Book Image

BeagleBone Home Automation

By : Juha Lumme
Book Image

BeagleBone Home Automation

By: Juha Lumme

Overview of this book

<p>Home automation lets you control daily activities such as changing the temperature, opening the garage door, or dimming the lights of your house using microprocessors. BeagleBone is a low-cost, high-expansion, hardware-hacker-focused BeagleBoard. It is small and comes with the high-performance ARM capabilities you expect from a BeagleBoard. BeagleBone takes full-featured Linux to places it has never gone before.</p> <p>Starting with the absolute basics, BeagleBone Home Automation gives you the knowledge you will require to create an Internet-age home automation solution. This book will show you how to set up Linux on BeagleBone. You will learn how to use Python to control different electronic components and sensors to create a standalone embedded system that also accepts control remotely from a smartphone.</p> <p>This book starts with the very basics of Linux administration and application execution using terminal connections. You will learn the basics of the general purpose input/output pins and discover how various electronic sensors and electronic components work. The “hardware jargon” is explained, and example applications demonstrating their practical use are created so that you will feel in control of the capabilities provided.</p> <p>Network programming is also a big part of this book, as the created server will be made accessible from the Internet through a smartphone application. You will also learn how to create a fully working Android application that communicates with the home automation server over the Internet.</p>
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Appendix A. Security, Debugging, and I2C and SPI

In this appendix, we would like to bring you more general information about interfacing your Beagle hardware with more complicated devices, such as GPS receivers, wireless modules, or perhaps your own microcontroller-driven design for some special purpose. When interfacing other self-operating devices, there are a few industry standards which we will talk about in detail. An introduction to advanced embedded-device-debugging techniques will also be presented, and we will talk about the security issues in the current protocol implementation and how to increase the security by using data encryption. After reading you will have:

  • A general knowledge of the I2C and SPI buses

  • An understanding of what is needed for the Linux kernel, or ARM processor debugging

  • Implemented an encrypted data transfer between our client and server

In the last section of this appendix, you will also find the complete mapping of headers P8 and P9. This can serve as a handy reference to find out which pins are usable for you, and where to find the desired functionality.