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environment-sensor-raspbian

README.md

This is a bot which accepts a handful of commands submitted via XMPP ("Botname, [temperature/temp, humidity, location, help].") and accesses a locally attached temperature and/or environment sensor for information as it currently understands it. This is a prototype based upon the AHT20 from Adafruit. Eventually I'll build an embedded version but I wanted to make sure I could do it in an environment I'm more comfortable with first. It was built with the Blinka Python module which implements a compatibility layer that lets you develop and run Circuitpython code in a not-Circuitpython environment.

The strongly recommended and supported way to install this project's dependencies is inside a Python virtualenv, like so:

  • cd exocortex_halo/environment-sensor-raspbian/
  • python3 -m venv env
  • source env/bin/activate
  • pip install --upgrade pip
  • pip install -r requirements.txt

You'll have to run source env/bin/activate every time you want to start the environment monitoring bot. I've included a shell script called run.sh which does this automatically for you.

As always, ./environment-monitor.py --help will display the most current online help.

Included a .service file (environment_monitor.service) in case you want to use systemd to manage your bots. I've written the .service file specifically such that it can be run in user mode and will not require elevated permissions (though the account this bot runs under has to be in the group that owns the /dev/i2c-* device nodes; the bot will error out with a message telling you this if it's not). Here is the process for setting it up and using it:

  • mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/
  • cp ~/exocortex-halo/environment-sensor-raspbian/environment_monitor.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
  • Configure the environment monitoring bot by making a copy of environment-monitor.conf.example to environment-monitor.conf and editing it.
  • Configure the XMPP bridge by adding a new name to the list of message queues.
  • Restart the XMPP bridge: systemctl --user restart xmpp_bridge.service
  • Enable the environment monitoring bot prior to starting it: systemctl --user enable environment_monitor.service
  • Starting the environment monitoring bot: systemctl --user start environment_monitor.service
    • You should see something like this if it worked:
[pi @ audra ~] (3) $ ps aux | grep [e]nvironment
pi        1865 30.1  3.2  24408 16028 pts/2    S+   15:22   0:03 python3 ./environment-monitor.py
  • Ensure that systemd in --user mode will start on boot and run even when you're not logged in: loginctl enable-linger <your username here>

If you want to send measurements to an API rail or webhook someplace (say, to Huginn) you need to uncomment and configure some additional variables in the environment-monitor.conf file:

  • webhook
  • webhook_username and webhook_password
    • HTTP basic auth credentials for the API rail or webhook.
  • header_api_key
    • If the endpoint you're sending the measurements to requires authorization in the form of an HTTP header, configure it here.
    • e.g., header_api_key = X-API-Auth-Key : JoeyHardcastleIsStilltheHero
    • The bot will split the value at the ':', .strip() each half to get rid of extra whitespace, and send it as a key/value pair in the HTTP headers.

The schema of the measurement packet looks like this:

{
    "stats": {
        "temperature": 93.0,
        "humidity": 23,
        "scale": "f"
    }
}