This codebase enables a central server on a Revenant Hollow location LAN to control all of the IOT nodes and interface with the Cloud API. This is also the same codebase installed on all of the nodes to program the effects that the node controls.
Update: this codebase is just for the IOT nodes. You can install most of it on a machine running Ubuntu for development and testing. Some of the packages and code require Raspberry Pi hardware, so at times you will have to deploy to a Pi for testing. The idea is that Flask is a great light-weight framework with a simple API package to expose the nodes on the network. This should help the performance of the props and effects that are controlled by the Pi. The servers, however will need more robust authentication and CRUD capabilities since they are exposed to the internet and interface closely with the main database.
NEW UPDATE: this codebase will in fact handle the IOT server as well as the nodes. It turns out Flask authentication is fine, and setting up a second Laravel API on the LAN just to control the IOT nodes would be overkill, redundant and sloppy. There are also additional layers of security we can implement on the network equipment, so I'm more confident in my ability to harden the LAN. It would also be a mess to combine the LAN server codebase with the Cloud API. Another benefit of sharing the same codebase on all devices on the LAN is that Python is the obvious choice for scripting on the Raspberry Pi nodes and this forces us to dive deep into Python and Flask and stay sharp and comfortable with developing and deploying changes in the language and framework that will be the most useful overall.
Each node will therefore run the most light-weight API possible and store only the data relevant to the active experiences that are proximal to it geographically. We will use a small, simple Mongodb that lives on the Pi itself and primarily persist the location haunt object, any effect and phenomena objects relational to it, and possibly the data of users within its radius of influence and their respective personal haunt data (ie: a user poltergeist or posession)
- A router with port forwarding controlling your LAN.
- A computer that can run Ubuntu.
- At least one Raspberry Pi to control an IOT node.
- Configure the server machine to use a local static ip
- Ideally, you want a static external ip, too.
- Forward all traffic on the server port to the server ip
- install python
- install pip
- install flask restful
pip install flask-restful - install mongo
pip install Flask-PyMongo
mongo on ubuntu 20 is kind of a pain. i'll run through the process again later and clean up these docs, but getting it to work was a mess. the main idea is that ubuntu 20 ships with a version of
mongo that you don't want. you have to completely remove that one, then become root with sudo su and
more or less follow the below instructions.
wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-5.0.asc | sudo apt-key add -echo "deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu focal/mongodb-org/5.0 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-5.0.listsudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org