gpioLogger

Daemon to read impulses or 1-wire sensors on GPIO ports of an RespberryPI and send the result to the volkszaehler.org middle-ware.

Features

• Non blocking IO (thanks to NodeJs) - the daemon will not miss signals, while sending to the middle-ware
• You can configure how often you want to send results to the middle-ware
• supports impulse sensors and 1-wire sensors
• For Impulse inputs
  • You don't need special io-board to count S0 like sensors, because you can connect them directly to your GPIO port. If you sensors work with a voltage different to 3.3V you can't connect them to the RaspberryPI without an extra circuit!
  • You can configure an software debounce timeout per channel
  • Configure the edge to watch for (rising, falling or both)
• For 1-wire sensors
  • You can connect the sensors to the GPIO port without an extra 1-wire busmaster chip

Example set-up

This is an very basic example with an push button as sensor. In the real world you would replace the button with a sensor of your choice.

Install

Install latest version of nodejs

• wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.22/node-v0.10.22-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz
• tar xvzf node-v0.10.22-linux-arm-pi.tar.gz
• sudo mkdir /opt/node
• sudo cp -r node-v0.10.22-linux-arm-pi/* /opt/node
• sudo nano /etc/profile and replace export PATH with

NODE_JS_HOME="/opt/node"
PATH="$PATH:$NODE_JS_HOME/bin"
export PATH

Install gpio-admin

install quick2wire-gpio-admin https://github.com/quick2wire/quick2wire-gpio-admin

• git clone https://github.com/quick2wire/quick2wire-gpio-admin.git
• cd quick2wire-gpio-admin
• make
• sudo make install

Install gpioLogger

• cd /opt/
• sudo git clone https://github.com/mvoehringer/gpioLogger.git
• cd /opt/gpioLogger
• `sudo npm config set registry http://registry.npmjs.org/
• sudo npm install
• create you config.js file by copying the config.template.js file. cp config.template.js config.js
• edit the config.js file
• now you can start ./gpioLogger.js and try if everything works as expected.

Configure impulse inputs

var config = {
   channels: [
       {
           // URL to log to http://HOST:PORT/middleware.php/data/CHANNELID.json
           url:  "http://localhost/middleware.php/data/fbfe8d2f-ef6b-4ea1-94d0-b9ebaec4545a.json",
           
           // interval in seconds to wirte the values to the middleware 
           interval: 15,
           
           impulse : {
               //   The pulse generating edge: 'rising', 'falling' or 'both'.
               edge: 'rising',

               // software debounce a button or switch using a timeout. Specified in milliseconds
               debounceTimeout: 0, 

               // GPIO port nummber, not the pin nummner
               gpioPort: 17, 
           }
       }
   ]
}
module.exports = config;

Configure 1 wire sensor DS1820 input

• At the moment, only DS1820 sensors are supported, maybe other sensors will work as well, but i only have a DS1820 for testing
• All sensors have to be connected to GPIO4, this is a limitation of the w1-gpio kernel module and will hopefully be removed in the future
• try to load the kernel modules

sudo modprobe w1-gpio pullup=1
sudo modprobe w1-therm

• if you want to load the modules at reboot, add two lines to /etc/modules

w1-gpio pullup=1
w1-therm

• Configure config.js

var config = {
   channels: [
       {
           // to activate 1wire sensors, connect you sensor to GPIO4 and activate the 1wire kernel  
           // modules, see https://github.com/mvoehringer/gpioLogger for more infos

           // URL to log to http://HOST:PORT/middleware.php/data/CHANNELID.json
           url:  "http://localhost/middleware.php/data/fbfe8d2f-ef6b-4ea1-94d0-b9ebaec4545b.json",
           
           // interval in seconds to wirte the values to the middleware 
           interval: 15,
           
           oneWire : {
               // sensor device numnber, you can finde the numner by enter
               // ls /sys/bus/w1/devices/
               // on the command line
               device: '10-000802b47b33',

               // ignore values
               // sometimes sensores will return unwanted values for example while initial
               ignore: [ 85.00, ],

               // at the moment only 'DS18S20' tempature sensors are supported
               type: 'DS18S20'
           }
       }
   ]
}
module.exports = config;

Autostart gpioLogger

• sudo useradd -m -G gpio gpiologger
• copy init script to startup gpioLogger after reboot sudo cp -a debian/gpiologger.sh /etc/init.d/gpiologger
• create folder for logfiles sudo mkdir /var/log/gpiologger
• sudo chown gpiologger: /var/log/gpiologger
• sudo /opt/node/bin/npm install forever -g
• sudo update-rc.d gpiologger defaults

Troubleshooting

• The best way to monitor you setup is to start the gpioLogger daemon via the command line.

  • make sure the gpiologger is not running sudo /etc/init.d/gpiologger stop
  • cd /opt/gpiologger
  • ```./gpiologger.js``
  • Now you should see messages as soon as the gpiologger receives the first data

• If you see errors like this, you have permissions problems!

fs.js:427
  return binding.open(pathModule._makeLong(path), stringToFlags(flags), mode);
                 ^
Error: EACCES, permission denied '/sys/class/gpio/gpio5/direction'

To solve this, please see https://github.com/fivdi/onoff for more infos.