CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonifttt
Programming Cats
Programming Cats

Reputation: 41

Making a ifttt enabled home automation system with raspberry pi

Hi everyone I am trying to make a relatively simple home automation system with ifttt and my raspberry pi model b+. My goal is to create a python script which hosts a web server which can be posted to by ifttt maker channel. The pi needs to be able to detect the post by ifttt and then run an action in my case change the color/brightness/state of an RGB LED. I have already tried use email to control actions but that was very slow and whenever wifi dropped out on my pi the script crashed so I also will need a detection system that can detect when wifi is out to prevent crashes. I am currently 11 years old (Shocker) but I need some help because currently, i am struggling to get anywhere close to my goal. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5341

Answers (1)

alok
alok

Reputation: 510

The RPi side
There are two separate scripts you need:
1) Python script which will host a web-server.
2) Python script which can manipulate RGB data.(Guess you already have this)

On IFTTT side
First of all, check out this IFTTT service called Maker Web-hooks.
Basically, IFTTT is able to hit URLs(in your case, your python web-services). So you expose an API, tell IFTTT to listen to a trigger of you choice. And upon trigger, invoke your web API. This should be very fast.
A Few Notes
1) The RPi's server needs to be accessible from the internet, not just the local wi-fi. This is because IFTTT is going to try to reach out to your RPi web-server.


2) For quick message delivery, you can evaluate MQTT. This has been explained in another answer here.
The only shortfall is, you need to register(for free) for an MQTT broker service. So there's essentially an additional entity between IFTTT and your RPi.

3) Like @anjsimmo has said, exception handling is a must. You'll need to do it with any sort of code.

I'm running my personal home-automation system with the same RPi model, using MQTT. Publisher is an Android app and subscriber is the RPi.


All the best with your project!

Upvotes: 1

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