Pimatic on Standard PC instead of rPi

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I will use a:
HP Microserver

• with Win Server 2016
• and ubuntu in VirtualBox

Just tried hyperv and it not working with USB-throughput…

How did you install node?
With apt?!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Chris

@chris

I’m using Windows Server 2012R2 with Homeduino USB attached directly to it.
Homeduino identifies as a COM port (COM5 on mine, yours will wary).

The thing is, I determined Windows Node install to not work as well as I hoped, so I installed a VirtualBox on that said computer. VirtualBox forwards the COM port to virtual machine, and all works well. It does not eat resources much, so it shouldn’t be a problem. In addition, this way you get an easy way to backup your pimatic: copy paste the VM folder.

I have it set up so that when the computer starts, it launched VirtualBox Pimatic instance hidden (headless mode). So you don’t need to start it manually either.

To install, you can pretty much follow the guide found in https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions
And for Pimatic itself, start from the topic “Pimatic installation” https://pimatic.org/guide/getting-started/installation/

I am running a test system on Windows 10 which works very well with say 90% of the plugins. Obviously, there are some platform-specific plugin like pimatic-gpio which cannot be used on Windows. The biggest hurdle for some users may be that Visual Studio 2013 for C++ needs to be installed (the free edition will do) as some nodeJS package contain native code.

If it is useful for some users we can additional information to plugins on platform support.

@mwittig

I’d like to try and install Pimatic on Windows as well! I suppose pimatic-homeduino works?
How about cron (linux exclusive), or some other type of timing procedure?

Supposedly all http request making plugins work. Though I’d settle with getting homeduino working first

@kitsunen said in Pimatic on Standard PC instead of rPi:

I suppose pimatic-homeduino works?

Homeduino should work, but I haven’t tried this so far with an Arduino board. I’ll give this a shot tomorrow with my test system in Windows. Cron should also work as it is 100% JS implementation of a Unix “Cron-alike” as far as I can see. It should be tested thoroughly on Windows which has not been done yet as far as I know. As you say any plugin basically doing http callouts should work.

An issue on winows you may run to is path length for filenames. To avoid this it is helpful to install pimatic with short path for the installation directory. This problem will disappear, once we have migrated pimatic to NPM3 or some other package manager which keeps package dependencies flat rather than building up deep directory trees for dependencies.

Generally, consider Windows support as “experimental”. You’ll be better of running on Linux, Mac OS X, or some other Unix derivate supported by NodeJS.

@mwittig Yeah, I might just go for another VirtualBox VM to do the reliable stuff …
Definitely trying this out on my developing PC though! Thanks for the input!

By the way, I’ve been thinking for some time, is there some link to make donations for the project (I might not make much a difference, but I wanted to make some kind of gesture) ?

@kitsunen said in Pimatic on Standard PC instead of rPi:

I’ve been thinking for some time, is there some link to make donations for the project (I might not make much a difference, but I wanted to make some kind of gesture)

Much appreciated! Donations are always welcome and also small amounts make a difference. It will help to get the running costs for the web hosting paid which Oliver does on his private expense, btw. There is a “Suport Us” link on top bar of the web site which will directed you to the page with all the details. Donations are rewarded with stickers if you fancy it.

@mwittig Thanks! Done!