HomePi – connecting the Pi and the LED board

Posted on by Patrick

After setting up the LED board (HomePi – Starting with the LED board) and proving that it is actually working, it is now time to connect the Pi with the LED board. In this blog Post, we will talk about:

  • The Raspberry Pi GPIOs in general
  • How to connect the two devices
  • Download & use a software that allows to control the GPIOs/LEDs

First things first: The GPIOs

GPIO stands for General purpose input/output. We find them on the Raspberry Pi. A very good source of information is https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/gpio/ where we find an image explaining the PIN numbering and location on the board.

The GPIO pins are a physical interface between the Pi and the outside world. At the simplest level, you might think of them as switches that you can turn on or off (input case) or that the Pi can turn on or off (output case).

Continue reading “HomePi – connecting the Pi and the LED board” →

How to install NodeJS 8 on Raspberry Pi (using the ArmV6 package)

Posted on by Patrick

The is just a little “note” on how to install NodeJS on the RaspberryPi, as I was searching for the best way to do it my self several time, I decided to put this up for you guys (and me 😉 ) here to find it more easily..

First ssh into your Pi, then follow the procedure:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ mkdir Downloads
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd Downloads/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.9.0/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
--2017-11-05 11:57:20--  https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.9.0/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
...
Length: 10272460 (9.8M) [application/x-xz]
Saving to: 'node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz'
node-v8.9.0-linux-a 100%[===================>]   9.80M  1.20MB/s    in 7.7s 
...  
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ tar -xvf node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads $ cd node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l $ sudo cp -R * /usr/local/
pi@raspberrypi:~/Downloads/node-v8.9.0-linux-armv6l $ cd
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ node -v
v8.9.0

You see, finally, we got no v8.9.0 on the Pi.

Stay tuned..

HomePi – What we will build

Posted on by Patrick

As announced before with my post , I am doing my first blog series about building a sample DIY home automation for everyone to copy.

But what will we actually build?

The general idea behind this series is to show you which steps are needed to connect a google home to you raspberry Pi. It may sound like a small thing, but actually some components are involved

Continue reading “HomePi – What we will build” →

HomePi – Google Home connected to raspberry pi using RSI #wc3auto

Posted on by Patrick

pi + Google HomeI am currently preparing a series of blog posts to explain, how I connected my rapsberry pi based sprinkler system to my Google home. I will share code an insights about my journey.

You will need a raspberry pi (any generation is fine, I run a 1.gen) and a Google Home, or just your smartphone with google assist enabled. The more impressive is the Google Home though.

I will explain how to setup the raspberry pi, how to obtain a hostname for you dynamic IP address, the setup of letsencrypt certificates on the rasberry pi, how to auto-renew them, how to write a plugin for the rsiServer (http://github.com/rsiServer), how to setup the server for Token based authorization, how to enable https and finally how to hook up the Google Home to the entire system.

Please give me a little time and support me by sharing the announcement, I will be back with detailled instructionssoon.