raspberrypi.md

Installation on Raspberry Pi

This project was primarily made to run on one or more small Raspberry Pis that are distributed to achieve good signal strength closely located to the Bluetooth accessories you might have.

Compatible Hardware

This project was tested with a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which has an integrated WiFi and Bluetooth chipset. Other combinations may work or not. If you find a combination that works, please contribute your knowledge.

Install Raspbian Stretch

I've good experiences running this on a fresh Raspbian Stretch. As always: Other versions may work and your mileage may vary.

Follow the official guidelines to install Raspbian.

Once you've configured Raspbian including all networking stuff, you'll need Node.js.

Remove node.js 4.8.3

The Raspbian distribution may still include the old Node 4.8.3 distribution. Uninstall this before you continue with the following steps:

sudo apt-get remove nodejs

This will prompt you to remove nodejs, node-legacy, nodered and potentially some other packages that depend upon it.

Download node.js

These instructions ask you to install node.js 9.3.0, but a newer version may work too.

Download the proper Node.js version 9.3.0 depending upon your version of the Raspberry Pi. If you're not sure which one is right for you, run:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -m
armv6l

In the above case you'd download the armv6 version of node.js using the following command:

wget https://nodejs.org/dist/v9.3.0/node-v9.3.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz

Install node.js

Install node.js using the following commands:

tar -xvf node-v9.3.0-linux-armv6l.tar.xz
sudo mv node-v9.3.0-linux-armv6l /opt/
sudo ln -s /opt/node-v9.3.0-linux-armv6l/ /opt/node
sudo chown -R root:root /opt/node*
sudo ln -s /opt/node/bin/node /usr/bin/node
sudo ln -s /opt/node/bin/npm /usr/bin/npm

Verify that the installation has succeeded by running

node -v
npm -v

The above commands should print v9.3.0 and 5.5.1 respectively. Newer versions may work.

Install homebridge

This plugin needs version 0.4.35 of homebridge. Earlier versions will not work. Later should work.

sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev
sudo npm install -g homebridge --unsafe-perm

Bluetooth issues

Please be aware of the following problems in noble, which affect the bluetooth connections to your accessories:

• Noble #465
• Noble #480
• Noble #474

The install script downloads a version of noble, which is supposed to circumvent the issues. At the end connections to accessories work, sometimes you'll still see immediate disconnects. Please restart homebridge if you see those issues.

I'm working on it. My recommendation at the moment is to report the issues in the noble project.

Install noble dependencies

Install the noble dependencies for Raspbian by executing the commands:

sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez libbluetooth-dev libudev-dev

Install this plugin

And finally install homebridge-ranger with:

sudo npm install -g homebridge-ranger --unsafe-perm

Launch homebridge upon boot

I'd recommend running homebridge via systemd - this is best described in this gist by @johannrichard.

The path to homebridge is /opt/node/bin/homebridge if you followed these instructions. As such the ExecStart line in homebridge.service should be:

ExecStart=/opt/node/bin/homebridge $HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS

Additionally change /etc/default/homebridge to look as follows:

# Defaults / Configuration options for homebridge
# The following settings tells homebridge where to find the config.json file 
# and where to persist the data (i.e. pairing and others)
HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS=-D -U /var/lib/homebridge

# If you uncomment the following line, homebridge will log more
# You can display this via systemd's journalctl: journalctl -f -u homebridge
DEBUG=homebridge,ranger:*

I would not recommend using the DEBUG=* option as this will give you a lot of logging from the bluetooth stack, which is usually not necessary. The debug option accepts a comma separated list of names if you need logging from other modules.

You can inspect the logs later using:

sudo journalctl -f -u homebridge

Give node bluetooth privileges

If you're launching homebridge as a non-root user (you should!) you need to give the node executable permissions to start and stop bluetooth advertising:

sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin
sudo setcap cap_net_raw+eip /opt/node/bin/node

Create a skeleton homebridge configuration

You need to create the following folder:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/homebridge

and create the homebridge configuration file with nano:

sudo nano /var/lib/homebridge/config.json

Paste the following configuration block, save with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X:

{
  "bridge": {
    "name": "Homebridge",
    "username": "CC:22:3D:E3:CE:30",
    "port": 51826,
    "pin": "031-45-154"
  },
  "platforms": [
    {
      "platform": "Ranger",
      "devices": [
      ]
    }
  ]
}

I'd recommend changing the name, username, port and pin properties to be unique in your installation.

Finally you need to give the homebridge user account permissions to the folder and all files it contains:

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/lib/homebridge
sudo chown -R homebridge:homebridge /var/lib/homebridge

Enable your homebridge installation

If you've followed the installation up to this point you can finish up the installation by running:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable homebridge
sudo systemctl start homebridge

Continue by verifying your homebridge installation.