Author: hilitski

This tutorial describes how to set-up the communication between Raspberry Pi 3 and AWS cloud. As a concrete example, we will store temperature data tin the cloud and visualize it. This is accomplished in several steps:

1. Connect Raspberry Pi 3 to AWS
2. Read temperature from I2C sensor
3. Store data time-series in DynamoDB
4. Visualize the historical temperature data
5. Receive alerts on low and high temperature

Connecting RPi 3 to AWS

As a starting point, we have the Raspberry Pi 3 board with Raspbian Linux  and fully configured WiFi connection. Let’s connect it to the Amazon IoT!

This process can be split up into two parts – set-up of security credentials and SDK installation. During the security credentials set-up, it does not matter which SDK you prefer. Amazon has pretty detailed description of how to connect RPi for Javascript SDK, but we can for the large part follow the same steps. Follow this AWS manual to

• Create and Attach a Thing (Device)
• Generate certificates and policy
• Download certificates

Once all the certificates (i.e. device certificate, private key, and root CA certificate) are downloaded from AWS, let’s upload them into $ ~/certs folder on the device.

Now, we will install Python SDK rather than NodeJS. Simply following the instructions here and executing $pip3 install AWSIoTPythonSDK

Let’s also clone the Git repository so we can use its sample code to learn the SDK basics:

$ git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-iot-device-sdk-python.git
$ cd aws-iot-device-sdk-python/samples
$ ls 
basicPubSub
basicShadow
ThingShadowEcho

We’ll take advantage of the basicPubSub.py script. It should be called together with the certificates (so that AWS IoT can identify the device):

# Certificate based mutual authentication
$ python3 basicPubSub.py -e <endpoint> -r <rootCAFilePath> -c <certFilePath> -k <privateKeyFilePath>

This sample code will subscibe to sdk/test/Python topic and publish to the same topic in the infinite loop. It is possible to use the external MQTT client (or the on built-into AWS IoT ) to see these messages and validate that the connection with AWS IoT is successful.

We are going to use the connection established in this way to publish ambient temperature to the appropriate topic. But first, we need to read the sensor data.

Reading Temperature Sensor…

I am using an affordable and easy to set-up TMP102 sensor from SparkFun, connected to the board using Pi Wedge. The connections are straightforward, as there are only four wires: SDA, SCL, +3.3V and GND.

Now let’s make sure that the I2C is enabled by typing  $ sudo raspi-config and going to the advanced options menu. If I2C is currently off,  enabling it requires reboot of RPi board. We also need to install i2c-tools by executing  $ sudo apt-get install -y i2c-tools  to be able to communicate through I2C. Let’s see what’s connected by executing i2cdetect command:

$ i2cdetect -y 1
   
  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 48 -- -- -- -- -- -- --
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

We have the TMP102 sensor at its standard address 0x48. The full temperature reading is stored in the first 12 bits with address 0. The first 8 bits provide  to get the rounded temperature reading:

$ i2cget -y 1 0x48 0 b
0x19

The returned result 0x19 = 25 C is the room temperature as measured by the sensor. The full 12 but reading will be used later to get more accurate data. For now,  we are assured that the sensor is connected and works. All we need is a python script that will read the temperature and send it to AWS.

…with Python

Let’s use pigpio library to communicate with I2C – seems like it comes pre-installed with Python3. Let’s also install the pyth0n-smbus library: $ sudo apt-get install python-smbus.

First, start a pigpio daemon by executing  $ sudo pigpiod.  After that, the script should acquire and print the temperature. We can start it by executing $ python tmp102.py The source code  of tmp102.py is below:

#!bin/python3
#reading TMP 102 sensor

import pigpio
import time

def tmp102_reading(byte0, word0):
 #calculation of the temperature based on 
 #the first word and the first byte
 
 # !!! not tested for negative temperatures !!!!
 #last 4 bits of the word0
 l4b = (word0 & 0b1111000000000000)>>12
 temperature = ((byte0<<4) | l4b) * 0.0625
 return temperature
 
 

#i2c bus of the Raspberry Pi 3
i2c_bus = 1
#TMP 102 address on the i2c bus
addr = 0x48


dev_pi = pigpio.pi()
dev_tmp = dev_pi.i2c_open(i2c_bus, addr, 0)
register_n = 0
try:
 while True:
 t_byte = dev_pi.i2c_read_byte_data(dev_tmp, 0)
 t_word = dev_pi.i2c_read_word_data(dev_tmp, 0)
 t = tmp102_reading(t_byte, t_word)
 print(' Temperature: {} C'.format(t))
 time.sleep(1)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
 pass
print('Exiting the loop');
r = dev_pi.i2c_close(dev_tmp)

This script will output the sensor reading every second until Ctrl+C is pressed:

Temperature: 25.59375 C
Temperature: 25.59375 C
Temperature: 25.625 C
Temperature: 25.625 C
Temperature: 25.625 C
Temperature: 25.625 C
Temperature: 25.625 C

Sending data to AWS

Instead of printing the temperature in the console, we need to send it to AWS IoT and repeat the whole thing after a set interval – every minute, for example. The Raspberry Pi has already been connected to AWS during the first step. We will re-use the publish/subscribe code example (basucPubSub.py) from the AWS SDK example to publish to a new topic for our new sensor.

First, let’s create variables for the topic and delay between temperature updates. Plus, we can give our sensor a serial number – in case we build more than one and need to distinguish between them:

delay_s = 60
sensor_sn = '00000001'
topic = 'myrpi/'+sensor_sn

Let’s now read the temperature in the loop and send it to AWS (until Ctrl+C):

try:
  while True:
    loopCount += 1
    t_byte = dev_pi.i2c_read_byte_data(dev_tmp, 0)
    t_word = dev_pi.i2c_read_word_data(dev_tmp, 0)
    t = tmp102_reading(t_byte, t_word)
    timestamp = datetime.datetime.now()
    print(' Temperature: {} C   Loop # {:d}'.format(t,loopCount))
    print(' Time: {} \n'.format(timestamp))
    msg = '"Device": "{:s}", "Temperature": "{}", "Loop": "{}"'.format(sensor_sn, t,loopCount)
    msg = '{'+msg+'}'
    myAWSIoTMQTTClient.publish(topic, msg, 1)
    print('Sleeping...')
    time.sleep(delay_s)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
  pass
  
print('Exiting the loop');
r = dev_pi.i2c_close(dev_tmp)
myAWSIoTMQTTClient.disconnect()
print('Disconnected from AWS')

Remember – this(get the entire file here)  is only a (slight) modification of the basicPubSub.py file provided in AWS Python SDK. Path to certificated is still necessary for it to run properly. The shell command to start publishing to AWS is therefore

$ python3 publis_temp.py -e <Your:AWS:endpoint> -r <rootCAFilePath> -c <certFilePath> -k <privateKeyFilePath>

The script publishes the following payload to the myrpi/00000001 topic:

{
 "Device": "00000001", 
  "Temperature": "27.0",
  "Loop": "2670"
}

The structure of this payload is very similar to the data sent by  the AWS  IoT button. Once the data is published we can time-stamp and log it the DynamoDB table. This was described in detail in the post about IoT button.