ioBroker integrates different smart home protocols into a single easy interface
Many in One
The smart home market includes a number of different vendor environments. You'll need a capable broker to fit them under one roof.
The story of the Tower of Babel teaches us that stagnation and confusion can ensue when the community does not have a common language. In today's world, your own smart home project can fail if the components in your Internet of Things (IoT) community do not understand each other. So far, the IoT industry has not settled on a single, uniform language for home automation. Instead, various IoT vendors have their own competing communication systems. If you purchase all your IoT gadgets from the same vendor, the whole network will chatter harmoniously, but if you don't want to be locked into a single vendor environment, you might be wondering how you could ever manage these babbling devices from a single interface.
One interesting solution for the IoT Tower of Babel dilemma is ioBroker [1], an extremely capable broker and interpreter for home automation projects. The ioBroker project was launched in 2014, and it continues on with strong support from a dedicated developer community.
What is ioBroker?
ioBroker offers a single user interface for managing IoT devices from several different vendor environments (Figure 1). The ioBroker system comes with a collection of software components called adapters that interface with the various hardware environments. The number of ioBroker adapters has increased from 100 to more than 180, and the count is still increasing. The adapters are installed individually, so you will never have more than you need.
The view in Figure 1 is filtered for lighting applications. ioBroker currently supports 10 different lighting control systems alone, including the popular Osram Lightify devices, Philips Hue products, and Ikea Trådfri components.
Getting Started
You can set up a smart home universal gateway for just under 60 Euros. A Raspberry Pi (preferably model 3), a suitable power supply, a microSD card (with 16GB), a case, and a patch cable are all you need. If the Rasp Pi has to control several USB interfaces, an external USB hub is also recommended to avoid stability problems due to the weak USB power supply.
SD card images [2] are available for a variety of small board computers (SBC). In addition to various Rasp Pi builds, you will find images for Banana Pi, CubieTruck, Pine64, CuBox, Tinker Board, Orange Pi, Rock64, and Windows. You might want to consider creating an ioBroker gateway with a special DIN rail housing for the Rasp Pi (Figure 2, bottom left), along with a USB hub (middle left), and LAN switch (middle right).
Auto Discovery
For your first steps, you might want to try out ioBroker on a conventional computer before moving to an SBC. The ioBroker application runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X Intel-equivalent systems, in addition to the supported ARM-based platforms.
You can configure ioBroker in the browser. After installing and entering some geolocation data, the setup wizard automatically searches for available devices on the local network. On the test network, ioBroker found 21 devices and 11 services, creating adapter instances directly for the detected FRITZ!Boxes and an InfluxDB database server.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.