BeagleBone Home Automation

What you will learn from this book
 

• Learn how to interface the BeagleBone board with various hardware components and environmental sensors
• Set up the programming logic necessary to enable standalone periodic tasks and their management
• Discover network programming over TCP/IP sockets, and enable encrypted access over the Internet
• Program an Android application that can interface with your home automation server
• Implement a framework to send any type of data, such as images captured from a camera, to your smartphone

In Detail

Home automation lets you control daily activities such as changing the temperature, opening the garage door, or dimming the lights of your house using microprocessors. BeagleBone is a low-cost, high-expansion, hardware-hacker-focused BeagleBoard. It is small and comes with the high-performance ARM capabilities you expect from a BeagleBoard. BeagleBone takes full-featured Linux to places it has never gone before.

Starting with the absolute basics, BeagleBone Home Automation gives you the knowledge you will require to create an Internet-age home automation solution. This book will show you how to set up Linux on BeagleBone. You will learn how to use Python to control different electronic components and sensors to create a standalone embedded system that also accepts control remotely from a smartphone.

This book starts with the very basics of Linux administration and application execution using terminal connections. You will learn the basics of the general purpose input/output pins and discover how various electronic sensors and electronic components work. The “hardware jargon” is explained, and example applications demonstrating their practical use are created so that you will feel in control of the capabilities provided.

Network programming is also a big part of this book, as the created server will be made accessible from the Internet through a smartphone application. You will also learn how to create a fully working Android application that communicates with the home automation server over the Internet.
 

Approach

An easy-to-follow guide full of hands-on examples to help transform your house into a standalone home automation solution.

Who this book is for
If you are looking for ways to create a highly capable home automation system that is easily extendable and highly configurable, then this book is for you. Basic knowledge of electronics and programming in Python and/or Java languages will be helpful, but not mandatory.

About the Author
Juha Lumme is an engineer with over 10 years' experience in the telecommunications field in various roles. He has been developing platform software for mobile phones and also working on the telecommunication networks side. Embedded systems are his passion, and a hobby he is working on in free time as well.

He is passionate about Linux and open source software in general. The open hardware movement in the recent years is also close to his heart, and he hopes we can all soon hack and build our dreams in a world free of patent abuse.

When not working on his computer, he loves traveling and riding mountain roads on his motorbike around Kanto prefecture in Japan.