Home Automation: Playing With IoT, Temperature Sensors, Fans, and Telegram Bots

Summer holidays are over. Besides my bush walks, I’ve been also hacking a little bit with one idea that I had in mind. Summer means high temperatures, and I wanted to control my fan. For example, turn on the fan when the temperature is over a threshold. I can do it using an Arduino board and a temperature sensor, but I don’t have the one Arduino board. I have several devices. For example, a Wemo switch. With this device connected to my Wi-Fi network, I can switch on and off my fan remotely from my mobile phone (using its Android app) or even from my Pebble watch using the API. I also have a BeeWi temperature/humidity sensor. It’s a BTLE device. It comes with its own app for Android, but there’s also an API. Yes. I know that one Arduino board with a couple of sensors can be cheaper than one of these devices, but when I’m at a shop and I’ve got one of these devices in my hands, I cannot resist.

I also have a new Raspberry Pi 3. I’ve recently upgraded my home multimedia server from a rpi2 to the new rpi3. Basically, I use it as multimedia server and now also as retro console. This new rpi3 has Bluetooth, so I wanted to do something with it. Read temperature from the Bluetooth sensor sounds good so I started to hack a little bit.

I found this post. I started working with Python. The script almost works, but it uses Bluetooth connection and as someone said in the comments it uses a lot of battery. So I switched to a BTLE version. I found a simple node library to connect BTLE devices called noble, really simple to use. In one afternoon I had one small script ready. The idea was to put this script in my RP3’s crontab, and scan the temperature each minute (via noble) and if the temperature was over a threshold switch on the Wemo device (via Ouimeaux). I also wanted to be informed when my fan is switch on and off. The easiest way to do it was via Telegram (I already knew the telebot library).

var noble = require('noble'),
    Wemo = require('wemo-client'),
    TeleBot = require('telebot'),
    fs = require('fs'),
    beeWiData,
    wemo,
    threshold,
    address,
    bot,
    chatId,
    wemoDevice,
    configuration,
    confPath;

if (process.argv.length <= 2) {
    console.log("Usage: " + __filename + " conf.json");
    process.exit(-1);
}

confPath = process.argv[2];
try {
    configuration = JSON.parse(
        fs.readFileSync(process.argv[2])
    );
} catch (e) {
    console.log("configuration file not valid");
    process.exit(-1);
}

bot = new TeleBot(configuration.telegramBotAPIKey);
address = configuration.beeWiAddress;
threshold = configuration.threshold;
wemoDevice = configuration.wemoDevice;
chatId = configuration.telegramChatId;

function persists() {
    configuration.beeWiData = beeWiData;
    fs.writeFileSync(confPath, JSON.stringify(configuration));
}

function setSwitchState(state, callback) {
    wemo = new Wemo();
    wemo.discover(function(deviceInfo) {
        if (deviceInfo.friendlyName == wemoDevice) {
            console.log("device found:", deviceInfo.friendlyName, "setting the state to", state);
            var client = wemo.client(deviceInfo);
            client.on('binaryState', function(value) {
                callback();
            });

            client.on('statusChange', function(a) {
                console.log("statusChange", a);
            });
            client.setBinaryState(state);
        }
    });
}

beeWiData = {temperature: undefined, humidity: undefined, batery: undefined};

function hexToInt(hex) {
    if (hex.length % 2 !== 0) {
        hex = "0" + hex;
    }
    var num = parseInt(hex, 16);
    var maxVal = Math.pow(2, hex.length / 2 * 8);
    if (num > maxVal / 2 - 1) {
        num = num - maxVal;
    }
    return num;
}

noble.on('stateChange', function(state) {
    if (state === 'poweredOn') {
        noble.stopScanning();
        noble.startScanning();
    } else {
        noble.stopScanning();
    }
});

noble.on('scanStop', function() {
    var message, state;
    if (beeWiData.temperature > threshold) {
        state = 1;
        message = "temperature (" + beeWiData.temperature + ") over threshold (" + threshold + "). Fan ON. Humidity: " + beeWiData.humidity;
    } else {
        message = "temperature (" + beeWiData.temperature + ") under threshold (" + threshold + "). Fan OFF. Humidity: " + beeWiData.humidity;
        state = 0;
    }
    setSwitchState(state, function() {
        if (configuration.beeWiData.hasOwnProperty('temperature') && configuration.beeWiData.temperature < threshold && state === 1 || configuration.beeWiData.temperature > threshold && state === 0) {
            console.log("Notify to telegram bot", message);
            bot.sendMessage(chatId, message).then(function() {
                process.exit(0);
            }, function(e) {
                console.error(e);
                process.exit(0);
            });
            persists();
        } else {
            console.log(message);
            persists();
            process.exit(0);
        }
    });
});

noble.on('discover', function(peripheral) {
    if (peripheral.address == address) {
        var data = peripheral.advertisement.manufacturerData.toString('hex');
        beeWiData.temperature = parseFloat(hexToInt(data.substr(10, 2)+data.substr(8, 2))/10).toFixed(1);
        beeWiData.humidity = Math.min(100,parseInt(data.substr(14, 2),16));
        beeWiData.batery = parseInt(data.substr(24, 2),16);
        beeWiData.date = new Date();
        noble.stopScanning();
    }
});

setTimeout(function() {
    console.error("timeout exceded!");
    process.exit(0);
}, 5000);

The script is here.

It works, but I wanted to keep on hacking. One Sunday morning, I read this post. I don’t have an Amazon button, but I wanted to do something similar. I started to play with the scapy library, sniffing ARP packets in my home network. I realized that I can detect when my Kindle connects to the network, my TV, or even my mobile phone. Then I had one I idea: Detect when my mobile phone connects to my Wi-Fi. My mobile phone connects to my Wi-Fi before I enter in my house — so my idea was simple: Detect when I’m close to my door and send me a Telegram message saying “Welcome home” in addition to the temperature inside my house at this moment.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
from scapy.all import *
import telebot
import gearman
import json
from StringIO import StringIO

BUFFER_SIZE = 1024

try:
    with open(sys.argv[1]) as data_file:
        data = json.load(data_file)
        myPhone = data['myPhone']
        routerIP = data['routerIP']
        TOKEN = data['telegramBotAPIKey']
        chatID = data['telegramChatId']
        gearmanServer = data['gearmanServer']
except:
    print("Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0])
    raise

def getSensorData():
    gm_client = gearman.GearmanClient([gearmanServer])
    completed_job_request = gm_client.submit_job("temp", '')
    io = StringIO(completed_job_request.result)

    return json.load(io)

tb = telebot.TeleBot(TOKEN)

def arp_display(pkt):
    if pkt[ARP].op == 1 and pkt[ARP].hwsrc == myPhone and pkt[ARP].pdst == routerIP:
        sensorData = getSensorData()
        message = "Wellcome home Gonzalo! Temperature: %s humidity: %s" % (sensorData['temperature'], sensorData['humidity'])
        tb.send_message(chatID, message)
        print message

print sniff(prn=arp_display, filter='arp', store=0)

I have one node script to read the temperature and one Python script to sniff my network. I can find how to read the temperature from Python and use only one script, but I was lazy (remember that I was on holiday) so I turned the node script that reads temperature into a gearman worker.

var noble = require('noble'),
    fs = require('fs'),
    Gearman = require('node-gearman'),
    beeWiData,
    address,
    bot,
    configuration,
    confPath,
    status,
    callback;

var gearman = new Gearman();

if (process.argv.length <= 2) {
    console.log("Usage: " + __filename + " conf.json");
    process.exit(-1);
}

confPath = process.argv[2];
try {
    configuration = JSON.parse(
        fs.readFileSync(process.argv[2])
    );
} catch (e) {
    console.log("configuration file not valid", e);
    process.exit(-1);
}

address = configuration.beeWiAddress;
delay = configuration.tempServerDelayMinutes * 60 * 1000;
tcpPort = configuration.tempServerPort;

beeWiData = {};

function hexToInt(hex) {
    if (hex.length % 2 !== 0) {
        hex = "0" + hex;
    }
    var num = parseInt(hex, 16);
    var maxVal = Math.pow(2, hex.length / 2 * 8);
    if (num > maxVal / 2 - 1) {
        num = num - maxVal;
    }
    return num;
}

noble.on('stateChange', function(state) {
    if (state === 'poweredOn') {
        console.log("stateChange:poweredOn");
        status = true;
    } else {
        status = false;
    }
});

noble.on('discover', function(peripheral) {
    if (peripheral.address == address) {
        var data = peripheral.advertisement.manufacturerData.toString('hex');
        beeWiData.temperature = parseFloat(hexToInt(data.substr(10, 2)+data.substr(8, 2))/10).toFixed(1);
        beeWiData.humidity = Math.min(100,parseInt(data.substr(14, 2),16));
        beeWiData.batery = parseInt(data.substr(24, 2),16);
        beeWiData.date = new Date();
        noble.stopScanning();
    }
});

noble.on('scanStop', function() {
    console.log(beeWiData);
    noble.stopScanning();
    callback();
});

var worker;

function workerCallback(payload, worker) {
    callback = function() {
        worker.end(JSON.stringify(beeWiData));
    }

    beeWiData = {temperature: undefined, humidity: undefined, batery: undefined};

    if (status) {
        noble.stopScanning();
        noble.startScanning();
    } else {
        setInterval(function() {
            workerCallback(payload, worker);
        }, 1000);
    }
}

gearman.registerWorker("temp", workerCallback);

Now I only need to call this worker from my Python sniffer and that's all.

I wanted to play a little bit. I also wanted to ask the temperature on demand. Because I was using Telegram, I had an idea. Create a Telegram bot running in my RP3. And that’s my summer pet project. Basically, it has three parts:

• worker.js: It’s a gearman worker. It reads the temperature and humidity from my BeeWi sensor via BTLE.

• bot.py: It’s a Telegram bot with the following commands available:

/switchInfo: get switch info
 /switchOFF: switch OFF the switch
 /help: Gives you information about the available commands
 /temp: Get temperature
 /switchON: switch ON the switch

• sniff.py: It’s just an ARP sniffer. It detects when I’m close to my home and sends me a message via Telegram with the temperature. It detects when my mobile phone sends an ARP package to my router (aka when I connect to my Wi-Fi). It happens before I enter in my house, so the Telegram message arrives before I put the key in the door

I run all my scripts in my Raspberry Pi3. To ensure all scripts are up and running, I use supervisor

All the scripts are available in my GitHub account.