you will welcome collaboration. Thanks for the work you have done, and the time you took to respond.

#5

Thank you for the apology.
I used google to show me a movie on gethub, creating your 1 st project …
Having another go to get it up on github platform…
Stay tuned …

#6

That is great, I look forward to hearing more about it!

#7

@mountain

Thanks for all your work on this and releasing the code.

I made a pull request on Github. I don’t know if you will want this but I needed to make these changes so it was easier for me to read the code and comments. I made a point to not change any business logic.

These is what was changed:

  • cleaned up and standardized indents
  • standardized comments
  • expanded shorthand if/else statements
  • delete empty else statements

If you don’t want these changes, please feel free to reject this pull request.

#8

@mineshaftgap I appreciate your help! I am so glad @mountain took up the torch and has gone so far. Thanks to everyone who keeps this going!!!

#9

First off I’d like to say “Hello to you all”.
I came across “MK_Smarthouse” many years ago watching YouTube, and was impressed with the entire clip, so I researched the website from that. At that time I bought, I think< about 10 “Blinds_Control” PCB boards, because I was in the process of a complete home remodel, and the price for the boards was very fair.
Jumping forward at least 4-5 years, I just found the PCB boards in my “collection” of electronics. I wanted to flash one of the modules to test it before installing, or modifying, so I went back on the site to find that my version, VER 1.0 has now progressed to ???. I thought 7, from what I see in the forum, but the web page says 2.0. Thats how I came across this post. Before reading this entire post, I too could “see” where mineshaftgap was coming from. As I tried to find the software on Github, but couldn’t. I have wondered why it never was posted on GitHub from Ver. 1.0, just because it seems that everyone uses that route, especially if they want to enhance their “creation”.
I am far from a software engineer, and I too have “played” very little with GitHub, but found it too much of a learning curve for me at this time. I was glad to see how this entire conversation ended. I think that everyone who is even signed up for MK_SmartHouse site, all have good intentions, and have very similar “goals”. Just in the past 6 weeks, I have spent a lot of time with OpenAI and have realized that much of the many “years” that I had researched and studied programming and working with microcontrollers, is now 90% obtainable without having much knowledge in Python or C++. I ask ChatGPT to write me the code for an ESP8266 to “description of my control layout”, and in less than 1 minute I have code. Do this a few times, and I have code written different ways. Take that and put it into Vs Code, make a few corrections, and Shazam!
There is no need to anymore to “protect” code thinking that it is going to make anyone a dollar. The PCB cards, maybe.
I am not smart enough to implement my automation into Home Assistant at this point. Close, but not quite there. This is where the forums are great. Learning from others that have the same interests, and sharing, is what will make a project worth pursuing.
Anyway, thanks for the initial “smart-blinds” PCB and information. I am pretty sure that if the code gets up on GitHub, it will become more useful for the time being. Technology will soon make it obsolete, like it always does. Maybe electrotint windows will become much more cost-efficient and make the use of blinds no longer needed? Or just do away with the window and replace it with high resolution monitor screens? Windows are expensive, need upkeep and cleaning, are not energy wise, etc. Having to look out the “fake window” and to see a tropical beach, or city overview from the 107th floor, or maybe 40 feet under the sea on a coral reef, even a sight of earth from standing on the moon? Lol
Last thing. One thing that I have been hoping someone, someday, would make an ESP8266 controller for BLDC closed loop, using incremental encoder for field control instead of hall sensors. Closed loop DC motors is the future! Lol

#10

@its4cnc, mountain did end up releasing the code and I took a swipe at cleaning it up a bit. You can find it here: https://github.com/mountain-pitt/mk-blindcontrol