Welcome
Hi I am Mike and I am a Nerd !!!
Home automation is something that I have been playing with for quite sometime and combining my other skill areas such as communications and Internet I felt that getting in to Internet Of Things was a perfect move.
When I started using
Node-RED
I was familiar with old style programming and I kept looking for functions such as if, then etc. Node-RED can perform these functions but does it in a very different way.
The Node-RED code that I used to produce was ‘ugly’ and not flexible and trying to debug although enjoyable was a challenge.
Overtime I have learnt to improve the code and become more organised and the purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate what I have learnt.
Key concepts
- Devices you wish to control should be decoupled from Node-Red using a broker via MQTT.
- Code should be produced in sections / tabs and linked creating clarity to your code.
- If your code looks messy you are likely doing it wrong !!
- Try and run the same code on all your IOT devices – I use Tasmota.
Requirements
- A Raspberry Pi
- Node-Red running on the Pi3
- Tasmota
- Mosquitto also running on the Pi3
- Echo dot AND Google home
- Broadlink Mini
- Sonoff devices
- Arduino Compiler and programmer
- Good WiFi – preferably a mesh.
- External MQTT server
- Time and patience.
- Low cost
What we want our systems to do will vary by household however for me I want
- Voice control
- Voice and email notifications
- Control TV, audio system, lights and appliances.
- Create a security system monitoring doors and movement.
- Lets get building
I will assume you have a Pi3 already built and using a debian image (raspbian is fine).
Install Node-Red and Mosquitto
This can usually be done using
apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients
To install Node-RED on a Pi3, it is best to use the pre-prepared script available via
bash <(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/raspbian-deb-package/master/resources/update-nodejs-and-nodered)
There are many guides already available on installing this software so I will assume you already have these running.
