Bluz Gateway for NodeJS

Bluz is a Bluetooth LE development kit that connects low cost, low energy sensors to the Internet of Things. Each bluz DK can hook to the Particle cloud and be controlled through a REST API, receive Over the Air firmware updates, and integrate with third party services such as IFTTT.

Using gateway solutions, bluz can stay online without the need of a smartphone, allowing users to create battery powered project that can stay online for months or years, and always be accessible.

This project turns a Raspberry Pi or C.H.I.P. into a gateway, allowing it to be the central hub for the entire network of devices.

Basic installation on Linux

For Debian-like Linuxes (Raspbian, C.H.I.P.), there is a simple installation script available. To run, type the following command into a shell prompt:

source <(curl -s http://gateway.bluz.io/install)

The gateway is installed, so let's run it with bluz-gateway. Assuming that everything went well, you should see a few lines of text describing the devices it's found, and no errors. Press Ctrl-C to exit. Now, let's set it up to run at boot.

# Change username in startup script, and copy to init folder
sed 's/OUR_USER_NAME/'$USER'/'  ~/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/bluz-gateway/example/init-script/bluz-gateway | sudo tee /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway

# Add to run at start
sudo update-rc.d bluz-gateway defaults

You should now be able to start it up with sudo /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway start, and view the log file at /var/log/bluz-gateway.log

Updating

npm update -g bluz-gateway
sudo /etc/init.d/bluz-gateway restart

Troubleshooting

If nothing seems to be working, first increase the debug level to 'info' in the config (below). Sometimes the Bluetooth stack in Linux will just stop working (it seems to be related to unclean disconnect and BLE shutdown), and you'll get either nothing showing up after the server start, or just "found peripheral with ID ..." and nothing after that. Often times a sudo hciconfig hci0 reset command will clear things up, or sometimes that will timeout, in which case a good old reboot will solve it.

Config

Upon first startup, the program creates a config file at ~/.bluz-gw/config.json

serverPort: Changes the port that the info server runs on
serverEnabled: Enables/disables the info server
blacklist: An array of BL MAC addresses of DKs we should not connect to
cloud:host and :port: If you want to run a local cloud
DEBUG: debug levels -
- error: show only errors
- warn: default, only shows very basic info
- info: shows up and down packet events
- debug: a lot
- trace: really a lot

Info Server

Upon startup the gateway starts a very basic REST-like server on port 3000 (default). It currently has commands of (with host_addr being localhost, or ip address of the server):

GET http://host_addr:3000/connected-device Returns connected device info
GET http://host_addr:3000/blacklist Currently blacklisted devices
POST text/plain http://host_addr:3000/blacklist Add a device to blacklist (12 digit hexadecimal MAC address in POST text/plain body, probably gotten from connected-devices)
DELETE http://host_addr:3000/blacklist/:id Delete a device from blacklist

Protocol

See wiki.

bluzDK / bluz-gateway

readme