Bzzzt: Opening the door with Websockets and Raspberry Pi (opens in new tab)

(madebymany.com)

45 pointszgryw11y ago8 comments

8 comments

8 comments · 3 top-level

untog11y ago· 3 in thread

I'll bite: what happen when the wifi goes out and there's no-one inside the building?

alexrbarlow11y ago

The door functions as normal becuase this is just an add on! The keypad etc outside works fine.

kubindurion11y ago

take a look at a photo, apart from the system working as usual from the outside, you can even do a manual override from the inside ;)

PhoenixWright11y ago

Sounds like you bit off more than you can chew.

kej11y ago· 2 in thread

>For the Raspberry Pi server we decided to write some Python using Tornado and instead of using an HTTP like API - HTTP and APIs built on it using REST etc are in my opinion often used too often when plain old sockets will do the job! - we decided to negotiate a socket using WebSockets and then communicate messages as small as possible over that socket so that the latency was negligible.

Not that it matters much which tool you use for a job like this, but this part doesn't really make sense. A WebSocket handshake is at least as big as this sort of REST request would have been, and if you wanted to keep everyone connected a basic TCP socket would work even better. They write how they had to implement a heartbeat on top of WebSockets, which seems like more work than the message framing on a TCP socket would have been.

Neat project just the same, though.

rhinoceraptor11y ago

I did a similar project, using Node.js to implement it with REST.

The advantage of that is I can create a CA with OpenSSL and sign a certificate for the server and one for the Raspberry Pi, and that way you can check if the other end is presenting a certificate signed by the same CA.

https://jacklew.is/raspberry-pi-redux/

StavrosK11y ago

I wanted something really simple for this, so I wrote this:

https://github.com/skorokithakis/gweet

It has a streaming HTTP mode, where the connection stays open and data comes in as the clients send them. It works very well for remotely opening my house doors.

GauntletWizard11y ago

I built a door system intended for a small office with a Pi, some sparkfun components, and Go. My code is here: https://github.com/GauntletWizard/vnw ; If anyone wants a more detailed explaination, I'll try to write one up.

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