HouseLights

A web server to control lights

Overview

This web server controls lights based on a schedule. The actual control of the lights is provided by a "control" web service and the location for each light is retrieved based on the HousePortal discovery mechanism.

See the gallery for a view of HouseLights' web UI.

Examples of control web services compatible with the server are orvibo, HouseKasa and HouseRelays.

Schedule times can be provided as time of day (format HH:MM), relative time after sunset (format +HH:MM) or relative time before sunrise (format -HH:MM).

Installation

• Install the OpenSSL development package(s).
• Install echttp.
• Install houseportal.
• Clone this GitHub repository.
• make
• sudo make install

You will need to have at least one control service installed and running.

Configuration

The lights schedule can be edited from the HouseLights web interface.

The list of control points is dynamically retrieved from the House services implementing the control interface.

This service supports a graphic map display to control the lights. That map display requires the presence of a user created floorplan.svg file in /var/lib/house/lights. This SVG file is typically created using Inkscape (see later).

An HTML page is automatically generated based on this floorplan.svg file and cached as /var/cache/house/lights/mapbody.html. All files in /var/cache/house/lights must be deleted after each change to any /var/lib/house/lights file.

Creating a floor plan display using Inkscape

A floor plan SVG display can be created using Inkscape, but a few conventions must be followed:

• Define a background color for the page in Document Properties. It is recommended to use #355b1eff, which is the background color used in the web UI.

• Each SVG element that is intended to reflect the state of a point must not have the stroke attribute (i.e. not have an explicit stroke color), and must have an id attribute matching the name of the point except for any ' ' replaced with '_' (Inkscape does this automatically).

• Symbols can be used, but the same "no stroke" rule applies to all their elements that must be animated. The id attribute must then be applied to the use element.

• If multiple elements are to be animated from the same point, they must all be joined into a single group, and the id attribute must be applied to the group, not to the elements within that group.

• The Inkscape project must be exported as plain SVG, and this plain SVG file must be installed as floorplan.svg in /var/lib/house/lights.

• Delete file /var/cache/house/lights/mapbody.html.

The stroke and id attributes can be modified using the Inkscape's XML Editor.

Panel

The web interface includes a Panel page (/lights/panel.html) that has no menu and only shows the current lights, each as one big button to tun the device on and off. This page is meant for a phone screen, typically a shortcut on the phone's home screen. (Because HousePortal redirects the URL, it is recommended to turn the phone in airplane mode when creating the shortcut from the web browser.)

Debian Packaging

The provided Makefile supports building private Debian packages. These are not official packages:

• They do not follow all Debian policies.

• They are not built using Debian standard conventions and tools.

• The packaging is not separate from the upstream sources, and there is no source package.

To build a Debian package, use the debian-package target:

make debian-package