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mhightower83 edited this page Dec 24, 2017 · 38 revisions

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Notes for connecting Amazon's Echo and X10 together

Amazon's Echo control of X10 devices via ha-bridge

The objective is to give Amazon's echo, Alexa, the ability to turn on and off X10 devices.

Prerequisite Reading and References:

Hardware required:

  • Raspberry Pi 3 or Raspberry Pi 2 with stable Power Adapter (5.1+ Volt)
    • Running 2017-11-29-raspbian-stretch.img.
  • USB to RS232 converter (Full RS232 voltage levels, not the TTL stuff)
  • X10 FireCracker, CM17A

Amazon's Echo has native support for the Philips Hue light system. BWS Systems' ha-bridge emulates a Philips Hue light system providing a path for Amazon echo to interact with devices it does not natively support. Ha-bridge supports many action methods for responding to Phillip Hue light commands. Of these methods we use the ability to run a bash script, x10ctrl.sh. This in turns buffers/queues and sends X10 commands via bottlerocket, br. The X10 FireCracker is powered and signaled by toggling the RS232 control lines. From the computers perspective this is a very slow process. So x10ctrl.sh manages a named pipe to queue the X10 commands and slowly feed them out with br.

Rather than having ha-bridge run with root privileges, The service habridge runs under its own user of same name, habridge. authbind is used to allow permission to port 80 from the non-root user, habridge.

How to setup on the Raspberry Pi

Need default Java to be set to Java 8 for habridge.

With 2017-11-29-raspbian-stretch.img, this no longer appears to be needed.

This command will show what is running and available. (source)

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo update-alternatives --display java
java - manual mode
  link currently points to /usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt/jre/bin/java
/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-armhf/jre/bin/java - priority 1063
  slave java.1.gz: /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-armhf/jre/man/man1/java.1.gz
/usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt/jre/bin/java - priority 318
  slave java.1.gz: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt/man/man1/java.1.gz
Current 'best' version is '/usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-armhf/jre/bin/java'.

If you need to switch the default Java version among available Java JREs.

Run the following command:

pi@raspberrypi:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There are 2 choices for the alternative java (providing /usr/bin/java).

  Selection    Path                                                   Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
 *0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-armhf/jre/bin/java          1063      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-armhf/jre/bin/java          1063      manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt/jre/bin/java   318       manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 2

In this case enter 2 to select .../jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt/jre/bin/java

Dedicate an account to run habridge

In the commands listed below we will: Create user, habridge, for ha-bridge to run under, and add users root and pi to the habridge group. Build habridge directory tree under /opt. Link the new tree under the user habridge's directory.

If you are doing copy/paste of the commands listed. Do the first two lines first. The adduser command will want to ask some questions.

sudo -i
adduser --disabled-login habridge

A copy paste of the commands listed here should work.

adduser habridge dialout
adduser root habridge
adduser pi habridge
chmod ug+s ~habridge
mkdir /opt/habridge
mkdir /var/opt/habridge
chown habridge:habridge /opt/habridge  /var/opt/habridge
chmod ug+s /opt/habridge
su habridge
ln -s /opt/habridge ~habridge/opt
cd /opt/habridge
mkdir bin etc src log data
ln -s /opt/habridge/log /var/opt/habridge/log

Download and set symbolic link to ha-bridge program

The commands shown in the block below will: Download the ha-bridge java program, install, and setup a link to the java program from the /opt/habridge/bin directory.

cd /opt/habridge/src
wget https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge/releases/download/v5.1.0/ha-bridge-5.1.0.jar
ln -s /opt/habridge/src/ha-bridge-5.1.0.jar /opt/habridge/bin/ha-bridge.jar

Download and install some more files

These files will be added:

This block of commands will: Change to user habridge's home directory, create a link over to the /opt/habridge directory, and restore the downloaded files to /opt/habridge/src and /opt/habridge/bin. The symbolic link can be removed once finished. Or left for installing updates, when available.

cd ~habridge
wget https://github.com/mhightower83/x10ctrl/archive/master.zip
ln -s /opt/habridge ~habridge/x10ctrl-master
unzip master.zip
rm x10ctrl-master # optional, link may be useful for applying future updates.

As shown below, verify you have the following files in the /opt/habridge/src directory.

ls -l /opt/habridge/src


...
-rw-r--r-- 1 habridge habridge 8341874 Dec 12 13:54 ha-bridge-5.1.0.jar
-rw-r--r-- 1 habridge habridge     392 Dec 22 19:32 habridge.service

As shown below, verify that your files and permissions in directory /opt/habridge/bin look similar to this:

ls -l /opt/habridge/bin


...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 habridge habridge   37 Dec 16 19:01 ha-bridge.jar -> /opt/habridge/src/ha-bridge-5.1.0.jar
-rwxr-xr-x 1 habridge habridge  754 Dec 22 19:32 start.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 habridge habridge 5127 Dec 22 19:32 x10ctrl.sh

If needed, set permissions as shown:

chmod 744 /opt/habridge/bin/start.sh /opt/habridge/bin/x10ctrl.sh

Setup some system stuff

In this block of commands, we exit the user habridge's account and add some system links as needed.

exit
whoami                # this should report root
ln -s /opt/habridge/etc /etc/opt/habridge
ln -s /opt/habridge/src/habridge.service /etc/systemd/system/habridge.service

In this block we install and setup authbind so a non root user, habridge, can create a socket on port 80. If you are doing copy/paste, this must be done into two separate copy/paste steps. One with the apt-get command by itself, then the remainder as a second copy/paste.

apt-get install authbind


cd /etc/authbind/byport
touch 80
chmod 700 80
chown habridge:habridge 80

These commands will enable and start the habridge service

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start habridge.service
systemctl enable habridge

Use the command below to check the service's status.

systemctl status habridge.service -l

Additionally

You need to install bottlerocket program br.

apt-get install bottlerocket

**** From here down needs more work ****

USB serial ports do not always map out to the same device name, /dev/ttyUSBnn. To make things more reliable you need to create a rules file to setup a reliable symbolic link to the USB RS232 device. Follow the instructions here: FriendlySymlink.

Now you are ready to add X10 device

bash /opt/habridge/bin/x10ctrl.sh J2 on
bash /opt/habridge/bin/x10ctrl.sh J2 off
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