homectrl - the software

It's been a while since my first post about my little homectrl-gateway. From then on I have been working on server-side software as well as some simple client applications.

The whole thing is done in Python. For the server side I decided to stick with bottle in combination with sqlalchemy (using sqlite for now as database). I forked the rcswitch-pi library, which became accessible trough python using swig to build the needet bindings. So far only the usage of dumb 433mhz cheap outlets is planned for my home"installation". More might follow !

dependencies

A full list of dependencies so far :

• functools32
• beaker
• zeroconf
• schedule
• bottle
• bottle-cork
• bottle-sqlalchemy
• sqlalchemy
• jsonschema
• pyparsing
• boolexp
• paste
• wiringPi
• rcswitch-pi

The server has proven itself to run relatively stable till yet but is not ready to be released. Design and database-modeling are in an ongoing state. However, creating, switching and querying devices works pretty well. All communication is done in a REST-like manner using JSON. There also is support for simple rules (timer based using "schedule") and sensors (WIP).

basic app

Besides some basic web interfaces to control devices, I wrote an andriod app to ease daily usage. The server itself announces it's service via zeroconf. The App will search for services and connect automatically (FCFS). Authentication is basically implemented but not used yet (needs some rework on DB side).