homesmarts is a python program to allow me to use a cheap Amazon Dash button as a lightswitch for my Phillips Hue lights. Rather than spend $60 on an "official" Phillips Hue switch, I decided to buy multiple $5 Amazon Dash buttons and hack them to operate my Hue lights (instead of order things off Amazon). It runs on my Raspberry Pi 3.

This idea was heavily incluenced from:

• Ted Benson's original blog on how he hacked Amazon Dash buttons to track baby data
• The "listen for ARP requests" code was based on Bob Steinbeiser's comment from the above blog

• rabbitmq-server: Implementation of AMQP
• pika: Pika Python AMQP Client Library
• phue: A Phillips Hue python library

To install on a Debian system (I'm running everything on my Raspberry Pi):

• Install and run rabbitmq-server
• Clone this repository

First off, I highly recommend you read Ted Benson's original blog. It's a great read and does a great job giving an overview how everything works together. (Keep in mind, we'll be interacting with Phillips Hue lights instead of tracking baby poops. :)

IMPORTANT: Before running any homesmarts python program for the first time, be sure to press your Phillips Hue bridge button. This allows the phue library to create a Hue username so it can access the Phillips Hue API.

• Discover MAC address for all Dash buttons. You can run dash-listener, which should log unknown MAC addresses to standard output.
• Edit your local homesmarts_config.yaml with your own details. Be sure to include:
  • IP address of your Phillips Hue bridge
  • Defaults to use for when toggling your Phillips Hue lights under light-defaults YAML section
  • Add all Amazon Dash buttons to your switches YAML section. Each Amazon Dash button can be associated with a single light (using light_id) or a group of lights (using group_id).
• Once everything is configured, run: sudo python homesmarts/dash_listener.py

Here are some links I found to be very helpful when writing and setting up homesmarts:

• Phillips Hue: Developer's Getting Started
• Phillips Hue: Full Phillips Hue API (NOTE: requires user registration)
• phue: A Phillips Hue python library
• RabbitMQ Tutorial

Be sure you have the correct IP address for your bridge in homesmarts_config.yaml. Also be sure you press the Bridge's button before running the program the first time.

You need to run dash_listener.py with sudo privileges to enable listening for all ARP requests.

It isn't necessary. I wanted to get experience with AMQP / enterprise messaging. Originally I planned on separate executables; one for listening for ARP messages (which requires sudo privileges) and publishes messages to the queue, and one for processing the messages (which could be run without sudo.

However, I later opted to keep everything in a single executable to make my life easier... but I still wanted to keep my AMQP code as a reference.