Getting Started with the open source JavaScript Internet of Things platform ioBroker

ioBroker is an open source Internet of Things platform written in JavaScript and using Node.js for the back-end. It is perfect to run on single board computers such as Raspberry Pi. The project started in 2014. The source code is hosted in GitHub and the core is available under MIT license. The creators and maintainers of ioBroker are from Germany and the project is very popular among the German open source community interested in home automation.

In this article you will learn how to get started with ioBroker by installing it on a Raspberry Pi and after that how to measure temperature and humidity from the built-in DHT22 sensor on ANAVI Thermometer through the machine-to-machine protocol MQTT.

ioBroker Installation Guide

Step by step video tutorial for installing ioBroker on Raspberry Pi

Only two steps are required to install ioBroker on GNU/Linux distributions, including on a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
curl -sL https://iobroker.net/install.sh | bash -

After successfully installing ioBroker, open the web interface and complete the initial setup as explained in the video.

Monitoring Temperature and Humidity from DHT22 in ioBroker via MQTT

Integrating ANAVI Thermometer with DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor in ioBroker

ANAVI Thermometer is an open source hardware, Wi-Fi development board for measuring temperature that’s powered by an ESP8266 processor. It comes with a built-in DHT22/AM2302 temperature and humidity sensor and has slots for a mini OLED display, waterproof DS18B20 temperature sensor, and empty slots for up to three additional I2C sensor modules.  Out of the box, the open source firmware of ANAVI Thermometer, works with Home Assistant specification for automatic discovery and MQTT messages with JSON payload.

Although ioBroker is an alternative open source IoT platform, through an adapter it supports the Home Assistant specification. The process for using ANAVI Thermometer in ioBroker is straight-forward thanks to the adapters MQTT Client/Broker and HASS-MQTT.

Adapter MQTT Client/Broker can be configured either as MQTT broker or as a client mode and use an external broker. In the particular demonstration in the video the instance of ioBroker adapter MQTT Client/Broker has been configured as a broker, without username/password and with disabled publish check-boxes from the MQTT Settings tab.

Adapter HASS-MQTT is required to support the Home Assistant MQTT specification. It have to be installed separately and bound to the instance of adapter MQTT Client/Broker as shown in the video. Get the HASS-MQTT adapter from: https://github.com/smarthomefans/ioBroker.hass-mqtt

ANAVI Themometer reporting temperature and humidity to the open source IoT JavaScript platform ioBroker

After turning on the instances of both adapters in Home Assistant, ANAVI Thermometer must be configured to connect to the same MQTT broker. After that ANAVI Thermometer will be automatically detected and the data from DHT22 as well as from any other attached supported sensors will be automatically reported to ioBroker. You just need to configure how to display it in your preferred graphical user interface (ioBroker offers several of them). In the video I used the ioBroker visualisation adapter which requires activation through an unique key. The activation requires registration with a email and is not shown in the video. Adapter visualisation if free for personal use. The other adapters, MQTT Client/Broker and HASS-MQTT are free and open source without any limitations.

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Improving Industrial Manufacturing with ANAVI Light Controller

ANAVI Light Controller is an open source WiFi development board for controlling 12V low-cost analog RGB LED strip. Although it has been designed primary for home automation, recently ANAVI Light Controller was integrated in an industrial environment.

Wing.eu is an innovative French start-up company reinventing the shipping. The company specializes in “first mile” logistics and provides services to e-merchants. Their warehouses in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon package and ship e-commerce orders. Wing.eu can be integrated with all leading e-commerce platforms, including the popular open source solutions PrestaShop, Magento and WooCommerce.

ANAVI Light Controller Andon Manufacturing
Wing’s warehouse using Andon manufacturing system implemented with ANAVI Light Controller and 12V RGB LED strips.

Running around the clock such an innovative logistics business requires excellent organization. To ensure high efficiency of the working process Paul Cancouet, project manager at Wing, implemented the Japanese manufacturing system Andon using ANAVI Light Controller.

Andon is a manufacturing term to alert about a problem in real-time. Pioneered by Toyota after World War II, Andon provides the ability to detect problems affecting manufacturing in real-time and fix them as soon as possible.

Paul and his team at Wing constructed a light indication on each desk at their warehouses, using ANAVI Light Controller, 12V RGB LED strip, appropriate 12V power supply, outdoor wall light, PVC tube and a 3D-printed socket. All Andon light indicators are communicating over the machine-to-machine protocol MQTT. The software on the server is written in JavaScript and Node.js. It spreads the information to Google spreadsheets, Slack channel and a HTML5 web interface that acts as a global monitoring dashboard.

The best part is that Wing.eu shared their server side source code in GitHub. ANAVI Light Controller is also entirely open source as the board has been certified by the Open Source Hardware Association and the default firmware is also available as an Arduino sketch at GitHub. Thanks to open source other factories can easily adopt the same solution and significantly improve the efficiency of their manufacturing process.

Paul Cancouet shared more details as a Crowd Supply field report. His industrial automation has been also covered by cnx-software.com.

ANAVI Light Controller is available at our distributors around the world: Crowd Supply, neven.cz and Pi Supply.

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