A Home Security System - Construction Blog

Construction Blog

Keywords: BeagleBone Black, Python, Tkinter, Raspberry Pi, RPi, Arduino, Security System, Home Automation

Update: June 5, 2013. (Table of Contents)

• Updated this entry (at the bottom) with SD card info.  http://bbqandbanjos.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-home-security-system-beaglebone-black.html
• My Host system changes:
• Installed 'Git' onto my system for Source Code Management.
• Had been running on a small Solid State Hard drive, but have decided to move to a larger physical hard drive.
• Decided to migrate from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 which has long term support.
• I used Linux's 'dd' command to image the new drive.  See details here.
• Noted that the Python version installed on the BeagleBone Black (B3) is not Python3, which is what I was planning on using.  Will have to investigate whether I can upgrade Python on the B3 to Python3, or will have to move back down to Python 6 or 7 - not sure which is on B3 at the moment.
• Will be out all next week, so I don't expect to make any additional postings.
• 
  

Update: May 18, 2013 (Table of Contents)

I have been pretty busy on the project.  I've been working on the following elements:

• Learning about the BeagleBone Black (B3) platform.  I decided to move the project off of the Raspberry Pi (RPi) and onto the B3.  I'm concentrating right now on the following aspects:
• How to interface with the onboard mux.  This is used to specify which channels, or pins, are being addressed.  
• Learning Python.  I've really been enjoying this!  I've been programming for a while: Fortran (1977), Assembler (1978), C (1983), C++(1995), Java (1999), Arduino (2004?), and Python3 (2013), so the move to Python3 hasn't been huge, but it's been different never-the-less.
• Learning Tkinter.  This is one of the main standard GUI interfaces into Python.  
• Designed a loose GUI concept mockup
• B3.  Not yet deep enough into this, but I'm planning on programming it using Python3.  
• Just received it on 5/17/13.
• Concentrating on getting it up and online.
• Concentrating on Mux addressing via Python3.
• So today, after finishing on this project update, I'm going to start with the B3 and getting it online, then accessing it's pins via short Python3 programs.