Cisco Spark + Raspberry Pi (no longer maintained)

Cisco Spark bot to interact with components of Raspberry Pi.

Currently, the bot accepts commands to take a photo with a Raspberry Pi camera on a user's demand, as well as subscribe to automatic photo shooting on detected motion.

Please note: this code was created for a programming class in 2017 and is no longer maintained.

Why

This is a simple educational project aimed to provide a clue about architecture of applications based on popular Cisco solution, Spark, and a world favourite mini-computer Raspberry Pi.

It was initially used at Cisco infrastructure team to inspire young students to information technologies. You are welcome to update the code, fork it and submit your ideas, as we're doing a lot of charity and educational projects and would be glad to reuse existing resources.

Prerequisite

Hardware

We use:

• Raspberry Pi 2b or 3b
• Official Raspberry Pi camera
• Motion sensor

The motion sensor is connected to the GPIO port 23 in our example, however you are free to choose any other port. Make sure to change app/config.py file accordingly.

Precautions

Make sure to remove static electricity when playing with the Pi Camera and motion sensors, as they might be damaged, for example, you can touch grounded metal surface.

Plug the camera in and out when the Pi board is not powered only, as doing otherwise could damage it.

Software

• Python 3.6+
• Python dependencies
• ngrok to create tunnels to localhost visible on the public internet.

You can install the dependencies manually or run an automated script to get this job done:

./setup.sh

External Services

1. Sign up on developer.ciscospark.com and create a bot. Save the authorisation token and the bot username (e.g. bot@sparkbot.io) into app/config.py
2. Sign up on ngrok.com and follow guidelines to run the tunnel to port 8080.
3. Create a webhook.This will ensure that messages sent to your bot will be forwarded via ngrok to your localhost script.

• Option 1. Create a webhook for your Spark bot online. Make sure to enable test mode on and enter your bot information on the webpage.
• Option 2. If you already saved the authorisation token (bearer) into app/config.py, then write the ngrok URL into target_url in app/register.py. Then run it: python3.6 app/register.py. If you see "OK", everything is good and the bot has been registered.

Run Bot

1. Run ./ngrok http 8080 to create a tunnel
2. Run python3.6 app/main.py to launch the bot

Note: every time you run ngrok on a free plan, it changes the URL, which means that you need to re-register the bot. The easiest way is to simply insert the new URL into app/register.py and run it.

Now, you can access Cisco Spark on web.ciscospark.com or download the app to your device. Add your bot to the contact list and start sending commands.

Bot API

Bot responds to the commands stated below. Commands are case insensitive, which means that COMMAND, command and CoMmanD are all the same thing.

You can add a bot to a Spark space, or start a 1:1 chat - all cases are covered.

Command Help

• help - Get the list of available commands and their description

Camera

• camera photo - Take a photo with a Raspberry Pi camera and send it back as an attached image.

Event Subscription

• event subscribe security - When the motion sensor detects the motion, it notifies the bot about it. If you're subscribed to this event, you'll receive a notification.

• event unsubscribe security - Opt out from the subscription.

Example

File Structure

├── LICENSE              - License file
├── README.md            - Documentation
├── app                  - All Python code here
│   ├── bot.py           - 
│   ├── commands         - Each individual command is implemented as a module
│   │   ├── camera.py
│   │   ├── default.py   - Default reply if command is not found
│   │   ├── event.py
│   │   └── help.py
│   ├── config.py        - Bot configuration
│   ├── main.py          - Entry point, all operations start here
│   ├── motion.py        - A module for motion detector
│   ├── register.py      - Automatic registration of a webhook
│   ├── spark.py         - Implementation of Spark API
│   └── tmp              - Photos will be saved into this folder
├── ngrok                - The binary ngrok to let you work out of box
├── readme               - Materials for this README that do not affect the app
│   └── camera-photo.png
├── requirements.txt     - Python3 dependencies (list of packages)
└── setup.sh             - Automatic environment setup script

References

• Spark for developers
• Raspberry Pi Pinout

License

This code and documentation are available under MIT license. See license for more details.