Beaglebone, Openhab, MySensors, Moteino setup

[nicbrink]

I wanted to share the progress I have been making on my own home automation setup. 

Design Decisions:
1.  Central Controller - BeagleBoneBlack - I know everyone else seems to be using a RaspberryPi, but I already had a BeagleBone and to be honest they are pretty interchangeable.  I initially purchased a BBB because of all the additional GPIO options, but to be honest I haven't used many of them.  So far I have found the server software to be rock solid and very responsive.  Most things are interchangeable between the two platforms, I even thought about getting an ATXRaspi working with it.  The plus side is there is a power button on it for graceful shutdowns that is until you put it in a case.

2.  Server Software - Openhab - I initially built a server based upon the excellent blog posts of Felix.  I eventually gave up and started using the The Thing System (http://thethingsystem.com/) but development on it has stopped.  Ultimately I landed on openhab (http://openhab.org) because it has a pretty good interface, large user base, and is actively being developed.  Defining interfaces and creating charts is super easy once you get the hang of it in Openhab.  It also has an Android and IOS client, which are pretty slick.  Like some of the others here, I am not yet sold on the security of it yet, however.  I plan on thoroughly understanding how to secure the interface prior to exposing it to the internet in any fashion.

3.  Distributed Sensors - Moteinos useing rfm69, obviously.  I also installed MySensors on the moteino.  So far I have created a simple temp sensor and sump pump monitor similar to the projects here.  I also created a simple script to set the color of a neopixel remotely from an openhab color selector which I plan on documenting in the near future.  Now that the development branch of MySensors includes RFM69 support I find it much simpler to use then what I doing.  Originally I was using code from Felix's demo classes and some of the great ideas of Colin which worked very well but I found I was spending more time tweaking the code then I wanted.  My only concern with the mysensors code is I have not tried to put anything on a battery yet, when I do I may end up rethinking this design decision.

4.  Interface between BBB and Sensor network - Moteino running MySensors (http://www.mysensors.org/) serial interface.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to get the MQTT gateway working, and while I had success stability was impossible.  It continued to crash randomly and rarely ran for more then 12 hours.  The serial gateway has been rock solid.  The downside is that it does require a bit of work on the openhab side to handle the mysensors protocol.  The serial protocol is very well formated and very easy to parse out in openhab rules. 


Here is where I have been documenting everything I have created so far.
https://github.com/nicbrink/BeagleBone_Openhab/wiki/0.--Overview

I still have a lot of things I want to document and would appreciate any thoughts or feedback. 


I also want to thank all the great people who participate here in the forums I have learned an amazing amount in a short amount of time.

[Felix]

THanks for sharing your efforts and experience, much appreciated.