Book Image

BeagleBone Home Automation Blueprints

By : Rodolfo Giometti
Book Image

BeagleBone Home Automation Blueprints

By: Rodolfo Giometti

Overview of this book

BeagleBone is a microboard PC that runs Linux. It can connect to the Internet and can run OSes such as Android and Ubuntu. BeagleBone is used for a variety of different purposes and projects, from simple projects such as building a thermostat to more advanced ones such as home security systems. Packed with real-world examples, this book will provide you with examples of how to connect several sensors and an actuator to the BeagleBone Black. You’ll learn how to give access to them, in order to realize simple-to-complex monitoring and controlling systems that will help you take control of the house. You will also find software examples of implementing web interfaces using the classical PHP/HTML pair with JavaScript, using complex APIs to interact with a Google Docs account, WhatsApp, or Facebook. This guide is an invaluable tutorial if you are planning to use a BeagleBone Black in a home automation project.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
BeagleBone Home Automation Blueprints
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Setting up the software


Now, it's time to play hard! We have to install a new kernel with specific patches in order to add the needed drivers. Then, we must set up our Google account in order enable the Google Docs API to manage a spreadsheet on the cloud. And, in the end, we must install and properly configure the weather station software we chose to collect the weather data.

Installing a new kernel

To install a new kernel, we must use a host PC where we use the following command to download the sources:

$ git clone git://github.com/RobertCNelson/bb-kernel.git

When finished, we must enter the bb-kernel directory and then check out the kernel, version 3.13:

$ git checkout am33x-v3.13

Now we should configure the compilation suite by generating a proper configuration file named system.sh, starting from the sample file as follows:

$ cp system.sh.sample system.sh

On my system, I modified the newly created system.sh file with the following settings:

CC=/usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-
MMC=/dev/sdd

The...