HOME APP

Target

A full stack application that allows its users to check and alter their home IoT capable devices. Currently using a Raspberry PI 4 as server and Zigbee capable devices for measurements. More features are to be added later.

Used technologies

The frontend is a website using ReactJS. The backend is written in .NET 6 and python3. The communication between them is currently a REST API that uses authentication and authorization (currently accepting Google OAuth 2.0 and first party sign in, more options are under development).

The Zigbee devices send data to a zigbee2mqtt bridge that transforms the data into MQTT. Therefore, it is also possible to use MQTT devices with this configuration.

The rest of the microservices use gRPC with Protobuf for communication between each other - currently set up for local environments only.

It is possible to use IoT devices that are outside the local area network, as the REST API provides endpoints for this scenario too. Due to security concerns, these devices must authenticate and authorize themselves.

Architecture

Getting started

How to install and run the project?

The entire project can be started by the launch_microservices.sh script, which can be added to crontab to start automatically during startup. It uses tmux to launch sessions. The microservices can be configured in microservices.yml. To add the microservices to crontab:

crontab -e

Add this to the bottom:

@reboot /path/to/your/launch_microservices.sh

• Note: when using spotifyd for the Spotify integration, it should be added as a systemd service. More information can be found here.
• Note: make sure to add all the neccessary environment variables to /etc/environment if you want all the microservices to work properly.

For the backend:

• make sure .NET 6 is installed, the project should run both on Linux and Windows
• set the environment variables JWT_SIGNING_KEY, CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET. The CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET should be available through the project's Google Cloud page. (If you have no access to the page, please create a new project, set it up with your domain and alter the addresses used in the project to the ones you have both in Google Cloud and the repository. In Google Cloud you should create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID if you want to use the google sign-in option.)

For the frontend:

• make sure to have node.js installed. The project was built with v12.22.9.

For zigbee2mqtt:

• Run

  docker compose up -d  
  

  from the zigbee2mqtt folder. It should start automatically after the first run.

For the Spotify integration:

• Make sure to have spotifyd setup correctly. More information about spotifyd and the Spotify Service can be found here.

NGINX (Linux) :

• To make the backend and frontend run properly without having to use ports explicity, NGINX has been set up to re-route the incoming requests. To set up nginx via APT run the sudo apt install nginx command. If you use other package managers, please check how NGINX can be installed. After installing, two rules have to be set up in the /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file. You can use your own files as well, but for simple projects like this, the default file should be good enough. HTTPS certificates were obtained via Certbot. There is an example configuration for it here.
• Make sure to remove the default location / value too.
• After making the changes link the file to NGINX via:

  sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
  

  and restart NGINX with the command:

  sudo service nginx restart
  

Database:

• The project uses MySQL (MariaDB) to store data, the databases are called the same as the microservices using them, but with lowercase letters (The name and credentials of the databases for a project can be found under its appsettings.json). Every project has a reset SQL script under its SQL folder. On Linux MySQL can be downloaded via sudo apt install mysql-server. Then it can be accessed via sudo mysql. Make sure to set up a user (currently "root") and a password (currently "rootpassword") and add the databases. Then, to access it you can run sudo mysql -u root -p. After entering the password "rootpassword" run use <database name> to select a database.

If everything is done properly you should be able to use the project.

In case of questions, feel free to contact me via GitHub Discussions: https://github.com/PetoAdam/HomeApp/discussions