Bluz Gateway for NodeJS

Bluz is a Bluetooth LE development kit that connects low cost, low energy sensors to the Internet of Things. Each bluz DK can hook to the Particle cloud and be controlled through a REST API, receive Over the Air firmware updates, and integrate with third party services such as IFTTT.

Using gateway solutions, bluz can stay online without the need of a smartphone, allowing users to create battery powered project that can stay online for months or years, and always be accessible.

This project turns a Raspberry Pi or C.H.I.P. into a gateway, allowing it to be the central hub for the entire network of devices.

Basic installation on Linux

For Debian-like Linuxes (Raspbian, C.H.I.P.), global install method. You should just be able to copy and paste this into a shell. If you already have Node installed, skip the first line.

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_4.x | sudo -E bash - # get latest nodejs

sudo apt-get install bluetooth bluez libbluetooth-dev libudev-dev nodejs  # dependencies

sudo setcap cap_net_raw+eip $(eval readlink -f `which node`)  # Allows us to use without root access

# From https://docs.npmjs.com/getting-started/fixing-npm-permissions, we want to set the global npm install directory to be in our user directory, so we don't need to use root permissions
mkdir ~/.npm-global
npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'
echo 'export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

# Install the gateway
npm install -g bluz-gateway

The gateway is installed, so let's run it with bluz-gateway. Assuming that everything went well, you should see a few lines of text describing the devices it's found, and no errors. Press Ctrl-C to exit. Now, let's set it up to run at boot.

# Change username in startup script, and copy to init folder
sed 's/OUR_USER_NAME/'$USER'/'  ~/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/bluz-gateway/example/init-script/bluz-gateway | sudo tee /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway

# Add to run at start
sudo update-rc.d bluz-gateway defaults

You should now be able to start it up with sudo /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway start, and view the log file at /var/log/bluz-gateway.log

Updating

npm update -g bluz-gateway
sudo /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway restart

Config

Upon first startup, the program creates a config file at ~/.bluz-gw/config.json

• serverPort: Changes the port that the info server runs on
• serverEnabled: Enables/disables the info server
• blacklist: An array of BL MAC addresses of DKs we should not connect to
• cloud:host and :port: If you want to run a local cloud
• DEBUG: debug levels -
  • error: show only errors
  • warn: default, only shows very basic info
  • info: shows up and down packet events
  • debug: a lot
  • trace: really a lot

Info Server

Upon startup the gateway starts a very basic REST-like server on port 3000 (default). It currently has commands of (with host_addr being localhost, or ip address of the server):

• GET http://host_addr:3000/connected-device Returns connected device info
• GET http://host_addr:3000/blacklist Currently blacklisted devices
• POST text/plain http://host_addr:3000/blacklist Add a device to blacklist (12 digit hexadecimal MAC address in POST text/plain body, probably gotten from connected-devices)
• DELETE http://host_addr:3000/blacklist/:id Delete a device from blacklist

Protocol

See wiki.