Remote Pi Controller

This will walk you through setting up the Raspberry Pi and Dashboard for remote controlling the Pi.

Installation

The Server

You need to configure and deploy the Remote PI Controller: Server repo to the Heroku app.

Clone the Remote PI Controller: Server and install the required dependencies on your computer.

git clone [repo_url]remote-pi-controller-server.git
cd remote-pi-controller-server
npm install

In config/clients.json change "client-id" to your own unique id for your pi. You can make it any unique string, i.e. "my-super-secret-client-id" or "bananas". This is how we'll validate your Pi's connection to the server.

Now you need to deploy the repo to some server. I suggest using Heroku for this as its free and easy to get started (Plus the project is already configured for it :P). Create a new app in Heroku and follow the instructions for deploying using Heroku Git.

Once the repo is deployed you should see the dashboard running at your app url.

The Raspberry Pi

Now that we have the dashboard running we need to set up a Raspberry Pi to control.

Clone the Remote PI Controller: Client repository and install the required dependencies on your Raspberry Pi.

git clone [repo_url]remote-pi-controller-client.git
cd remote-pi-controller-client
npm install

Now you'll configure your .env variables. You need to set SERVER_URL to match your app's URL. You also need to set your CLIENT_ID to the id you used earlier in the config/clients.json file on the server.

And now your Pi is ready to go! Start the client by running:

npm start

Verifying and Testing

Lets take it for a spin. On your app page you should see the Pi listed as online. You can run any of the commands listed! See what happens :)

Documentation

Adding a command

The Server

Add the command in the config/commands.json.

The Client

Add the command in the app/commands.js.

Making your own Dashboard

Go into the .env on the server and set GENERATE_UI to false. You can use dashboard.js to send and listen for events.