There are two Fauxmo plugins here. Together they allow you to build a relatively complete Wemo on your own Raspberry Pi hardware.

As a test project, I wanted to develop a better Wemo plug. See this blog post for the full post, but my main criticism of Belkin was contained in this sentence:

Ideally, the Wi-Fi functionality would be built into the lamp. For this to happen, Belkin et al need to sell modules to the likes of Pottery Barn (or, more realistically, Pottery Barn’s lamp suppliers). Failing that, we need a fashionable-looking box that sits on the table, beside or under the lamp, that allows direct control of the light by pressing a button.

So I cobbled together a Raspberry Pi Zero W with a 120V relay and a momentary switch, and built the whole thing in a very nice (if I do say so myself) walnut box that measures 8 in square by 2 in tall and serves as a stand for the lamp that it controls. My "Wemo" is controllable by Alexa (thanks to the great Fauxmo project). It also has a schedule.

In order to make this work, I developed two fauxmo plugins, details below.

This Fauxmo plugin triggers (and can be triggered by) GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi. The plugin supports the following functionality:

• First, one output is required. Two types of output are supported.

  Type one: an output_pin can be configured in the config file, in which case the output pin will be set to ON when the wemo is ON, and vice versa. The canonical use case for this would be to wire up the output pin to a relay controlling a light.

  Type two: alternately, an output_command (one each for ON and OFF states) can be configured in the config file, in which case the appropriate command will be run when the wemo's state is toggled. In some ways this duplicates the CommandLinePlugin found in the fauxmo-plugins project, but there are some differences.

• Second, and optionally, one input pin can be configured. If set, the input_pin specifies a GPIO input which is tied to a physical, momentary contact switch. When the switch is pushed, the state of the Wemo device will be toggled.

• Third, also optionally, one notification pin can be set. This is a GPIO output, and its state will be toggled in various ways to reflect the status of the output, the schedule, and whether the input pin is currently depressed. The notification pin has the following behavior:

   output on, schedule off:  on
   output on, schedule on:   slow blinking
   output off, schedule off: off
   output off, schedule on:  slow blinking
   switch depressed during long press interval: fast blink
   switch depressed after short press interval: on
  

  The state of the schedule is derived through the paired Fauxmo plugin SchedulerPlugin. If no schedule is configured then it's as if the schedule is always off.

• Finally, if an input_pin is configured, a long_press_interval can also be configured. In this case, if the input_pin is triggered for longer than the long_press_interval, then the long_press_action will be triggered. This can be used (just like a real Wemo!) to allow one switch to control two devices.

See the documentation in fauxmogpioplugin.py for more.

SchedulerPlugin is a helper plugin: It allows you to add a schedule to another Fauxmo plugin. SchedulerPlugin supports the following functionality:

• Turn on/off at a given time of day (e.g., turn on at 6:05 pm)

• Turn on/off at a specified offset from sunrise or sunset (e.g., turn off 20 minutes after sunset).

• In addition, schedule events support randomization, where the actual turn on/off event will happen within a random window specified by the user (e.g., turn off sometime within the 20 minutes after 10 pm).

In order to use the sunrise/sunset functionality, the user must know the latitude and longitude. This is readily available via Google Maps lookup.

Because SchedulerPlugin is itself a Fauxmo plugin instance, the schedule can be controlled via Alexa independent of the plugin being scheduled. So, for instance, you might have a FauxmoGPIOPlugin named "Living Room Light", which controls a lamp in your living room. Then to control this device, you can have a SchedulerPlugin named "Living Room Light Schedule". You can say "Alexa, turn on the Living Room Light Schedule" to enable the schedule, and conversely to disable it. This can be useful, for instance, when leaving for vacation.

See the documentation in fauxmogpioplugin.py for more.

To install and configure:

1. Follow the Fauxmo installation directions

2. pip install RPi.GPIO Astral

3. git clone https://github.com/howdypierce/fauxmo-gpio-plugin.git

4. Edit config-sample.json to values suitable for your use, and start fauxmo using your edited .json file: fauxmo -c /path/to/config.json -vv

• Fauxmo by Nathan Henrie. You need to install Fauxmo in order to use my plugins.

• Fauxmo-plugins, also by Nathan Henrie. Note you don't need to install this project in order to use my code, but there is additional documentation and examples at this link that explain what's going on.

This whole project was made much easier by the Fauxmo project, which is extremely well done. Thanks to Nathan Henrie and @makermusings for that.