HomeServerIOExt

HomeServerIOExt

When migrating my home control server from a Raspberry Pi to x86 hardware I needed an interface to connect some sensors (door contact, PIR sensors, temperature sensor) which were previously connected to the RPi´s GPIOs.

This simple solution consists of an Arduino Nano which is connected to the host via USB and a daemon written in Python which publishes the states over MQTT.

• Arduino reads the sensors/IO-Pins and sends values/state changes via Serial
• Python program runs as a daemon, receives the serial data and sends values/states to an MQTT broker

Installation

• download/copy ioext directory to /home/pi/ioext
• edit ioext.py - change configuration for serial, MQTT etc (serial should be accessed via /dev/serial/by-id/...)
• if python3 and/or pip is not installed - install it as root: apt install python3 python3-pip
• install requirements: pip install -r requirements.txt
• chmod +x /home/pi/ioext/ioext.py
• test it: ./ioext.py

install systemd service (as root):

• cp /home/pi/ioext/ioext.service /usr/lib/systemd/system
• systemctl daemon-reload
• systemctl enable ioext
• systemctl start ioext