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PiTFTDomoPanel

Raspberry PI + PiTFT based home automation web control panel with screen activated by PIR movement detector

This project was started so that I am able to control some basic functions of my home automation system at home. It uses a RaspberryPi with a 2.8" capacitive touch PiTFT display from Adafruit and a small PIR movement detection module.

The idea is to activate the screen only when movement is detected to avoid useless screen usage and wear when the panel is not in use. The device simply displays a web page from the home automation system.

This projects consists of many parts:

  • A 3D box model to house everything
  • The list of hardware needed to create the project
  • The code that manages the PIR movement detector
  • Setup instructions to enable the PiTFT display and setup X to display a web page in kiosk mode

What does it look like ?

Here are some pictures of the final result: Front view Back view

Make your own

In the following sections, you will find a detailled description of the steps to make one.

Bill of materials

To realize this project, the following components are required:

  • A Raspberry PI B+ (2 or 3)
  • An Adafruit PiTFT PLUS 2.8" capacitive touch TFT screen (Adafruit link)
  • A PIR sensor module from Adafruit or any other vendor (Adafruit link)
  • A 3D printer or access to one
  • Some Screws:
    • 4x M4x10mm (25mm max) with conic head to close the enclosure
    • 4x M3x5mm to tighten the PiTFT to the enclosure
    • 2x M2x5mm to tighten the PIR to the enclosure

Wiring

The only thing to wire manually is the PIR sensor to the Raspberry Pi. One problem to face is that the PiTFT hat connects on the Raspberry Pi taking all the GPIO pins. The solution to that problem is to use the second male connector at the back of the PiTFT.

For that, I soldered a piece of ribbon cable to which I soldered individual cutable headers but feel free to use any other mean of wiring. You can also solder the three cables to the PiTFT header and the RPI header. I't more definitive but, less cumbersome than creating a custom cable like I did. If I make another one, I will take the soldering to header approach !

To give you an idea, the PIR has three pins, Ground, VCC (+5V) and output. Ground goes to one of the Ground pins of the Pi, VCC to a +5V pin and Output goes to the GPIO4 of the Raspberry Pi.

To help you figure out the wiring, here is a picture of the final wiring result: Wiring

I cannot include a Fritzing schema here becaus it's impossible to find a schematic where the back header is visible. But it's pretty obvious from the picture above. On the picture the collor of the cables correspond to:

  • Read: VCC
  • Orange: Output
  • Yellow: Ground

Installation of the RPi base system and the PiTFT

Install raspbian

First of all, start with a fresh raspbian lite installation. This project is based on Raspbian stretch. Go to the raspbian homepage, download the "lite" image and follow the installation guide.

Don't forget to enable ssh and/or finetune your installation with the raspi-config utility.

Configure the PiTFT hardware

Connect to the Raspberry using SSH.

Edit the file /boot/config.txt

#> sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Enable SPI and I2C interfaces by uncommenting the following lines. The former is required to send data to the TFT display, the later to handle the touch screen.

dtparam=spi=on
dtparam=i2c_arm=on

Then enable the overlay for the PiTFT display by adding the following lines at the end of the file. The first line sets the communication speed to 32Mhz, reduce to 16Mhz if your screen behaves strangly. It also sets the refresh speed to 25 frames per seconds which is enough in our case. The second line performs a screen rotation of 270° then adapts the touch screen so that it matches the display. It maches the layout of the TFT in the box created for the project but feel free to tweak this.

# PiTFT overlay
dtoverlay=pitft28-capacitive,speed=32000000,fps=25
dtoverlay=pitft28-capacitive,rotate=270,touch-swapxy,touch-invy

It is important to use two lines because there is a maximum file length of something linke 79 characters and there are too many parameters to fit within this line length limit.

Last remark, the available orientation options are:

  • rotate : Rotation of the screen (0, 90, 180 or 270)
  • touch-swapxy : Swaps the X and Y axis of the touch screen
  • touch-invx : Inverses the direction of the X axis (Y axis if swapped)
  • touch-invy : Inverses the direction of the Y axis (X axis if swapped)

Save and close nano

Display the boot console on the PiTFT at startup

Here we will modify the kernel boot parameters so that the boot messages are displayed on the PiTFT during boot. This will also give you a login prompt in case something goes really wrong.

Edit the file /boot/cmdline.txt

#> sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

Append the following options to the startup command line (after the bootwait argument)

fbcon=map:10 fbcon=font:VGA8x8

Save and close nano

Reboot your Raspberry Pi and enjoy the boot messages:

#> sudo reboot

You should see the boot screen upon reboot and end up with a prompt once the boot has completed.

Installation and configuration of the X11 server

Now that we have the TFT with it's framebuffer working, we can attack installing and setting up the application.

We will use the following software:

  • X11: will be responsible for the graphical environment.
  • matchbox: a minimal lightweight window manager.
  • nodm: a minimal window manager
  • xset: a X tool that can be used to tweak stuff like the screen saver
  • unclutter: a X tool that allows to hide the mouse cursor.

Install the X11 server and configure the PiTFT framebuffer

Install the basic x11 packages with the matchbox windows manager a browser and the nodm lightweight desktop manager.

#> sudo apt install x11-xserver-utils xinit matchbox nodm unclutter

Create a new file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-pitft.conf:

#> sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-pitft.conf

Enter the following content:

Section "Device"
  Identifier "Adafruit PiTFT"
  Driver "fbdev"
  Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb1"
EndSection

An important point is the use of "/dev/fb1" here. The PiTFT will settle on the framebuffer 1 as framebuffer 0 is already taken by the HDMI output.

Just for safety, ensure that the file /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf does not exists. If it does, just move it to your home folder for backup.

sudo mv /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf ~

You are free to delete it.

Install the frontend Python application

The application will be installed in the home directory of the user pi.

Install the application files

First, create a new directory for the program and copy the python application:

#> mkdir ~/domo-panel

Copy the files from the frontend git folder in ~/domo-panel

Create the python virtual environment:

#>sudo apt install -y python3-venv libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0
#>python3 -m venv ~/domo-panel//venv
#>~/domo-panel/venv/bin/pip3 install -r ~/domo-panel//requirements.txt

Setup nodm display manager

Edit the /etc/default/nodm file

#> sudo nano /etc/default/nodm

Ensure that the following values are set as below

NODM_ENABLED=true
NODM_USER=pi

Create the X11 session startup file

Next step will tell the system what should be done when the graphical environment starts. This is the place where the browser will be started.

Create the file /home/pi/.xsession and open it using nano

#> nano ~/.xsession

And enter the following content:

#!/bin/bash

# disable the DPMS (Energy Star) features
xset -dpms

# disable the screen saver
xset s off

# hide the mouse cursor when not moving
unclutter -idle 0 &

# Run the window manager !
matchbox-window-manager -use_titlebar no &

# Starts the application
~/domo-panel/venv/bin/python ~/domo-panel/main.py

Then change the permissions of the file to 700:

#> chmod 700 /.xsession

Enable boot to the graphical environment

As the lite version of Raspbian has been installed, it will boot to console by default. In order to boot into graphical mode, it's necessary to tell systemctl to boot to the graphical target.

To do so, type in the following command:

#> sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

Everything should be working now. The next thing to do is to reboot. The raspberry should reboot in graphical mode with the Midori browser displaying the web page in full screen mode.

#> sudo reboot

Activating the PIR sensor to activate the screen when a movement is detected

One thing left to do is install and enable the python script that manages the IR movement detector. When movement is detected, the script will enable the script for a configurable duration and then disable it again.

Installing required python and packages

The script requires python3.x and the RPi.GPIO python module. Make sure these are installed using the following command:

#> sudo apt install python3 python3-rpi.gpio

Installing the python script and the startup service

It's better to install the python script at a usual location for executables.

Copy the content of he src/pir folder to the /home/pi home directory of your Raspberry Pi.

Make the install.sh script executable and run it:

#> chmod -v 755 install.sh
#> ./install.sh

This script does the following:

  1. Creates the folder /usr/local/bin/pirscreen*
  2. Copies the pirscreenmanager.py to that folder
  3. Makes the copied script executable
  4. Copies the pirscreen.sh RC script to the /etc/init.d folder.
  5. Eakes the copied RC script executable
  6. Enables the script to run at boot

By default:

  • The screen stays on for 30 seconds
  • The X display is ':0'
  • Log file located at /tmp/pirscreenmanager.log

To change any of these options, the DAEMON_OPTS variable in the /etc/init.d/pirscreen.sh file must be modified. To do so, edit the file with nano and change it's content:

#> sudo nano /etc/init.d/pirscreen.sh

Printing the case and assembling

The case that can be seen in the images is available in the src/enclosure folder.

The two .stl files are provided ready to print.

Modification of the model before printing

In the case where you whish to change the model, open the source .scad with OpenScad.

The file starts with all parameters and two modules, one for each part of the box:

  • front_part : The module to render the front part of the box.
  • back_part : The module to render the back part of the box.

Before exporting the STL file, don't forget to leave only the part to export uncommented at the end of the file and do a render (F6).

Assembling

To assemble the electronics and the 3D printed box, some extra screws are needed: * 4x M4x10mm (25mm max) with conic head * 4x M3x5mm * 2x M2x5mm

To assemble:

  1. Separate the PiTFT board from the Raspberry Pi.
  2. Screw the PiTFT to the front of the case using the four M3 screws.
  3. Screw the PIR to the front of the case using the M2 screws.
  4. Plug the MicroUSB power to the PI
  5. Reassemble the Raspberry Pi on top of the PiTFT board
  6. Power up to check that everything still works.
  7. Pass the power cable in the channel at the bottom of the back of the case.
  8. Assemble the back and the front using the four M4 screws.

Here are pictures of the final assembly: Front view Front view

Note that on the pictures, I used special metal bolts fused into the plastic. I removed these from the 3D model because they don't bring extra value and are quite hard to find. So don't panic if your model does not have these. In the revised version, the screws go directly into the plastic !