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Show HN: PiUi – add a mobile phone UI to your RaspberryPi project

26 points by dps 14y ago

amirnathoo 14y ago
Cool! > There’s even an Android app to make connecting easy and show useful status info plus an iPhone webapp you can save to your homescreen. What does the Android app do to show useful status information? Can we expect an iPhone version in the future too?
- dps 14y ago
  Right now, the Android app shows the current uptime and system load on the Raspberry Pi in the title bar. It does this by polling a URL which is handled by the PiUi Supervisor (separate python app from your main app). As you can see on github, the supervisor can also list and stop/start apps - I have feature enhancements to use all this planned for Android and yes, I'm keen to expose on iOS in future too.
holri 14y ago
I ssh into the rpi from my Nokia N900 (has a hardware keyboard), and have a little text based python interface for controlling my heating. KISS.
- dps 14y ago
  Yep, that's neat! Intention was to allow richer, graphical UI. Esp, the timelapse project was a motivating use case for me and seeing the preview images on the phone display is really useful.
Cpt_Monac 14y ago
This is pretty neat! How would I go about porting this over/ implementing something similar on the BeagleBoard?
- dps 14y ago
  Other than the wifi access point set up, it should just work on the BeagleBoard. Follow the detailed instructions on the blog post (not the "easy way" using SD card images) and follow a BeagleBoard wifi AP tutorial.
CamperBob2 14y ago
Hmm, this does seem pretty nifty. I've never heard of making a device "support" WiFi by appearing as an access point. That seems to offer some huge advantages over making the user configure their device to connect to an existing network. It's almost like Bluetooth 4.0 meets WiFi.
- dps 14y ago
  FWIW, this is how the GoPro works with its iPhone app and Android app. It's so easy to set up that I decided to adopt it here. It is of course possible to connect the Pi and the phone to the same (existing) wifi network, but then you need to help the user figure out the right IP address to connect to. I messed around with zeroconf/bonjour for this before I settled on this simpler mechanism -> it works but is pretty temperamental. The other thing I have tried on Android is to have the phone create a wifi hotspot with the same SSID and password as my home network. When at home, the devices are all connected nicely, when away, the Pi connects to the phone and (modulo zeroconf being picky) the whole thing works well; couldn't get this to work with the iPhone.
LAMike 14y ago
So one could build a Pi project that was controlled by the interface on a iOS or Android phone? That's awesome!
platz 14y ago
I like it! Although why would I use it over building a simple webapp hosted on the Pi by using existing server-side technologies such as Flask, Rails etc..
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  No configuration needed in order to talk to it. You just tell your users to connect to the access point it provides, and everything happens automagically from there.
Piquestion 14y ago
Does the phone have to be on the same WiFi network to connect to the http://piui/ http://piui/? More specifically, if the pi is running at my house and is connected to my home WiFi, can I run the UI from my phone while at my office over a different WiFi or over 4G?
jabian 14y ago
Following manual setup instructions, with raspbian, you end up with 'ImportError: No module named cherrypy' when calling the demo script
dkp0h 14y ago
@jabian : 'ImportError: No module named cherrypy' => sudo python setup.py install ;O)
- jabian 14y ago
  @dkp0h, Thanks I know how install a python module, actually pip does the job. My point is that it should be indicated on the requirementents of the piui installation. Just to help beginners.
dkp0h 14y ago
I appreciate that work of UI for rPi....i need it to show some datas with highcharts so i need to include html code with jquery...what would the way to do it ? thank you 4 your work - (dkp0h at free dot fr)
jottinger 14y ago
How fast is nginx at executing the python code? (What's the typical UI response time?)
rbn1 14y ago
Great project. Just got it working. I have an Edimax 7811 module which of course didn't work being realtek based. I tried Paul's alternative hostapd and couldn't get joy out of that either. Eventually I found this one http://www.jenssegers.be/blog/43/Realtek-RTL8188-based-access-point-on-Raspberry-Pi http://www.jenssegers.be/blog/43/Realtek-RTL8188-based-acces... and it worked OK. Also as already pointed out the missing CherryPy module need sorting out. YOu could add instructions of where to get it and how to install it for those who don't know
- kananaskis 14y ago
  I ran into the missing CherryPy module issue.... How did you sort it out? Thanks for all of the great info.
Pauldf 14y ago
Works great but:- 1) How do I stop the verbose on screen reporting (I use SSH) 2) How do I stop it once it is running - CTRL+C does not work and kill only sometimes works 3) Is there any documentation or more examples please Thanks
Blaster 14y ago
Hi, got a problem with toggles. I dont understand the code 100% If a toggle has the status "On" i would like to send an OS Command like os.system("send 11111 1 0") to toggle an 433 MHz Switch Unit. How do i do this? Thanx Stefan
Sevik 14y ago
Can someone please give me some instructions on how to set PiUi u without turning the Pi into a access point? I installed Nginx and followed the do-it-yourself instructions from "Configure nginx". Everything is installed and the piui_demo.py works without errors. However, when I type in the IP of the Pi, I only see the "Welcome Screen" from nginx. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks
- jaws84 14y ago
  I had the same problem so I went through the nginx.conf file supplied with PiUi and compared it to the default one in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. In the default one there's an _include_ line on line 71. This pulls in what ever .conf files from /etc/nginx/conf.d/ I then copied the lines 40-59 from piui/nginx/nginx.conf to its own file /etc/nginx/conf.d/piui.conf and restarted nginx. Now when I type in the IP of my Pi in my mobile webbrowser I get in to the PiUi site. However this way does not provide the small graphics components in the UI components. Any ideas on that?
  - Sevik 14y ago
    Thank you. It seems that I installed another version of nginx. With the apt-get install it worked perfectly. I replaced the whole conf. file.

26 points by dps 14y ago

Cool! > There’s even an Android app to make connecting easy and show useful status info plus an iPhone webapp you can save to your homescreen. What does the Android app do to show useful status information? Can we expect an iPhone version in the future too?

dps 14y ago
Right now, the Android app shows the current uptime and system load on the Raspberry Pi in the title bar. It does this by polling a URL which is handled by the PiUi Supervisor (separate python app from your main app). As you can see on github, the supervisor can also list and stop/start apps - I have feature enhancements to use all this planned for Android and yes, I'm keen to expose on iOS in future too.

holri 14y ago

I ssh into the rpi from my Nokia N900 (has a hardware keyboard), and have a little text based python interface for controlling my heating. KISS.

dps 14y ago
Yep, that's neat! Intention was to allow richer, graphical UI. Esp, the timelapse project was a motivating use case for me and seeing the preview images on the phone display is really useful.

Cpt_Monac 14y ago

This is pretty neat! How would I go about porting this over/ implementing something similar on the BeagleBoard?

dps 14y ago
Other than the wifi access point set up, it should just work on the BeagleBoard. Follow the detailed instructions on the blog post (not the "easy way" using SD card images) and follow a BeagleBoard wifi AP tutorial.

CamperBob2 14y ago

Hmm, this does seem pretty nifty. I've never heard of making a device "support" WiFi by appearing as an access point. That seems to offer some huge advantages over making the user configure their device to connect to an existing network. It's almost like Bluetooth 4.0 meets WiFi.

dps 14y ago
FWIW, this is how the GoPro works with its iPhone app and Android app. It's so easy to set up that I decided to adopt it here. It is of course possible to connect the Pi and the phone to the same (existing) wifi network, but then you need to help the user figure out the right IP address to connect to. I messed around with zeroconf/bonjour for this before I settled on this simpler mechanism -> it works but is pretty temperamental. The other thing I have tried on Android is to have the phone create a wifi hotspot with the same SSID and password as my home network. When at home, the devices are all connected nicely, when away, the Pi connects to the phone and (modulo zeroconf being picky) the whole thing works well; couldn't get this to work with the iPhone.

LAMike 14y ago

So one could build a Pi project that was controlled by the interface on a iOS or Android phone? That's awesome!

platz 14y ago

I like it! Although why would I use it over building a simple webapp hosted on the Pi by using existing server-side technologies such as Flask, Rails etc..

CamperBob2 14y ago
No configuration needed in order to talk to it. You just tell your users to connect to the access point it provides, and everything happens automagically from there.

Piquestion 14y ago

Does the phone have to be on the same WiFi network to connect to the http://piui/ http://piui/? More specifically, if the pi is running at my house and is connected to my home WiFi, can I run the UI from my phone while at my office over a different WiFi or over 4G?

jabian 14y ago

Following manual setup instructions, with raspbian, you end up with 'ImportError: No module named cherrypy' when calling the demo script

dkp0h 14y ago

@jabian : 'ImportError: No module named cherrypy' => sudo python setup.py install ;O)

jabian 14y ago
@dkp0h, Thanks I know how install a python module, actually pip does the job. My point is that it should be indicated on the requirementents of the piui installation. Just to help beginners.

dkp0h 14y ago

I appreciate that work of UI for rPi....i need it to show some datas with highcharts so i need to include html code with jquery...what would the way to do it ? thank you 4 your work - (dkp0h at free dot fr)

jottinger 14y ago

How fast is nginx at executing the python code? (What's the typical UI response time?)

rbn1 14y ago

Great project. Just got it working. I have an Edimax 7811 module which of course didn't work being realtek based. I tried Paul's alternative hostapd and couldn't get joy out of that either. Eventually I found this one http://www.jenssegers.be/blog/43/Realtek-RTL8188-based-access-point-on-Raspberry-Pi http://www.jenssegers.be/blog/43/Realtek-RTL8188-based-acces... and it worked OK. Also as already pointed out the missing CherryPy module need sorting out. YOu could add instructions of where to get it and how to install it for those who don't know

kananaskis 14y ago
I ran into the missing CherryPy module issue.... How did you sort it out? Thanks for all of the great info.

Pauldf 14y ago

Works great but:- 1) How do I stop the verbose on screen reporting (I use SSH) 2) How do I stop it once it is running - CTRL+C does not work and kill only sometimes works 3) Is there any documentation or more examples please Thanks

Blaster 14y ago

Hi, got a problem with toggles. I dont understand the code 100% If a toggle has the status "On" i would like to send an OS Command like os.system("send 11111 1 0") to toggle an 433 MHz Switch Unit. How do i do this? Thanx Stefan

Sevik 14y ago

Can someone please give me some instructions on how to set PiUi u without turning the Pi into a access point? I installed Nginx and followed the do-it-yourself instructions from "Configure nginx". Everything is installed and the piui_demo.py works without errors. However, when I type in the IP of the Pi, I only see the "Welcome Screen" from nginx. Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks

jaws84 14y ago
I had the same problem so I went through the nginx.conf file supplied with PiUi and compared it to the default one in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf. In the default one there's an _include_ line on line 71. This pulls in what ever .conf files from /etc/nginx/conf.d/ I then copied the lines 40-59 from piui/nginx/nginx.conf to its own file /etc/nginx/conf.d/piui.conf and restarted nginx. Now when I type in the IP of my Pi in my mobile webbrowser I get in to the PiUi site. However this way does not provide the small graphics components in the UI components. Any ideas on that?
- Sevik 14y ago
  Thank you. It seems that I installed another version of nginx. With the apt-get install it worked perfectly. I replaced the whole conf. file.