Preface

The Raspberry Pi was first introduced by the Raspberry Pi foundation to promote the education of basic computer science in developing countries. Little did the foundation know that they had truly started a DIY home project revolution. A development board running a flavor of the Debian Linux distribution at only $25 complete with a multitude of hardware pins providing support for GPIO, UART, I2C, SPI, and more, was a godsend for tinkerers hoping to wire it up to control sensors and actuators for their home automation ideas. With the introduction of version 3 and Raspberry Pi Zero W, programmers can connect to Wi-Fi with the Pi without the need to use a USB Wi-Fi dongle.

Arduino boards were first launched in the early 2000s. With a real-time operating system, and onboard ATMega controllers, these boards have always been easy to program, and they have provided a great way to interface with analog devices. Their ability to read analog signals without a 2D chipset and the extremely low power consumption of some variants allows these boards to complement the Raspberry Pi for automation projects. Just like the Raspberry Pi, these boards also provide the ability to communicate on 12C, SPI, and other protocols. Some specialized variants, such as the ESP8266, also support Wi-Fi connectivity.

As you will read through the chapters in this book you will notice how we use the Raspberry Pi or an appropriate variant of Arduino as per the specific needs of the chapter. We will show you how to use these boards to create real-life, cool, practical automation projects.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Creating a Raspberry Pi-Powered Magic Mirror, teaches you about the Raspberry Pi development board, how to navigate the command line using basic Linux commands, and how to set up the open source Magic Mirror modular platform to work with the Pi. Once we set up, we will take a look at configuring the Magic Mirror and integrating third-party modules to create a customized smart mirror experience.

Chapter 2, Automated Gardening System, begins by explaining how to build a simple smart gardening system that automatically waters your plants as needed. The chapter explores the use of an always-on low power Arduino Pro Mini setup and outdoor waterproofing options. We will go into the specifics of building a system that senses when your plants need watering so that you can maintain ideal conditions for your garden to grow.

Chapter 3, Integrating CheerLights into a Holiday Display, reveals how to craft a festive dynamic light display using CheerLights, ESP8266, and NeoPixels. It also navigates you through the functionality of the ESP8266 breakout board and shows you how you can get the world to light up your festive display through Twitter tweets. These Wi-Fi-connected lights change colors based on tweets sent from around the world.

Chapter 4, Erase Parking Headaches with OpenCV and Raspberry Pi, uses OpenCV, a Raspberry Pi with the Wheezy distribution, the Amazon Web Service’s Simple Notification System, and a webcam, to teach you how to create a notification system for a parking space.

Chapter 5, Building Netflix's The Switch for the Living Room, helps you design your own button, which, when pressed, will dim the lights, order pizza, turn on Netflix, and silence notifications on your phone—Netflix, being fans of the maker movement, put out a great project called The Switch. This is an excellent way to quickly get into the movie-watching mood, and it will be sure to impress any guests.

Chapter 6, Lock Down with a Windows IoT Face Recognition Door System, is for you, if you have ever wanted to create a locking system that relies on facial recognition. You will use ideas taken from Microsoft's Hack the Home initiative, the Raspberry Pi, an electric door strike, and other components to create a security system using Windows IoT Core for Raspberry Pi 3.

What you need for this book

For this book, the main component you will need is, of course, a control board, which, depending on the chapter, may be a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino-based board. The beginning of each chapter lists the complete list of items required to build your project. We will also show you how to program the control boards for the project and how to connect all the components together. We will guide you step-by-step through building the hardware so that you are not left behind.

An understanding of electronic hardware, networking, and basic programming skills would help you move quickly through the chapters, however, we will provide detailed explanations of the software setup in case you need more hand-holding at any point.

Who this book is for

This book is for you if you agree with one of these:

• You have seen cool projects on the internet that amateur beginners have set up in their homes and you have an interest in hopping on the DIY automation bus, but don’t know where to start.
• You have used the Raspberry Pi for a media center or as a Linux desktop and you want to take it to the next level and find the answer to the question "what else can it do?"
• You want to impress your friends with your use of technology to simplify mundane everyday home tasks.
• You want someone to hold your hand through creating some cool home automation setups so that you may get the confidence to try your own big idea next.

All the projects in this book are examples of how you may use these boards. You may customize these ideas for your own situations; it depends on what you want to do or create. Your creativity and imagination is the limit.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in the text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Make sure your Raspberry Pi is updated and upgraded. You can do this by typing sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade".

A block of code is set as follows:

{
  module: 'module name',
  position: 'position',
  header: 'optional header',
  config: {
    extra option: 'value'
  }
},

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

{
  module: 'module name',
  position: 'position',
  header: 'optional header',
  config: {
    extra option: 'value'
  }
},

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/node_latest_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg –i node_latest_armhf.deb

New terms and important words are shown in bold.

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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