Copyright © 2015 by Dave Hocker
DEPRECATED and replaced by AtHomeFRB
ahps_web is a companion web server for the AtHomePowerlineServer. It will allow you to control one running instance of the AtHomePowerlineServer from any web browser (it has been tested with Chrome and Firefox).
Like the AtHomePowerlineServer it was designed to run on a light weight system (e.g. a Raspberry Pi) that can be run head-less and fan-less. This is as opposed to a PC or Mac based solution. The small size of such a system like the Raspberry Pi allows it to be positioned more freely (ideally, close to the breaker panel). And, a Raspberry Pi system can be assembled for considerably less than a PC. While the server was designed to run on a lightweight system, it will run on any system that supports Python 2.7 (including Windows) and the Flask framework.
Also, like AtHomePowerlineServer application, ahps_web is open source. Anyone can fork it and build upon it.
The ahps_web server is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 as published by the Free Software Foundation, Inc.. See the LICENSE file for the full text of the license.
The full source is maintained on GitHub.
ahps_web is written in Python 2.7. It uses the popular Flask framework. Start by installing the python-dev and libffi-dev packages (e.g. sudo apt-get install python-dev libffi-dev). These packages are required by some of the dependencies called out in the requirements.txt file. A suitable development environment would use virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper to create a working virtual environment. The requirements.txt file can be used with pip to create the required virtual environment with all dependencies. See readme.txt for additional details.
ahps_web was developed using PyCharm CE. PyCharm CE is highly recommended. However, a good text editor of your choice is all that is really required.
To create a working web server, you must assemble a configuration file: ahps_web.conf. Put this file in the folder where runserver.py is located. A prototype configuration file can be found in ahps_web.example.conf.
The ahps_web.conf file is basically a JSON formatted structure. Here are the keys. To get an idea how the configuration file is used check out the configuration.py file.
| Key | Use |
|---|---|
| Debug | True or False. If True, produce more verbose logging. |
| DatabasePath | The path for the folder where the database will be kept. If empty, the default is application_root/database. |
| Server | IP address or name of the AtHomePowerlineServer that is to be controlled. |
| Port | The port number that was assigned to AtHomePowerlineServer. The standard/default is 5000. |
| LogFile | The full path (with file name) of the log file. |
| LogConsole | True or False. If True logging output will be routed to the log file and the console. |
| LogLevel | Debug, Info, Warn, or Error. Case insensitive. |
| SecretKey | The full path (with file name) to the secret key file. Use the make_secret_key.sh script to create a secret key file. |
| City | The name of the city where you are located. Used by the sunrise/sunset dependent code. |
| Latitude | The latitude where you are located. For sunrise/sunset accuracy. |
| Longitude | The longitude where you are located. For sunrise/sunset accuracy. |
ahps_web uses Sqlite 3. To get started you need to create an empty database. To do this, run the database/init_db.py script. This will produce an ahps_web.sqlite3 file. Move the file to the folder designated by the DatabasePath configuration key.
You can run the web server as an application as follows.
- If you are using virtualenv, activate the environment you set up.
- Then: python runserver.py
The ahps_webD.sh script can be used to run the web app as a service. That way it will automatically start at boot up time. If you are not familiar with how to do this, check out this article: How to set up a service. Look for the section titled /etc/init.d.