DashboardPI - Retro Display Dashboard

Flashing RaspberriPi Hard Disk / Install Required Software (Using Ubuntu Linux)

Download "RASPBIAN JESSIE LITE" https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Create your new hard disk for DashboardPI

Insert the microSD to your computer via USB adapter and create the disk image using the dd command

Locate your inserted microSD card via the df -h command, unmount it and create the disk image with the disk copy dd command

$ df -h /dev/sdb1 7.4G 32K 7.4G 1% /media/XXX/1234-5678

$ umount /dev/sdb1

Caution: be sure the command is completely accurate, you can damage other disks with this command

if=location of RASPBIAN JESSIE LITE image file of=location of your microSD card

$ sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/raspbian-jessie-lite.img of=/dev/sdb (note: in this case, it's /dev/sdb, /dev/sdb1 was an existing factory partition on the microSD)

Setting up your RaspberriPi

Insert your new microSD card to the raspberrypi and power it on with a monitor connected to the HDMI port

user: pi pass: raspberry

Change your account password for security

sudo passwd pi

Enable RaspberriPi Advanced Options

sudo raspi-config

Choose: 1 Expand File System

9 Advanced Options

A2 Hostname change it to "DashboardPI"

A4 SSH Enable SSH Server

A7 I2C Enable i2c interface

Enable the English/US Keyboard

sudo nano /etc/default/keyboard

Change the following line: XKBLAYOUT="us"

Reboot PI for Keyboard layout changes / file system resizing to take effect

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Auto-Connect to your WiFi

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Add the following lines to have your raspberrypi automatically connect to your home WiFi (if your wireless network is named "linksys" for example, in the following example)

network={
   ssid="linksys"
   psk="WIRELESS PASSWORD HERE"
}

Reboot PI to connect to WiFi network

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Now that your PI is finally on the local network, you can login remotely to it via SSH. But first you need to get the IP address it currently has.

$ ifconfig Look for "inet addr: 192.168.XXX.XXX" in the following command's output for your PI's IP Address

Go to another machine and login to your raspberrypi via ssh

$ ssh pi@192.168.XXX.XXX

Start Installing required packages

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

$ sudo apt-get install vim git python-smbus i2c-tools python-imaging python-smbus build-essential python-dev rpi.gpio python3 python3-pip

**Update local timezone settings

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

select your timezone using the interface

Setup the simple directory l command [optional]

vi ~/.bashrc

add the following line:

alias l='ls -lh'

source ~/.bashrc

Fix VIM default syntax highlighting [optional]

sudo vi /etc/vim/vimrc

uncomment the following line:

syntax on

Install i2c Backpack Python Drivers

$ git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Python_LED_Backpack

$ cd Adafruit_Python_LED_Backpack/

$ sudo python setup.py install

Supplies Needed

Raspberry PI or Pi Zero

0.56" 4-Digit 7-Segment Display w/I2C Backpack (x2)

Quad Alphanumeric Display - 0.54" Digits w/ I2C Backpack (x4)

LED Lights (x4)

Building the Dashboard

1) Using a 3d printer, print the cover, box and back panels

Using the following 3 STL files in the /construction/3D Print/ folder, print out the cover, box and back of the case to assemble.

Dashboard-cover.stl Dashboard-box.stl Dashboard-back.stl

2) Solder Unique Display Jumpers

NOTE: All the I2C backpacks must be soldered on the back of each of the displays, the backpacks come with the display and must all be soldered on first.

For each of the I2C backpack displays you must solder the jumpers on the back in the all the possible combinations to have your RaspberriPI I2C interface to recognize each display with a unique address.

Leave the first display with no jumper soldered, the 2nd with the farthest right soldered, the 3rd with only the middle soldered and so on... Eventually you'll have to solder jumpers in all the combinations of 2 at a time connected and the final display with all 3 jumpers soldered to be connected.

There's a total of 3 pins so you should have a total combination of 8 unique combinations.

3) Mount Displays in box

Using a hot glue gun, mount the displays in the holes and glue them in place. The LED lights may hold by friction from the 3D printed design, else use hot glue to hold them in place as well.

NOTE: I have written down on the back of the box cover the HEX addresses x70 - x77 that each display has based on the soldering jumpers (see section #2)

4) Wiring all Displays

Each of the 14 segment alpha numeric displays needs to have a connection to the RaspberryPI GND, 5V and 3V pins. The 7 segment display only needs connectivity to the GND and 5V pins.

I've used standard jumper wires to connect to all the pins on the display / RaspberryPI pins and grouped the common connections (all the GND wires, 5V wires) with a wirenut.

Each LED light needs to have a 270 ohm resister solder to the ground (short) pin and connect each positive LED pin to the corresponding GPIO pins on the PI, I've used GPIO pins 18, 13, 15 and 16.

For each display in the dashboard ALL of the D and C pins need to be connected to the SCL and SDA pins on the PI.

5) Finished (Final Touches)

Screw the front cover and back panel to the main box

You're now ready to run the Dashboard!

7) Install Central Webhost

This project includes a small PHP server that you can host on almost any low cost linux webhost. From this project copy the files from the "server/" folder and place them on your PHP webhost and remember the domain name.

For our example it will be installed on a hypothetical host with the public domain name of: www.mydashboard.com

The server/README.md file contains all the details about how to get/set message values, measurement values and flag values to the PHP server. These values will then be listened for on the Retrodashboard to display to you as output via the alphanumeric / numeric and led lights turning on and off.

8) Install & Run Dashboard Drivers

Start up your RaspberryPi and make sure the I2C bus recognizes all your connected 7/14 segment displays. [each display is given a unique address described above by how you solder each display's jumpers in different combinations]

If you have all 8 displays with jumpers soldered in all 8 combinations, you should have the following output for the i2cdetect command:

sudo i2cdetect -y 1

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f

00: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

70: 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

(in this case all the displays numbered 0 to 7 are being recognized on the PI as I2C available devices)

**Install all 3 python driver scripts from this project (in the dashboard/ folder) to your home directory of the RaspberryPI. ** So your PI has the following home directory files:

cd ~ ls -lh

-rwxrwxr-x 1 pi pi 2.8K May 21 01:56 alphanum.py
-rwxrwxr-x 1 pi pi 2.2K May 21 01:54 dashboard.py
-rwxrwxr-x 1 pi pi 1.4K May 21 02:36 indicators.py

Edit each python scripts variable to reference your running PHP data server (see Step 7)

dashboardServer = 'CHANGE TO YOUR SERVER.com'

alphanum.py

Change the python code to reflect the HEX addresses each display is assigned based on the solder jumpers (see section #2)

display1 = AlphaNum4.AlphaNum4(address=0x77, busnum=1)
display2 = AlphaNum4.AlphaNum4(address=0x76, busnum=1)
display3 = AlphaNum4.AlphaNum4(address=0x75, busnum=1)
display4 = AlphaNum4.AlphaNum4(address=0x73, busnum=1)

dashboard.py

Change the python code to reflect the HEX addresses each display is assigned based on the solder jumpers (see section #2)

blueDisplay = SevenSegment.SevenSegment(address=0x70, busnum=1) 
yellowDisplay = SevenSegment.SevenSegment(address=0x71, busnum=1) 
greenDisplay = SevenSegment.SevenSegment(address=0x72, busnum=1) 
redDisplay = SevenSegment.SevenSegment(address=0x74, busnum=1)

indicators.py

*Change the python code to reflect the GPIO pin numbers each LED is assigned based on your exact wiring (I've used GPIO pins: 13,15,16,18)

GPIO.setup(18, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.output(18,GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.setup(13, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.output(13,GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.setup(15, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.output(15,GPIO.LOW)
GPIO.setup(16, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.output(16,GPIO.LOW)

Now that your 3 scripts are pointing to your own data server you're now ready to run the dashboard to display your output.

Run the following commands to start your Dashboard displays.

$ nohup python indicators.py > indicators.out &

$ nohup python dashboard.py > dashboard.out &

$ nohup python alphanum.py > alphanum.out &

This will allow you to logout of your PI and have the python drivers remain running as a background process, if they do fail for any reason, the error message will be found in the [.out] from the commands above.

Run Displays at system startup

Place the following entries in the Dashboard crontab to have it run the scripts on system start/reboot. Note: logging to [.out] files has been supressed in this case to /dev/null if you have any errors occuring.

$ crontab -e

@reboot nohup python /home/pi/indicators.py >/dev/null 2>&1 @reboot nohup python /home/pi/dashboard.py >/dev/null 2>&1 @reboot nohup python /home/pi/alphanum.py >/dev/null 2>&1

9) Running Plugins for Populating Display Data

(These plugins run on different machines of your choosing for the dashboard to then monitor them)

The 'plugins/' folder contains plugins to get started populating the central server with information that the dashboard will display as output.

network-monitor.py

This plugin will persist to the central data hub local network information such as your current upload and download speed in KBPS.

Software Requirements:

ifstat is required

sudo apt-get install ifstat

Configure and run the script:

dashboardServer = 'CHANGE TO YOUR SERVER.com'

$ nohup python network-monitor.py > network-monitor.out &

server-monitor.py

This plugin will persist to the central data hub local CPU usage and temperature statistics.

Software Requirements:

psensor-server is required

sudo apt-get install psensor-server

Configure the script:

dashboardServer = 'CHANGE TO YOUR SERVER.com'

Run pensor server on port 17510, then run the server monitor script:

$ nohup psensor-server -p 17510 > /dev/null 2>&1

$ nohup python server-monitor.py > server-monitor.out &

DashboardPhone/

This is a fully functional Android App that runs on your phone as a service and will persist to the central data hub notifications and indicator flags (coming soon).

Configure the App You need to update the settings.java file with your local settings

	// host with the PHP server script installed for the RetroDashboard
	public static String remoteDashboardHost = "CHANGE TO YOUR SERVER.com";

	// create a list of notifications (by title) your phone always produces but don't need to broadcast
	public static String[] ignoredNotifications = new String[] { "Privacy Guard active", "Change keyboard" };

Build the App

Using an Android IDE, import the project locally and build it to an APK file. Install the APK on your phone locally and it should start working for you.

PushBullet/

Using the pushbullet app for your phone, signup to recieve an API key to have a simple python script be able to capture and push data hub notifications and indicator flags

Install Python 3.5 for asyncio functionality

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential tk-dev
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev
sudo apt-get install libdb5.3-dev libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev
sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev

If one of the packages cannot be found, try a newer version number (e.g. libdb5.4-dev instead of libdb5.3-dev).

wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.5.2/Python-3.5.2.tgz
tar zxvf Python-3.5.2.tgz
cd Python-3.5.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2
make
sudo make install
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/pydoc3.5 /usr/bin/pydoc3.5
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/python3.5 /usr/bin/python3.5
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/python3.5m /usr/bin/python3.5m
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/pyvenv-3.5 /usr/bin/pyvenv-3.5
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/pip3.5 /usr/bin/pip3.5
cd ~
echo 'alias python35="/usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/python3.5"' >> .bashrc
echo 'alias idle35="/usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/python3.5"' >> .bashrc

Install the python3 dependancies

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools
sudo apt-get install python3-pip
pip3 install asyncpushbullet

Optional way Download the python repository directly to obtain the python dependancies without the use of pip installing it

git clone https://github.com/rharder/asyncpushbullet
cd asyncpushbullet && sudo /usr/local/opt/python-3.5.2/bin/python3.5 setup.py install

Copy the PushBullet/ folder of the dashboard plugins/ from this project to the dashboard pi.

Visit the pushbullet settings page in your account to generate an API key to use https://www.pushbullet.com/#settings

Configure your pushbullet-listener.py script to have the correct API and dashboard central host

# your API Key from PushBullet.com
API_KEY = "o.XXXYYYZZZ111222333444555666"

# dashboard central server host
dashboardServer = 'MY-SERVER-HERE.com'

Add the script to start at dashboard boot and restart your dashboard pi