GoGadgets

Gadgets

A gogadgets app consists of a collection of gadgets. Most gadgets control a physical device (led, thermometer, motion sensor, electric motor, etc). The gogadgets includes 5 built in gadgets::

GPIO

This gadget is used to turn things on and off.

Switch

Switch is really a GPIO that has been configured as input. It is used to wait for some input device (push button, motion sensor, etc) to change state. When the state of the input device changes then the rest of the system receives a message for that state change. All gadgets, whether input gadgets or output gadgets, received these messages and can therefore react to changes in other parts of the system.

Thermometer

The 'extras' directory includes a compiled dts file (BB-W1-00A0.dtbo) for dallas one-wire devices. If you load it into the beaglebone's device tree overlay then you can connect a dallas 1-wire temperature sensor to it and include the thermometer in your gadgets system.

Heater

Use this gadget to heat things up. When you heat something up with Heater it listens for temperature updates and turns itself off when the desired temperature has been reached. You must have a thermometer in your system to use this.

Cooler

Motor

Recorder

This gadget doesn't actually control hardware. It receives all the update messages from the rest of the system and pushes them to a MongoDB (which should really be hosted on a server somewhere on your sub-net).

Installation

Gogadgets

Try out one of the examples

The config file for the led example looks like::

{
    "host": "http://<IP ADDR>:6111",
    "gadgets": [
        {
            "location": "lab",
            "name": "led",
            "pin": {
                "type": "gpio",
                "port": "8",
                "pin": "9",
            }
        }
    ]
}

So to try this example out you would connect an led to port 8, pin 9. Next, start the app::

# $GOPATH/bin/gogadgets run -c /path/to/config.json

Next you can turn on the led from the command line. You can either ssh into the same beaglebone that is running gogagdgets, or you can install gadgets again on another machine. If you were to install gogadgets on a remote machine then you can turn on the led like this::

$ $GOPATH/bin/gogadgets cmd "turn on lab led"

Robot Command Language

All Gadgets in the system respond to Robot Command Language (RCL) messages. A RCL command is a string consisting of::

  <action> <location> <device name> <for|to> <command argument> <units>

So, for example::

turn on living room light
turn on living room light for 30 minutes
heat boiler to 22 C

Methods

A Method is a sequence of RCL messages. Let's say you had a gadgets system like this::

{
    "gadgets": [
        {
            "location": "lab",
            "name": "led",
            "pin": {
                "type": "gpio",
                "port": "8",
                "pin": "9",
            }
        },
        {
            "location": "lab",
            "name": "motion sensor",
            "pin": {
                "type": "switch",
                "port": "8",
                "pin": "11",
            }
        }
    ]
}