I'm currently working on a small project of simply controlling the lights in my apartment. I have a Raspberry Pi setup to control the lights with a 433 Mhz transmitter. I can send on/off commands to the lights using a "send code " command through the command line on the PI. I'm looking to create an Android App to do this for me, and I'm looking for a way to make this happen.
The Raspberry Pi is always connected to the internet, so I was thinking about hosting an Apache Webserver on it, and then somehow sending it commands from the app. Would anyone know how to go about doing this? I have little knowledge about Apache or webservers to begin with, but my basic google searches have pulled up ideas about using http posts.
Would figuring out how to use an HTTP post be the best course of action, or is there an easier way?
There are many options but probably some Python web framework running on your Raspberry PI will do the job (Twisted, Django or many other).
Python is preinstalled in the PI so it could be the easier choice.
Your Android app will then run HTTP requests (using HttpClient or something more elaborated) to the Python web server that will run in response the bash code.
The real problem comes when you will want to secure your end point (via login or whatever secret sent via Https) to be sure you are the only one switching on/off your lights :)
Personally I'd use an SSH library such as jsch to create a simple android app that sends the desired commands to your raspberry pi, on the press of a button. Of course, if you need to learn how to make an android app, have a look here first.
Related
I am trying to do some wacky home automation which will require me to send a signal from my Android phone to my Pi 3 in order to execute a script to control a motor using the GPIO pins.
The only part I'm stumped on is the best way to connect the Android and Pi.
I've read so many different things and it's all overwhelming, the amount of differing answers I've seen.
So far I'm leaning towards using Jsch in my app to ssh into the Pi and execute the command, but I have been told this is silly.
Can anybody explain to me why this is a bad idea and explain to me a better one? Ideally the phone app would be able to connect over both local network and other networks.
Nothing is wrong with SSH, but people typically use web servers on the Pi plus HTTP requests on the Android side. Or you can run your own protocol via a raw socket connection.
SSH commands might be more secure if you use SSH keys.
Otherwise, you'd be exposing your commands to anyone snooping on your internet traffic, and random people will be controlling your devices
Either way, if you want access both internal and external to home, you can do more research to see if you can "port forward" your router
The advantage of using HTTP for this sort of thing is that it potentially creates its own user interface. What I mean by this is that, if the interface on the Pi is a Web server, then you have a way to provide an HTML/JavaScript interface to your Android device, and thus avoid the need to create an Android app at all -- the user just needs a browser. The whole user interface is managed from the Pi.
I've used this approach for motor control on the Pi a fair bit. On the Pi I use a C program that embeds the libmicrohttpd webserver engine. The program can serve out ordinary HTML pages to create the user interface on the browser, or respond to particular HTTP GET requests that result from the user clicking buttons or manipulating sliders or whatever. You can do some really sophisticated stuff by sending JavaScript functions that make their HTTP requests outside the normal HTTP request/response flow, so you can (for example) have a browser display that updates dynamically (e.g., display sensor values from the Pi).
Moreover, it's easy-ish to provide some kind of security using SSL and HTTP authentication. I prefer C, but there are webserver libraries for Python that work on the Pi as well.
To my way of thinking, the only time it's worth considering something more complex than this is when you need a user interface on Android that can't be implemented in HTML/JavaScript.
I'm sure there are many different ways to do what you want. I prefer to do most of the work on the Pi, because I find writing Android apps deeply unrewarding. On the other hand, if you like developing for Android and have plenty of experience doing so, the approach you suggested -- sending commands to the Pi over SSH -- could work perfectly well. It would just mean doing most of the work in Android.
Yes, ssh is silly solution. I suggest to develop rest api webservice, host it on your PI and invoke it from your Android app
I'm trying to develop a proyect like PTTDroid, I mean a Push-To-Talk or Walkie-Talkie application.
The issue is that in this app you can´t use 3G to access the web, so I've decided to use a Node.js server and implement an Android client to comunicate with it. I tried to do a multiplattform proyect using Phonegap the problem is that for audio record you can't access to buffer, you can only start and stop or pause the recording process but not send data while capturing. So my problem is that is possible to streams audio capture in real time by native Android functions (Audiorecord class) with a Node.js server by Socket.IO or similar?
I discovered this project, Asimi JS, but I don't know if someone else knows a better way to do what I want.
Thank you very much for your help!
It is certainly possible to do it, but a standard NodeJS http server would not be advisable as it uses tcp. You want to use UDP as a transport layer for audio, since it will be faster and the small packet loss that can occur will most likely not be a problem.
To be completely honest with you it sounds like you need to write a few demo applications on the native platforms - so do not use phonegap. You need native platforms in order to access things suchs as the mircrophone and to stream over UDP.
When you have a demo working, you can go on and try with another platform afterwards, but start with a simple setup instead of trying to do it all at once - if it was that easy, someone else would have done it before you.
Let me recommend a simple UDP server in whatever language you are most comfortable with such as (NodeJS, Java, C, C++, C#). Let the UDP server receive and save the content into a file that you can then play back on a desktop computer to verify the result. As a simple client, build one either on Android or iOS, and stream a file that you have already recorded and included in the app. When you have this setup working, you can try to capture the microphone, then do a user interface, then support multiple phones, then build a server which records the conversations, then build a user database, and so on a so forth. But start with a prototype of your main feature.
I've finally discovered and solved my problem (at least that's what I think)...First of all I created a server to send and receive UDP packets by DatagramSocket and after that, to achieve communication between server and client, when I was connected by 3G, I needed to have a static port and IP, that's why my server couldn't connect with the client. With data connection, the user IP and port is not always the same and you have to keep the same socket always opened if you want to send and receive. On the other hand the server has to store the adress and port from the client in the moment of connection.
Thank you very much for your help ExxKA
I can program my Raspberry PI to control its GPIOs using Python or Wiring-PI C library.
I can control it with web interfaces like webiopi or web2py.
What I intend to do is write my own android app (layouts created by me only) and want this app to remotely acces the PI and run the code stored for the GPIOs control.
I want my Java code to control my C code remotely or something like that.
I have no idea what kind of libraries I need for this kind of interaction and I would appreciate any ideas.
As you can control your Raspberry Pi with web interfaces like webiopi or web2py, why not use REST API from your Android application.
REST API Client Library for Android
Restful API service
If you are looking for more ideas you may consider Bluetooth client server application with an Android client (on device) and Java/Python server (running on the pi)
Initializing bluetooth connection android(client) to python(server) on pc
you'll need to setup a server on your raspeberry pi to receive GET or POST calls.
Then from your Android app use all the normal, standard Java to call this web service and get a suitable response, e.g. GPIO status.
for example android App use a GET request to http://192.168.0.10:8080/GPIO/Toggle/3 your raspberry Pi server, listening to port 8080, will toggle GPIO 3 and reply back to Android 00001000 (meaning that GPIO 3 is On).
But that's just one possible idea, you could use a library like Kryonet to communicate over traditional sockets.
what is the best framework that I should use to make a remote control app for Android. What I want to do is something like Tony Fadel's app for Android and Iphone where you control your house thermostat temperature remotely with a smartphone app.
I was going to use sockets programming, but not sure if that is the best way. If it is then i will use it, but wanted some feedback before i get started.
If I make one android device the server and the other device the client I will still have to manually set the IP address every time I want to connect the client to the server.
I am trying to avoid having to make a web-app and having to make a php website to act as a server for this. Having to keep a server running is too much overhead. would rather make something like two android phones or tablets that can send message to each other over the internet or wifi router without too much setup and effort.
Would appreciate any ideas on this. I can't figure out how the nest thermostat works (http://www.nest.com/) but that is kind of the functionality that I am looking to copy. I wonder if they have to use a centralized server for all of the remote controls. If there is a way to do this peer to peer that would be great. that way all i would need is two Android tablets.
The other examples I can think of is VOIP like skype and google talk. I am sure these don't use a centralized server for voice calls. My needs are much more simple. no voice or video, only sending text messages from one android device to another over the internet. Each android device will probably be using wifi exclusively.
I have a task to integrate a Bluetooth device into my application. Now my requirement is very specific. The device has a specific communication protocol which relies on certain ACKs but I figured it would make my development much easier if there was a program that let me test communication with the device.
I was wondering if there was a program for Linux, or perhaps a simple Android program which let me communicate with any Bluetooth device with a series of pings using data I enter and simply log the responses.
EDIT: I might not have been clear enough in my question.
I have a scale that I need to integrate into my application, and the scale has a protocol similar to this:
Get a specific byte string from device
Transfer data
Transfer packet for disconnection
Receive acknowledgement for disconnect packet
Disconnect
Now when I have to issue a POST request from my application, I usually build a test script online so I can test if the POST works properly.
I was wondering if there was something similar I could do with the device.
Thanks
Your question is not clear enough. To communicate with a BT device, you need to know what profile your device supports. Depending on that, you can find a way in Android or Linux or windows to communicate with the device.
The simplest way is to open an RFCOMM channel from android/PC and transfer data to and from the device. For this the device has to support the serial port profile (SPP). If you want to do this in Android, look for the BluetoothChat example from google.
If you want to use a PC/mac/linux look at the Bluez python module. It's really simple to use. There are plenty of other options too..
I was looking for something like SENA BTerm. It lets me connect to any device and send whatever data I wish.
It is an extremely useful tool for testing my code.
http://www.sena.com/download/manual_bterm/overview.html is where you can find it.