🌧 Wireless Sensor Gateway Project 🌧

📔 What is it?

A gateway for recording wireless sensor readings using a raspberry pi in a MySQL database using a software defined radio (SDR), MQTT, acurite wireless temp/humidity sensors(other sensors can be used, check rtl_433 repo for support/config) & rtl_433 Generic data receiver.

💢 Table of contents

• Devices
• Software
• RasPi Setup
• SoapySDR Setup
• RTL_433 Setup
• Reading Sensor Data
• Node-Red Setup
• MQTT Setup
• Running Multiple Devices with Different Frequencies
• Grafana Setup
• MySQL DB Setup
• Node Red Using APIs
• Loading Node-Red flow
• Starting the station
• Running RTL433 on boot
• Running node-red on boot

Sensor Gateway APIs (Required)

Frameworks

• Symfony https://github.com/danistark1/sensorGatewayAPISymf
• Laravel v8.60.0 (Latest, in-progress) https://github.com/danistark1/sensorGatewayAPILrv

Devices

• Accurite06002M wireless temperature and humidity sensor(433MHZ)
• NooElec Software defined radio(NTL SDR) to read the sensor's 433MHZ signal
• A raspberry-pi running raspbian https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/

Software

• Node-Red with MySQL palette added(Not required is using the API). (menu->manage palette).
• MQTT
• rtl_433 Generic data receiver, mainly for the 433.92 MHz, 868 MHz (SRD), 315 MHz, and 915 MHz ISM bands
• Grafana

Raspi Setup

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade -y
• sudo reboot

SoapySDR Setup

• git clone https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433.git
• git clone https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR.git
• cd SoapySDR/
• git pull origin master
• mkdir build
• cd build
• sudo apt-get install cmake
• cmake ..
• sudo make install
• SoapySDRUtil --info

RTL_433 Setup

• sudo apt-get install libtool libusb-1.0.0-dev librtlsdr-dev rtl-sdr build-essential autoconf cmake pkg-config
• cd rtl_433/
• mkdir build
• cd build
• cmake ..
• sudo make install
• sudo ldconfig

Reading Sensor Data

• rtl_433 -v You should see something like

Found 1 device(s) trying device 0: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001

Node-Red Setup

• sudo apt install build-essential (installs required npm modules)
• bash <(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/node-red/linux-installers/master/deb/update-nodejs-and-nodered)
• sudo systemctl start nodered (add node-red as a service to start on boot)
• sudo systemctl status nodered (to check the service status)

Now that Node-RED is installed, install and configure mosquitto aka MQTT

MQTT Setup

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade -y
• sudo apt-get install mosquitto mosquitto-clients
• sudo systemctl enable mosquitto.service
• sudo systemctl start mosquitto.service
• sudo systemctl status mosquitto.service

Now send the rtl_433 output to as MQTT messages - -R 40(is the device type of the acurite sensor I am using)

• rtl_433 -M notime -F json -R 40 | mosquitto_pub -t home/acurite -l

• in another terminal run the belelow

• mosquitto_sub -t home/acurite

access your node-red from the top left menu under programming. Node-red uses port 1880 Import the file under node-red

Running Multiple Devices with Different Frequencies

**Frreuqncy 915 MHZ + 433 MHZ, Devices 142 & 40 **

Setting the hop to 80 seconds, to switch the frequency

• rtl_433 -f 915M -f 433920000 -M notime -F json -R 142 -R 40 -H 80 -E hop | mosquitto_pub -t home/sensors -l

Multiples devices, same frequency

• rtl_433 -F json -f 433920000 -R 103 -R 40 | mosquitto_pub -t home/sensors -l

Grafana Setup

• wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana_7.2.0_armhf.deb
• sudo dpkg -i grafana_7.2.0_armhf.deb (check latest version)
• sudo systemctl enable grafana-server (to start on boot)
• sudo systemctl start grafana-server

under /src/grapfana bckup

You can access grafana http://localhost:3000

MySQL DB Setup

(Not required if you are using SensorGateway API at https://github.com/danistark1/weatherStationApiSymfony)

From node-red, go to manage palette, add MySQL.

Use this function to read data from payload before inserting to MySQL db.

var date = new Date();
msg.topic="INSERT INTO sensor_data (room,temperature,humidity,station_id,insert_date_time) VALUES ('basement',?,?,?,?)";
msg.payload=[msg.payload.temperature,msg.payload.humidity,msg.payload.id,date];
return msg;

Node Red Using APIs

To read/write to mySQL db, you can use https://github.com/danistark1/wirelessSensorGatewayAPI which uses APIs.

Sample Node Red Http Request Flow

Payload

return {
    payload: {
        id: msg.payload.id,
        temperature: msg.payload.temperature_C,
        humidity: msg.payload.humidity,
        room: 'basement',
        station_id: 3026
    }
};

Humidity Query

SELECT
  insert_date_time AS "time",
  humidity
FROM sensor_data
WHERE
  station_id = 6126
ORDER BY insert_date_time`

Temperature Query

SELECT
  insert_date_time AS "time",
  temperature
FROM sensor_data
WHERE
  station_id = 6126
ORDER BY insert_date_time`

Loading Node-Red flow

• backup under /src/node-red flow
• CLI: Start node-red from the command line, type node-red
• URL: You can then access node-red's dashbaord from http://localhost:1880

Starting the station

(automated last step)

• node-red start
• rtl_433 -M notime -F json -R 40 | mosquitto_pub -t home/acurite -l
• mosquitto_sub -t home/acurite

Running RTL433 on boot

• sudo apt-get install supervisor
• sudo nano rtl433.sh in the file above paste

#!/bin/bash
rtl_433 -M notime -F json -R 40 | mosquitto_pub -t home/acurite -l

• sudo chmod +x rtl433.sh
• sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/rtl_433.conf

[program:rtl_433service]
command=/home/pi/Desktop/weatherStationFiles/rtl_433service.sh  --sleep=10 --tries=3 --daemon
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/long.err.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/long.out
startsecs=0
exitcodes=0


[program:rtl_433mosquito]
command=/home/pi/Desktop/weatherStationFiles/rtl_433mosquito.sh
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/long.err.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/long.out

do the same for mosquitto servi

Troublshooting supervisor

• sudo supervisorctl (check the running services)
• sudo service supervisor restart (or reload)

Running node-red on boot

• sudo npm install -g pm2
• which node-red (to get current path)
• pm2 start /usr/bin/node-red --node-args="--max-old-space-size=128"

to access the logs

• pm2 info node-red
• pm2 logs node-red to run on startup
• pm2 save
• pm2 startup