Eclipse VOLTTRON™

Eclipse VOLTTRON (eclipse-volttron/volttron-core) is an open source platform for distributed sensing and control. The platform provides services for collecting and storing data from buildings and devices and provides an environment for developing applications which interact with that data.

Prerequisites

• poetry >= 2.0.1

• python >= 3.10

• pip >= 24.0

  Note: Ubuntu 22.04 comes with python 3.10. To upgrade pip run python -m pip install --upgrade pip

Installation

This package contains the essential server and client component of Eclipse VOLTTRON framework. In order to start VOLTTRON in addition to this package(volttron-core) you also need volttron-lib-auth and volttron-lib-zmq.

It is highly recommended you use a virtual environment for installing VOLTTRON.

python -m venv <directory name for your virtual env. for example .venv>
source .venv/bin/activate
export VOLTTRON_HOME=</path/to/volttron/home>
pip install volttron

Note: you can also run pip install volttron-zmq or install the three packages explicitly using pip install volttron-core volttron-lib-zmq volttron-lib-auth

Quick Start

1. Setup VOLTTRON_HOME environment variable: export VOLTTRON_HOME=/path/to/volttron_home/dir

   NOTE This is mandatory if you have/had in the past, a monolithic VOLTTRON version that used the default VOLTTRON_HOME $HOME/.volttron. This modular version of VOLTTRON cannot work with volttron_home used by monolithic version of VOLTTRON(version 8.3 or earlier)

2. Start the platform:

   volttron -vv -l volttron.log &>/dev/null &
   

3. Install agents and optional libraries:

   Each volttron agent is in its own repository. Each agent's repository will have its own readme with instructions on how to install the agent and any optional libraries that could be used with the agent. But in general, agents should be installed using vctl install command.

   For example,

   vctl install volttron-listener
   

   All libraries that the agent depends on will automatically get installed in your current python environment.

   Optional Libraries

   In addition to mandatory libraries that are automatically installed during agent install, some agents could have optional features that are enabled or disabled based on availability of additional libraries. For example, an agent could support unit conversion if the python pint library is installed in the python environment. In order to install optional libraries use

   vctl install-lib <library name>
   

   To remove a previously installed library use

   vctl remove-lib <library name>
   

   Modular VOLTTRON uses poetry for dependency management. When VOLTTRON is started, it creates a poetry project (pyproject.toml file) in VOLTTRON_HOME directory and uses that for keeping track of all installed packages. For example, when you run vctl install volttron-listener an entry for that agent's package name and version gets added to $VOLTTRON_HOME/pyproject.toml. If you are installing optional libraries, such as pint use vctl install-lib pint instead of pip install. vctl install-lib will internally use poetry and poetry will check if the version of volttron-core (and other librabries) in your current activated environment is compatible with requirements of the version of library you are installing.

   ⚠️ WARNING

   You could use pip to install libraries, but pip will not check dependent library versions for compatibility and would simply overwrite packages in the current environment. For example, if you are running volttron-core version 2.0.0 and volttron-lib-bacnet-driver has dependency on volttron-core version 1.0.0, pip install volttron-lib-bacnet-driver would overwrite volttron-core version 2.0.0 with version 1.0.0. However vctl install-lib volttron-lib-bacnet-driver will fail because of a version incompatibility error.

4. View status of platform

   vctl status
   

5. Shutdown the platform

   vctl shutdown --platform
   

Scaled VOLTTRON deployments

Multiple VOLTTRON instances can work together as a federated group and communicate with each other through publish/subscribe method. This is one way to achieve distributed scalable deployments. VOLTTRON also supports automated deployment using ansible. Please refer to readthedocs for more details

Available Agents

• volttron-agent-watcher
• volttron-dnp3-outstation
• volttron-emailer
• volttron-bacnet-proxy
• volttron-platform-driver
• volttron-listener
• volttron-postgresql-historian
• volttron-sqlite-historian
• volttron-log-statistics
• volttron-sysmon
• volttron-threshold-detection
• volttron-topic-watcher

Libraries

• volttron-lib-bacnet-driver
• volttron-lib-fake-driver

Links to important documentation

• Known issues in this version
• Important backward incompatible changes
• Full VOLTTRON documentation available at Eclilpse VOLTTRON Readthedocs

Contributing to VOLTTRON

Please see the contributing.md document before contributing to this repository.

Please see developing_on_modular.md document for developing your agents against volttron.

Disclaimer Notice

This material was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor the United States Department of Energy, nor Battelle, nor any of their employees, nor any jurisdiction or organization that has cooperated in the development of these materials, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness or any information, apparatus, product, software, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights.

Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof, or Battelle Memorial Institute. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.