Indigo Domotics

use this thread to discuss the piBeacon plugin

This looks really interesting. Might have to pick up a Pi to try it out.

Do you think the apple watch would work as a beaconing device with this?

If it behaves like beacon and advertises , yes.
I now have 9 PIs in my house and I am covering everything. I am working on a version that is completely self configuring. Only need to put in the ssd ...


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My guess is that it doesn't but sticking a Radius Dot or something similar on a key chain wouldn't be a problem. Now all I have to do is fine some time....

the biggest challenge I have to figure out is which BLE device is what. There are too many. The only info they deliver is the MAC number, UUID Major and Minor numbers.
I have not found a list where those are mapped to producers. With IP mac numbers there are maps for vendors/ suppliers available

The detective wok is to isolate them: find with which PI they are communicating, interpolate between them , then try to switch some devices in the area on / off see if any BLE entry goes offline.


Karl

http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewtopic.php?f=187&t=15152&p=106411#p106411

New Version 0.9.9 has been released. This is close to a released product. Several weeks of debugging and tuning went into it.

new features:

• added Exclude/Include list for iBeacons that are not interesting = no indigo devices created, no updates etc.
• added exclude "family of beacons" list. It looks as if cars have BLE devices with a common UUID (first xx characters are 1a13ff4c000c0e .....). They show up once (while they drive by) and then not any more. With this option you can define a UUID string that will exclude those from being tracked i.e. no indigo devices will be generated and no history is kept
• Distance calculation was added. You will see the distance between the beacon and egPi # 3 in the state Pi_3_Distance in the beacon. It is in Meters.
• As there are MANY updates especially when you have many PIs as they see themselves as beacon, you have an option to reduce the update frequency of indigo states for PIs themselves. From regular (every new message) to only every 5 minutes-- this is reasonable as you should not see PI's appear and disappear and they should be stationary.
• Several configuration help menus and reports were added: update PIs, restart PIs, restart Plugin web server, configure Wifi, manage Bacon lists etc.
• Added interface to FINGSCAN to enable FINGSCAN to use beacons for presence magagement . The new FINGSCAN will be posted tomorrow
• Option to clear history of beacons tracked
• All menue items have tool tips - leave the mouse on the items and the tool tip will pop up
• Some more error control was added i.e. if the RSA keys do not match, the plugin will change the .ssh/known_hosts file to enable access to the new PI with its IP number, it deletes the old RSA key and enables the PIs to be put into the this list

This plugin/ setup enables a very fast reliable local presence monitoring system independent of any internet connection. So far no false positives or negatives in my setup.
The load on the Indigo server is small ~ 1-2%. The network load is also small ~ 10Kbit every 60 seconds per Pi server if no new beacons appear. When a new beacon appears it will generate ~ 3 messages immediately (3 kByte), then back to normal. Mostly negligible


Karl

Will this work on the new PI-Zero, the $5 pi?

Apologies if that's a dumb question, I don't know my way around the various Pi devices yet.

It should. Key question is how do you get the wifi and Bluetooth dongles working.


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This looks brilliant!

Forgive me if I've missed a step, but I think I'm stuck.

I've loaded the raspi image on the SD and have it booted. I've got the plugin installed and configured. I've went through the Setup Pi servers and Send Config to Pi Server routines, but I'm not seeing any devices. I've got iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and some radbeacon dots.

Any ideas?

debugging that remotely is difficult.. if you like we can do a Skype session. that would likely be MUCH faster.

The key is the proper setup of the pi.


but could you do

change the debug level for the pi to 1, then send config to pi

check if pi is running with terminal

ping ipnumber of pi


after it reboots

ssh pi@ipnumber and enter password

then

tail logfile

you should see something happening.

if not type
ps -ef | grep beacon

check if you see some programs running

Will be posting a new version tonight, may be you can wait until then.

some stability (too many open files, need to close files, not just open them) and some minor changes.

Which bluetooth dongle are you using.?

Karl

Thanks for the quick response.

If you're pushing out a new version tonight, I'll just save you the time and see if the new version sets things straight; no worries.


I set the debug on the pi to 1 and pushed out the new config. After it rebooted this is what I found in the logfile.

Code: Select all

pi@pibeacon ~ $ tail logfile
debug: 1; loopMaxCallBLE: 300; sendAfterSeconds: 60; collectMsgs: 3
ble thread started
 secsCollected, data 0=1=5C:F3:70:6D:E7:25=0C:F3:EE:00:31:46,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-70.0,-63.0,3=

I picked up some of the iogear bluetooth dongles you suggested.

Am I supposed to create the piBeacons Indigo folder? Also, when it's working are devices supposed to show up in Indigo automatically?

Thanks for the help.

That log file looks good
Could you do
cat parameter.fixed and .pi. And post.


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pi@pibeacon ~ $ cat parameters.fixed
debug=1
loopMaxCallBLE=300
collectMsgs=3
sendAfterSeconds=60
rebootSeconds=86400
ipOfServer=10.0.1.2
pi@pibeacon ~ $ cat parameters.ip
portOfServer=9931
myPiNumber=1

This also keeps showing up in the Indigo log.

Code: Select all

piBeacon                        web server restarted unsuccessfully, giving up

looks good too


open finder goto documents/pibeacon
and double click piwebserver.log
you should see something like this:

Code: Select all

       
 22:55:55 IP= 192.168.1.xx  #cycles= 34
         0
         5C:F3:70:6D:DA:75
         5C:F3:70:69:69:FB,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-59.0,-94.1,99
         5C:F3:70:6D:DA:7A,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-59.0,-90.6,94
         5C:F3:70:6D:D9:4A,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-59.0,-73.0,273
         5C:F3:70:6B:BE:A8,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-59.0,-86.5,80
         00:15:83:E5:12:D5,010300d512-58755-5376,0,0,83
         5C:F3:70:6D:DA:76,2f234454cf6d4a0fadf2f4911ba9ffa6-1-1,-59.0,-80.4,271*
...

if not do a restart web server # 1

Karl

AND make sure a pibeacon is switched on: e.g. the green led on the radius beacon should flash once and hold it next to the raspberry ~ 1 meter