xAAL Python stack

1 Requirements

To install xAAL for Python, you need Python-3 (version 3.8 or above). And limited stack exists for Python-2, you can find more informations here.

1.1 Un*x like

Install the following packages:

subversion
python3-dev
python3-setuptools
libsodium-dev

For Debian / Ubuntu users:

$ apt-get install subversion python3-dev libsodium-dev python3-setuptools gcc
# recommended
$ apt-get install python3-venv python3-pip

1.2 Windows

This code can be used w/ Windows (tested w/ Win10 and Python 3.8). You can build the virtualenv with the same way. To activate the venv, you should run Scriptsactivate.bat. For Powershell users (recommanded), you must tweak the ExecutionPolicy to be able to run Activate.ps1.

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

To install libsodium. You can dowload it here: https://download.libsodium.org/libsodium/releases/ Extract the DLL from the zip file (libsodium-x.y.z-stable-msvc.ziplibsodiumx64Releasevzzzdynamic) in the Win32 DLL folder.

If everything is fine, you can use exactly the same commands on Un*x and Windows. The xaal-* commands are just renamed with an exe extension (ie: xaal-dumper.exe)

Issues: Right now some gateways won't work on Windows due to missing libaries (openZwave ie)

2 Installation

2.1 Manual

Right now, there is no public release (pip based) of xAAL Python binding, so you have to install things from SVN or archive.

You can use virtualenv (recommended).

First build a virtualenv :

$ python3 -m venv xaal_env

Everytime, you want to use the binding, you must source the activate script.

$ source xaal_env/bin/activate

Download sources from SVN:

$ svn checkout https://redmine.telecom-bretagne.eu/svn/xaal/code/Python/trunk/ xaal_svn

First, install the xaal.lib package:

$ cd xaal_svn/libs/lib/
$ python setup.py develop

Install the monitor lib (needed by Dashboard, REST API..)

$ cd xaal_svn/libs/monitor/
$ python setup.py develop

Install the schemas (needed by some devices)

$ cd xaal_svn/libs/schemas/
$ python setup.py develop

Install the tools

$ cd xaal_svn/apps/tools
$ python setup.py develop

You can use the python setup.py install instead of develop, but modification in source files won't be applied, you have to re-install it. Right now, develop is the best option.

Create the configuration file in your home directory:

$ mkdir ~/.xaal/
$ cp xaal_svn/libs/lib/xaal.ini.sample ~/.xaal/xaal.ini
$ xaal-keygen

xaal-keygen will compute an key for a given passphrase. Edit the xaal.ini file according to your needs.

2.2 Automatic

Instead of manual installation of each package, you can use the install.py script. This script will install allmost all packages without user interaction.

2.3 Docker

The docker folder contains an Dockerfile to run the xALL software in a docker container. The Dockerfile use the automatic installation script.

3 Tests

First, you can launch a message dumper with this tools

$ xaal-dumper
$ or xaal-tail

To start an fake lamp:

$ python -m xaal.dummy.lamp

To check devices, you can use:

# search alive devices
$ xaal-isalive

# search lamp.basic devices
$ xaal-isalive -t lamp.basic

# search any kind of lamp
$ xaal-isalive -t lamp.any

# display description / attribute
$ xaal-info xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <- uuid

# display description / attribute for all devices
$ xaal-walker

# same but only for lamp devices
$ xaal-walker -t lamp.any

To turn on/off the lamp

# turn on the lamp
$ xaal-send -d xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -r turn_off
$ xaal-send -d xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -r turn_on

4 Informations

4.1 Coding style

Every xAAL package (device, gateway, app) use a namespace. For example, xaal.rest, or xaal.zwave. By convention, you can run everything just by calling the namespace module.

# to run the meta data sever:
$ python -m xaal.metadb

# to run the dashboard (web interface)
$ python -m xaal.dashboard

# to run the Open Weather Map gateway
$ python -m xaal.owm

To reduce memory footprint, you can use the xaal-pkgrun command. This tool will register every package on a single Python interpreter.

# to run aqara and owm gateways:
$ xaal-pkgrun aqara owm

4.2 Links

The repository contains a large number of devices, gateways and tools. You can find the packages list here.
You can find the xAAL lib documentation here.

4.3 Notes

If you use xAAL on multiple hosts, take care of the system clock. xAAL use date/time to cypher the messages. If clocks differs, you will receive an error message about a "replay attack". In production, NTP is your best friend. A window of 1 minutes is accepted, but no more.

4.4 FAQ

Configuration files are hard to read / edit. Why don't you use YAML or XML for config ?

First, we need something that support nested config so we can not use ConfigParser. Next, we tested severals YAML packages, but they are really slow to import. We want xAAL stack to load as fast as possible, and importing big packages (like PyYAML) take around 0.5 sec on a Raspy. This is way too much for a simple command-line tools like xaal-info for example. We want to provide a better user experience.