A new plugin is available for Johnny Five, a Robotics and IoT programming framework. Thanks to Johnny Five, you can easily integrate a wide range of sensors and actuators attached to an Arduino board or your Raspberry Pi. On Arduino, the universal Firmata library is used which implements a protocol for the communication with the host computer. Thus, there is no need to modify the Arduino sketch when new sensors or actuators are connected to your Arduino. Generally, one sketch will fit them all, but it is also possible to use tailored sketches for specific needs. As part of your projects, pimatic-johnny-five may provide a good alternative to using other frameworks like MySensors in many cases.

Issues

For bug reports, please use the issue tracker on github project page. For questions and feature request please use the forum. I’d greatly appreciate your input and suggestions!

Contributions

If you like this plugin, please consider ★ starring the project on github. Contributions to the project are welcome. You can simply fork the project and create a pull request with your contribution to start with.

Progress and Next Steps

This is minor update which includes dependency updates for johnny-five, particle-io and the serialport libraries. It also contains an implementation of an combined temperature & barometric pressure sensor contributed by @kanedo. Thanks!

Meanwhile, Firmata regulary supports ESP-8266, but at present this is only good for experimental use as johnny-five still doesn’t handle re-initialization after re-connect. My plan for the near future is to spend more time on this plugin to progress on some of the following topics:

• add a Multi-Sensor device (temperature, humidity, pressure, altitude, orientation, acceleration)
• a RGB-LED device to drive (analog) RGB-LED strips.
• OLED and LCD display driver
• investigate issue with expander connected to unipi i2c bus
• further investigate how to reinitialize a board which had been disconnected for a while

Updates

• Version 0.9.11, 23/01/2017: Bug fixture: added missing require statement for new action
• Version 0.9.10, 23/01/2017: Added support for software PWM and support for excluding pins with raspi-io. Added RGBLedDevice to provide control for common cathode/common cathode LEDs
• Version 0.9.9, 17/01/2017: Improved device schema for temperature unit properties to editable with device editor, Added debug mode property to enable plugin debugging mode
• Version 0.9.8, 16/01/2017: Improved error handling for the expander board, i.e. handle i2c errors due to misconfiguration
• Version 0.9.7, 15/01/2017: Dependency updates, Fixed initialization bug for expander board when used with raspi-io, issue #54
• Version 0.9.6, 05/11/2016: Fixed handling of i2c address property, issue #47, Remove data listener on destruction of temperature device
• Version 0.9.5, 05/11/2016: Fix for invalid I2C address problem, issue 46
• Version 0.9.4, 27/10/2016: Dependency updates, Added JohnnyFiveTemperaturePressure - thanks @kanedo
• Version 0.9.3, 06/05/2016 Dependency updates, removed beta tag
• Version 0.9.2, 06/05/2016 (for pimatic 0.9 beta, only): Dependency updates
• Version 0.9.1, 03/05/2016 (for pimatic 0.9 beta, only): Dependency updates
• Version 0.9.0, 27/04/2016 (for pimatic 0.9 beta, only): Added ESP-8266 board support (experimental), Pimatic 0.9 compatibility changes, Dependency updates
• Version 0.8.8, 05/03/2016: Dependency updates. Now includes support for Raspberry Pi 3. Fixed some typos.
• Version 0.8.7, 10/02/2016: Fixed initialization for “particle-io” boards, issue #3 - thanks @hoodpablo, Updated README, Fixed switch example - thanks @Hr-FS
• Version 0.8.6, 23/01/2016: Updated dependency on “raspi-io” to include support for enabling pull up resistors by writing HIGH to the pin while in INPUT mode, Tweaked johnny-five to allow for longer board initialization timeouts to provide for slow initialization of some Arduinos, Added note to README about installation issue
• Version 0.8.5, 21/01/2016: Added support for Expander boards, Improved support for setup of remote boards, Improved robustness and error handling.
• Version 0.8.4, 12/01/2016: Fixed dependency on etherport fork, thanks to @rubenoost7
• Version 0.8.3, 29/12/2015: Added board config option to set baudrate. Bug fixture
• Version 0.8.2, 28/12/2015: Bug fixture
• Version 0.8.1, 28/12/2015: Added experimental support for Photon boards.

Platform Support

The plugin currently supports Arduino, Raspberry Pi boards, Photon boards, and tethering, i.e. connecting to remote Arduino & Raspberry Pi boards. More boards can be added on request. The Johnny Five project provides a detailed list of supported platforms with detailed information on supported features and how to set up the board.

Co-existance

The plugin can be installed along with other plugins using GPIO such as pimatic-homeduino and pimatic-gpio.

Status of implementation

This version supports the following devices

• ContactSensor, PresenceSensor, and ButtonSensor (digital input)
• Dimmer (digital output with PWM)
• Switch (digital output)
• Relay Switch (relay boards attached to digital output)
• Temperature Sensor (analog, I2C and 1-Wire)
• Temperature & Humidity Sensor (analog, I2C - sorry, no 1-Wire support, to date)
• Temperature & Barometric Pressure Sensor (I2C devices such as BMP180, MPL115A2, MPL3115A2)

The OLED and LCD display devices are incomplete and, thus, should not be used. They won’t do anything useful anyway.

Board-support has been tested with “arduino”, “raspi-io”, “particle-io”, “etherport” and “expander” board types.

@mwittig Nice work, thanks. I’m going to test

With this module, it seems to me controllino much more interesting. Including certification.
More scalable solution than Evok (comes from my home country, sorry guys from Brno)

@wutu said:

With this module, it seems to me controllino much more interesting.

Thanks for pointing this out! The controllino really has some interesting features like the ESD protection, automatic input voltage selection, certifications (as you said), and the form factor - and the Mini already has 6 relays integrated. I like it!

A point which I think speaks for UniPi is the good customer track record. I am not sure where Controllino stands right now, but for sure their offering is highly competitive. Anyhow, competition is a positive aspect in that area in my opinion. I’ll get in touch with these guys to check if there are interested in collaborating with open source projects.

@mwitting
Thanks a lot for this great plugin!!!
I want to use the RPi/Arduinos/Pimatic for a new open source energy managment system, which should act as the following:
RPi2 with pimatic <-> LAN <-> Wiznet5100 <-> Mega2560 with Firmata <-> IO-extension.
http://www.photovoltaikforum.com/smart-grids-f138/osems-open-source-energy-managment-system-t110566.html#p1333201
Sorry it’s German, but there are less alternatives for EMS.

So the normal connection by serial/USB should be replaced with LAN. It’s caused by longer distance between RPi2 and the Mega2560 (~10m). I know, that some FHEM-freaks use the configurable Firmata with Perl on serverside. It would be a keyfeature doing this with the nice Pimatic-soft.
I’m more the hardware freak so I ask for help for the Software-part. How can I help to speed up the “LAN-Johnny-Five-plugin”?
iot

@Hr-FS Thanks for your positive feedback. Your project sonds really interesting and I am happy to help you. I have some basic understanding of the “EMS” and also looked into OGEMA (at an early stage) a couple of years ago.

As outlined on Chat I have done some tethering experiments, but did not have the opportunity yet to test the Arduino-Ethernet yet, as I do not have an Arduino with LAN right now.

Yes - OGEMA is the goal but sounds a bit too big at the moment. So the intention is to develop a prototype of open source EMS which can control devices (heat pump, AC/DC-converters with 0-5V input or RS485 ModbusRTU, swiches …). On the input side we need values from powermeters like e UEM-80 or EM300 (with existing openhab-bindung).

The problem is that devices are not at the same place. If every device would get an own RPi I think thats overkill (people in pv-forum suggested this).
So the Arduinos as “extended arm” of the controlling RPi looks more perfect. The main advantage would be only no or less updates of firmata and only 1 RPi-system with (maintained) Linux.
iot

I have recently updated the plugin to provided support for Expander boards, and to provide improved support for setup of remote boards. See “Progress and Next Steps” section in the first post.

Unfortunately there is also an installation problem if you’re planning to use “raspi-io”. See “Issues” sections for details.

@mwittig

I tested PCA9685 expander at raspi-io and works great.

I can not find out how converts JF received levels . Your module uses: level * 255 / 100. But what gave the JF I can not detect.

I want to fit MQTT dimmer configurable range: Meanwhile, I have:
pimatic (0-100)
8 bit
12 bit
(Another thing that would fit into the Super Dimmer)

I have this card, order still Arduino with Ethernet and test it.
With Johnny Five module could be interesting Dimmer, controllable via Ethernet.

@wutu said:

I can not find out how converts JF received levels .

Sorry. I missed this one. As this is mapped internally to a J5 LED it has 8 bit resolution. It might be insufficient if the expanders supports 12-bit resolution and you wish to control at this granularity. For this I would need to change the code to use the board I/O API directly or may some other driver serves the needs (may be servo?).

I like your concept of Super Dimmer and I am happy to promote it for integration into the pimatic core. I need to have closer look at your code though.

Thanks for the reply. I have adjustable resolution for dimmer in MQTT module. But I’m not sure if it would not become the responsibility of the developer module.

P.S. Perhaps it can even write better. Perhaps it can write better. But so far it’s the only way I know how.

Version 0.8.8 released - see first post for details

Today I have managed to run the firmata sketch on Wemos D1 and to run a simple J5 blink LED demo. So, ESP-8266 support as part of pimatic-johnny-five is probably just a matter of a few weeks now. For pimatic, it is probably less exciting as we already have ESPimatic and ESPeasy which serve very well for most use cases. However, there may some used cases which benefit from J5’s large base of supported sensors and actuators and the possibility to seamlessly use a variety of boards in a single setup.

The firmata changes have not been released yet and can be found on the “esp” branch.
https://github.com/firmata/arduino/tree/esp

Hi, i have a little suggest for the device documentation. I tried to implement a JohnnyFivePwmOutput device for a raspi-io board and stuck at the configuration. My main problem was the pin address, because i used the GPIO pin number intentionally. After a lot of debugging and reading the dependencies, i found out, that i have to take another pin notation.

P1-12 instead of the GPIO ID, the wipiring ID or what ever.

Here a example of my working JohnnyFivePwmOutput device configuration:

{
      "pin": "P1-12",
      "boardId": "raspberry-pi",
      "id": "dimmer-test",
      "name": "Dimmer Test",
      "class": "JohnnyFivePwmOutput"
    }

For the future it would be nice to add a hint, what exactly pin address means for the specific board. For example a small table with all supported boards and a example pin mapping would be helpful to have a better understand of the configuration (especially for the raspi-io board).

But finally the plugin and the device work’s very fine! Good job.

@possmann said in New plugin for Johnny Five:

For the future it would be nice to add a hint, what exactly pin address means for the specific board. For example a small table with all supported boards and a example pin mapping would be helpful to have a better understand of the configuration (especially for the raspi-io board).

Thank you very much for your feedback. I am sorry for the delay in reply, I’ll definitely take this into account.
https://github.com/mwittig/pimatic-johnny-five/issues/48

@possmann said in New plugin for Johnny Five:

Hi, i have a little suggest for the device documentation. I tried to implement a JohnnyFivePwmOutput device for a raspi-io board and stuck at the configuration. My main problem was the pin address, because i used the GPIO pin number intentionally. After a lot of debugging and reading the dependencies, i found out, that i have to take another pin notation.
P1-12 instead of the GPIO ID, the wipiring ID or what ever.

For your information, I have added a document on pin naming which will be published shortly. It can be found at: https://github.com/mwittig/pimatic-johnny-five/blob/master/assets/docs/pin-naming.md

Meanwhile, Johnny Five has evolved and besides the header/pin naming scheme it is also possible to use pin names, e.g. GPIO18, or WiringPi pin numbers, e.g. 1. See pin naming document for further information.