Raspberry Pi Home Automation with Google Assistant integration — Part 1 (Software)

Got a Pi collecting dust at home? Let’s get some lights and fans automated! I say lights and fans, but you can automate any electrical switch in your home.

First, we’ll go through all the software requirements

1. Install NodeJS $ curl -sL deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash - $ sudo apt-get install nodejs -y
2. Clone backend We’ll install pm2 to manage our backend server

$ npm install pm2 -g
$ git clone git@github.com:sidhantpanda/raspberry-pi-home-backend.git
$ cd raspberry-pi-home-backend && npm install
$ pm2 start bin/www

1. Clone frontend

   $ git clone git@github.com:sidhantpanda/raspberry-pi-home-frontend.git
   $ cd raspberry-pi-home-frontend
   $ npm install && npm build
   

2. Install and configure nginx We’ll use nginx to expose our frontend and use it as a reverse proxy for our backend service

   $ sudo apt-get install nginx
   $ sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
   

   Now, look for the root for the web server and edit it to the path of the build directory of the frontend repo. Add proxy_pass for all the /api/* routes to the web server to the NodeJs process being run by pm2:

   --  root /var/www/html;
   ++  root /path/to/repo/build; 
   ++  location /api/ {
   ++   proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
   ++  }
   
    location / {
    ...
   

   Now, save the file, quit vim and restart nginx

   $ sudo service nginx restart
   

3. Run on boot To make the service restart automatically on boot, edit the /etc/rc.local file

$ sudo vim /etc/rc.local

Just add the following to the end of the file just before exit 0:

...
pm2 start /path/to/backend/repo/bin/www
/etc/init.d/nginx start

exit 0
`

That’s it!

Part 2: Raspberry Pi Home Automation with Google Assistant integration — Part 2 (Hardware)