Tah - Lego block for Internet of Things

TAH Main Board

In this blog post I am going to introduce the Tah platform and talk about some of the applications using it.

Tah is a hardware as well as a software platform.  The hardware has following characteristics

1. An Arduino with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
2. Onboard USB (HID device) - emulating a keyboard and a mouse
3. Great building block (like a LEGO) for your home automation systems using Arduino.

USB HID-Compatible

ATmega32u4 — the microcontroller at the heart of Tah — has onboard USB 2.0 support, that is used to directly program the Tah without having to use a USB-to-Serial converter. Tah can also act as a USB human interface device (HID), which enables you to create your own keyboard, mouse, joystick, or other input devices, all without the need for installing special software on the host computer. If you want to create a new smarter custom keyboard that communicates with your smartphone, you need not look beyond the Tah. It already has sample applications that allow you to control your PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation and Xbox without ever needing to write any code for those platforms — all you need to do is program your Tah board and make a smartphone app, for which we’ve also provided open source examples for both iOS and Android to get you started.

Bluetooth Beacon

Each Tah board can serve as a Bluetooth beacon which tells your smartphone where exactly it is located based on the beacon’s unique identifier. This is amazing for indoor navigation, contextual notifications, and microlocalization.

Here are some of the interesting applications that can be built using the Tah and its shields.

Infrared Control (IR Transceiver Shield)

IR has been used for near range wireless communication for a long time. We have TVs, music systems, air conditioners and so many other things that have their own remote control  

We have created an IR shield which has a transmitter as well as a receiver on board. With this connected to your Tah, you have a universal remote that can be controlled from your smartphone. Forget keeping a bunch of remotes to control everything in your living room. You could do all of that from a single app on your phone. 

Relays (Relays + Sensors Shield)

Electronics is usually associated with low voltage DC appliances but so much of what we use everyday runs on 110V/220V AC. All our light bulbs, fans and everything else.  

To control these there is a Relay shield that translates signals between DC and AC so to speak. One can use the GPIO pins 2 and 3 from the Tah to control 2 relays. 

Bridge the gap between electronics and electrical with this relay plus sensor shield. It comes with its own app which you can use with some standard sensors such as the depth and temperature sensors among others.

• Input working voltage: 7V to 12V DC
• Two Relays rated 5V DC.
• Load Capacity: 10A/120VAC, 10A/24VDC, 7A/250VAC
• Relays are connected to Pin number 2 and 3 of Tah
• Digital Pin Numbers 4 to 13 & Analog Pin Numbers A0 to A5 all are connected to 3 pin standard Grove connector

Arduino

That's why we have the Shield Shield which consists of the Arduino UNO R3 layout which let's you use the already available shields in their projects. This shield makes Tah compatible with all existing Arduino Shields, It means all your Arduino-compatible shields are also compatible with the Tah. (Input working voltage: 7V to 12V DC)

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By no means is the above list comprehensive. There are many more amazing things that can be built using the Tah.  

Examples on the website. A forum to discuss more about this.

If you would like this device, you can grab them here.

(This is a product of Reavealing Hour Creations who run this blog and the IOT Community)

Home Automation with RaspberryPi Python - Django

Home Automation with RaspberryPi Python - Django

So after attending the 2 meet-ups for IOT-Pune. I got a Raspberry Pi and decided to play around with it a little bit. The following post will walk you through the steps needed to turn on/off a light bulb.

Things needed

1. Raspberry Pi

2. Relay switch

3. light bulb with wire to plug into main power supply

Lets us start!!!

• sudo apt-get install python-dev python-setuptools
• sudo pip install django
• django-admin.py startproject mysite
• cd mysite/
• django-admin.py startapp ledblink
• cd mysite
• open file named setting.py and add the ledblink app in the INSTALLED_APPS so that it looks like this

INSTALLED_APPS = (

    'django.contrib.auth',

    'django.contrib.contenttypes',

    'django.contrib.sessions',

    'django.contrib.sites',

    'django.contrib.messages',

    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    'ledblink',

    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:

    'django.contrib.admin',

    # Uncomment the next line to enable admin documentation:

    # 'django.contrib.admindocs',

)

• add this to the templates dir make sure you  add import os at the top of the page

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (

     os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'templates').replace('\\','/'),

    # Put strings here, like "/home/html/django_templates" or "C:/www/django/templates".

    # Always use forward slashes, even on Windows.

    # Don't forget to use absolute paths, not relative paths.

)

• cd ledblink
• open the views.py file and change it to this

from django.shortcuts import render

from django.http import HttpResponse

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

import time

GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)

GPIO.setup(18,GPIO.OUT)

def blinker(request):

    if 'on' in request.POST:

        GPIO.output(18,1)

    elif 'off' in request.POST:

        GPIO.output(18,0)

    return render(request,'control_page.html')

    

• Let us add the template control pages so go ahead and create a templates directory in your ledblink app and add the following html code and name it control_page.html

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

</head>

<body>

<form action="" method="post">{% csrf_token %}

<input type="submit" name="on" value="on" />

<input type="submit" name="off" value="off" />

</form>

</body>

</html>

• now let us create a url that links to this view. Goto the urls.py file in mysite directory cd ../mysite

from django.conf.urls import patterns, include, url

from ledblink.views import blinker

# Uncomment the next two lines to enable the admin:

# from django.contrib import admin

# admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('',

    url(r'^ledblink/$',blinker),

    # Examples:

    # url(r'^$', 'mysite.views.home', name='home'),

    # url(r'^mysite/', include('mysite.foo.urls')),

    # Uncomment the admin/doc line below to enable admin documentation:

    # url(r'^admin/doc/', include('django.contrib.admindocs.urls')),

    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:

    # url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),

)

• Goto main folder of the project where the manage.py file is located and run the following command

sudo python manage.py runserver 192.168.0.106:8000

open up a web browser and type http://192.168.0.106:8000/ledblink/ in the address bar and you should have the following result

now lets get to the part where we connect every thing to the raspberry pi.

• Sorry I couldn't get a better picture even though Nishant suggested to take the book out. :P But yoy connect the 5V out of the Pi that is pin 2 to the positive on the relay . The ground pin 6 to the regative of the relay and finaly GPIO18 to the corresponding pin on the relay board.

• Plug the bulb in the main power supply. Go ahead and try turning on the bulb from the web Browser