Homenet Core

Home automation system tightly coupled with Node RED intended for those who like to write their own code.

I'm not a fan of complex web and app interfaces, so the approach is more of a hands off - triggers are automatic or via sensors or buttons. There is an Android tablet app in the works that uses multi-finger gestures to control things. Ideally I'd like to integrate with voice control when that becomes feasible.

Powerful Rules

• Uses Node RED for rule system. Much more powerful than the IFTTT style rules used by others.
• Infinite number of "scenes". Each scene is like a clean slate of rules. When the scene changes, so do the Node RED flows. For example have a "day" and "night" scene, one for when you're "away" from home, one for when you're watching "movies", one for when you're "entertaining".
• Common tabs - any Node RED tab that starts with the word "Common" is available in every scene. No need to repeat rules that you always want available.
• Custom Node RED nodes are provided for tighter integration with core.

Pluggable Architecture

Core relies on plugins to communicate with external devices and services.

• Core plugins can easily be written in Javascript or Typescript (or any other language that compiles to Javascript such as Coffeescript).
• Core plugins are discovered automatically if installed globally via NPM.
• Any Node RED plugin can also be used within the rule systems (although they will not be controllable via the HTTP API).

API

External applications can interact and control devices via the HTTP APIs. There is both a REST and GraphQL API.

Documentation

Click here to view documentation

Installing and Running

The best way to use now is to install globally:

npm install -g @homenet/core node-red-contrib-scenes

Then to run:

homenet4 /path/to/my/config.json

Adding Plugins

Search for plugins on NPM

homenet-core doesn't do much without plugins. Install plugins globally and they will be automatically discovered. Eg:

npm install -g @homenet/plugin-hue

Plugins are discovered by searching global and local node_modules for modules with the keyword homenet4-plugin.

example package.json:

{
    "keywords": [
        "homenet4-plugin"
    ],
    "homenet4": {
        "plugins": [
            "MyPluginLoader"
        ]
    }
}

Using as a Module

It is also possible to use as an NPM module inside a project. Docs TBD.

Developer Help

Clone and Build Locally

Build using Typescript 2.

git clone git@github.com:denwilliams/homenet-core.git
cd homenet-core
npm install
npm install -g typescript
tsc

Building Docs Locally

npm install -g typedoc
npm run typedoc

Running Tests

npm test

or

node_modules/.bin/ava