Home Automation System - It's time for OpenHAB 2

Ok, I played a lot with hardware device :), now it's time to get involved in the "software" area of my Home Automation Project. Who read my previous posts already knows that I chose OpenHAB v.2 as my Home Automation System software; it's already installed on my new Raspberry PI3, as described in a previous post:

http://domoticsduino.blogspot.com/2017/08/home-automation-system-openhab-2-on.html

For me this is a new "world" and so I will follow the official documentation (http://docs.openhab.org/introduction.html) and the community too (https://community.openhab.org/) where you can find a lot of useful infos.

In simple words (and based on what I understood), OpenHAB v.2 makes a link between the devices (real or virtual...), called "things", and logical entity, called "items". The items will be used to manage the "Home Automation System".

From www.openhab.org

To integrate the real or virtual devices (things) in OpenHAB v.2 you can use Bindings, which are objects that make OpenHAB v.2 able to communicate with external device (real devices or simple Webservice or data providers...)

"Items" integration inside the user interfaces will be done using "Sitemaps", while "Rules" permit to manage events and automation logics

All data which will transit over the OpenHAB v.2 Communication Bus can be stored through persistence engine called "Persistence"

I will try to explain all of these concepts as I move forward with my configuration.

So, my system is ready to be configured and used. This is my software configuration on Raspberry PI3

- OpenHAB v 2.1
- Broker MQTT mosquitto, with auth
- Grafana
- InfluxDB, as persistence engine of OpenHAB
- Reverse proxy SSL with auth, using NGINX , to securely expose on internet OpenHAB e Grafana.

The standard configuration (choosing the "standard package" at the end of the setup) of openHAB v.2 modules is the following one:

- BASIC UI: responsive UI for the standard user; it is built using Sitemaps

- PAPER UI: UI for configuration purpose, not completed yet (mmany configurations part will be done directly using configuration files)

- HABPANEL: user UI, optimized for tablet

There are lots of others modules; see the ADDONS section of PAPER UI.

To complete the overview, two words about native mobile App

Android OpenHAB App

IOS OpenHAB App

Windows OpenHAB App, also for Windows 10, but it seems a bit "young".

Ok, it's time to let OpenHAB v.2 doing its stuff

Just to become familiar, I will try something easy; later I will try to integrate SONOFF with MQTT.

First of all, I follow all the beginner tutorial, just to become familiar with the environment and having no real device like LIFX lamp or KNX device, I decide to integrate speedtest and weather data, provided by external services.

For speedtest integration, I followed this great tutorial https://community.openhab.org/t/speedtest-cli-internet-up-downlink-measurement-integration/7611; so I learned as you can edit configuration files. A lot of OpenHAB areas are involved:

 - addons / bindings: to let OpenHAB v.2 exec shell commands

 - items: object creation as speedtest data storage "device"; 

 - sitemaps: user UI, linked to the items

 - rules: automation rule just to collect speedtest data automatically

In other words, OpenHAB v.2 will run speedtest-cli shell script (a textual interface for the speedtest service) at regular time interval (I set a 2 hours refresh), stored its result in item objects and then link these items to a user UI.

This is the result on a new sitemap (Basic UI)

For weather service integration, I chose OpenWeatherMap (already knows it)

So, I followed again the official documentation (http://docs.openhab.org/addons/bindings/weather1/readme.html) and reach the target was not so difficult. This is my final result:

For the files configuration, I used Eclipse SmartHome Designer (http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/editors.html#esh-designer), a graphical editor which provides some facility.

Well, with these test I verified OpenHAB v.2 is a working system. In short time my OpenHAB v.2 will be able to lights up my garden lamp (I hope...)...thanks to MQTT

Data acquisition - Photovoltaic production

Another kind of data I would like to acquire is the production of my photovoltaic plant, a 3 kwp plant built over my roof and made by SUNAGE 250 swiss modules and AROS SIRIO inverter.

I also received a little energy monitor tool, which allows me to verify power production through a wireless display. This display is able to store data in a little sqlite database. Through a USB connection, it lets me view and download data using a PC.

This tool is called OWL

http://www.theowl.com/energy-monitors/standalone-monitors/owl-usb/

My model is the OWL+USB CM160.

The OWL has a little bug because it also detects reactive power when the inverter is switched off (during the night for example...)

For my purpose I have to connect OWL to Raspberry. Unfortunately this is not supported and there aren't official drivers. Making some research over the internet, I found a good linux open source interface for OWL: EAGLE-OWL https://github.com/cornetp/eagle-owl

I compiled and installed this software directly into the Raspberry. It is a background process which detects the CM160 e gets the database data.

This is the shell of Raspberry where you can see the eagle-owl software and database files.

This process will run automatically on startup. Then I wrote a little php script which is able to read CM160 database file e put its data into mysql. In this way I could store all historical data which will be displayed through a web interface.

This script will run on Raspberry every minute (standard cron task).

My first project - data acquisition system

I started design my first data-acquisition system with Raspberry PI and Arduino. The idea is to have a sensors network which send data to a receiver which, through ethernet, send these data to WEB/APP server.

The main components are:

- one or more sensors
- a receiver
- a DB Server for storage purpouse
- a WEB/APP server to acquire data and let remote user monitoring the system

Here is the design:



More details:

SENSORS

They can send data in different ways:

- wireless RF-433 towards receiver
- ethernet towards receiver
- USB directly towards server

They can be Arduino board or Raspberry PI or others...
Depending on the type of communication, there can be other interface boards or control led...

RECEIVER

It receives data via wireless RF-433 or via Ethernet
Through ethernet, it transmits data to WEB/APP server, for storage and monitoring purpose

It's built over an Arduino boards with Ethernet Shield and wireless RF-433 receiver. There are also control led.

WEB/APP SERVER

It receives data from receiver through ethernet or from sensor directly connected on its USB port
It stores data on DB server
It runs a web application for remote monitoring

The WEP/APP server software is the world famous Apache HTTPD, installed on Raspberry, running Fedora linux distro.

The monitoring web application is written in PHP / HTML5 using Bootstrap framework, which make it responsive.

DB SERVER

It stores data received from WEB/APP server.

The RDBMS is Mysql Community Edition installed on the same Raspberry of WEB/APP server

My new Raspberry PI 2

In a few days, I received my new toy...Raspberry PI 2



It has very strong tecnical characteristics...it's a real PC...but with low power consumption and a very small size...

- A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU
- 1GB RAM
- 4 USB ports
- 40 GPIO pins
- Full HDMI port
- Ethernet port
- Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video
- Micro SD card slot

It has no internal storage and so it's necessary to use a micro SD card as "Hard Disk"...I chose a 16 GB Sandisk card, which is an adequate size for the OS and some other stuffs...as OS I will install Fedora 21 Remix...

Ok, it's time to play with it...