MyController agent for embedded boards

McAgent to control GPIO pins of the embedded boards via MyController server. This agent is using PI4J to control GPIO’s.

Master:

SNAPSHOT version

Supported embedded boards

• Raspberry Pi

• BananaPi

• BananaPro

• Synovoip BPI

• Odroid

• OrangePi

• NanoPi

IMPORTANT: PI4J controls IO pins via WiringPi. For some platforms we may need to install specific WiringPi library on the system. In that case you can change static to dynamic on the option PI4J_LINKING in mcagent/bin/start.sh. Refer this issue for more details.

How to setup this agent on embedded boards(example: Raspberry PI)?

Steps on MyController

• You need to enable MQTT broker service on MyController server.

• Create a MQTT gateway as shown here,

Steps on MCagent

• Do login in to your RPI as a root user

• Download recent version from here

• Extract downloaded file tar xzf mcagent-rpi-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-bundle.tar.gz

• cd mcagent

• Start the agent bin/start.sh

• You can see the log file on logs/mcagent.log

Now you can see the list of internal sensors on MyController server.

MCagent properties:

• File location: conf/mcagent.properties

• Default mcac.platform: RASPBERRYPI. Supported options: RASPBERRYPI, BANANAPI, BANANAPRO, BPI, ODROID, ORANGEPI and NANOPI

• Default pin.numbering.scheme: DEFAULT_PIN_NUMBERING. Supported options: DEFAULT_PIN_NUMBERING, `BROADCOM_PIN_NUMBERING `

• To know more about pin.numbering.scheme click here NOTE: Pin numbering option supports only on Raspberry Pi platform.

• when you are running this agent on remote RPI, configure MQTT settings on this file,

#========================================================================
# MQTT client settings
# Add MQTT client configurations here.
# All communications must happens via on MQTT only!
#========================================================================
mcac.mqtt.broker.host=tcp://localhost:1883
mcac.mqtt.clientid=mc-rpi-client
mcac.mqtt.username=
mcac.mqtt.password=
mcac.mqtt.feed=rpiagent

Important: When you change anything on mcagent file. MCagent restart is required to update your changes.

How to control GPIO pins

You can control any GPIO from MyController. However, you have to do one-time setup on MCagent as follows.

Steps:

• Add GPIO entry on the file conf/devices.yaml Note: you should follow YAML syntax.

• GPIO pins should be added under gpio_devices:

Few examples,

Input (switch, push button, etc)

- id: sample_digital_in
  name: Sample digital input switch
  type: DIGITAL_IN
  enabled: true
  properties:
    pin: gpio 0
    pull_resistance: pull_up
    debounce_interval: 100

• id - is the id used as MyController sensor id

• name - is the name used as MyController sensor name

• type - What the type of this sensor. Supported types: DIGITAL_OUT, DIGITAL_IN, SOFT_PWM_OUT, PWM_OUT, TEMPERATURE_DS18B20

• enabled: We can enable or disable this sensor

• properties: This properties based on type of sensor. here it supports for the following properties,

• pin: pin number on RPI

• pull_resistance: supported types: pull_up, pull_down and off

• debounce_interval: debounce_interval in milliseconds

Output (on/off switch)

- id: sample_digital_out
  name: Sample on/off relay control
  type: DIGITAL_OUT
  enabled: true
  properties:
    pin: gpio 2

PWM output

- id: sample_pwm_out
  name: Sample PWM out
  type: PWM_OUT
  enabled: true
  properties:
    # All Raspberry Pi models support a hardware PWM pin on GPIO_01.
    # models A+, B+, 2B, 3B also support hardware PWM pins: GPIO_23, GPIO_24, GPIO_26
    # for other platforms(example: orange Pi), kindly refer their specifications.
    pin: gpio 23
    range: 1024
    # supported modes: balanced, mark:space
    # for detail refer http://wiringpi.com/reference/raspberry-pi-specifics/
    mode: balanced
    clock: 500

Soft PWM

- id: sample_soft_pwm_out
  name: Sample Soft PWM out
  type: SOFT_PWM_OUT
  enabled: false
  properties:
    pin: gpio 3
    range: 100

Temperature sensor (ds18b20)

- id: temperature_ds18b20
  name: Temperature sensor
  type: TEMPERATURE_DS18B20
  enabled: true
  properties:
    device_address: 28-011615318bee
    # scale can be either CELSIUS, FARENHEIT, KELVIN or RANKINE
    scale: CELSIUS
    cron: 0,30 * * * * ?

• device_address: Manually you have to find device address and update

• scale: scale can be either CELSIUS, FARENHEIT, KELVIN or RANKINE

• cron: When using the temperature sensor. you have to mention how long once you want to report the temperature value to MyController via Cron expression. 0,30 * * * * ? - reports on 0th second and 30th second.

How to control internal

These are all the default sensors to monitor RPI internals, However, can change reporting frequency and/or enable/disable

internal_devices:
- id: cpu_temperature
  enabled: true
  properties:
    cron: 0 0/2 * * * ?

- id: cpu_voltage
  enabled: true
  properties:
    cron: 0 0/10 * * * ?

- id: memory_usage
  enabled: true
  properties:
    cron: 0 0/5 * * * ?
    unit: MB

- id: cpu_usage
  enabled: true
  properties:
    cron: 0/30 * * * * ?