Marvin - Home automation middleware

Marvin was created to connect Amazon Alexa`s Smarthome capabilities with various smarthome hardware vendors and systems like Homematic and Philips Hue. This is basically only a code repository without installable binaries. So you will need some technical knowledge to use this project for setting up your own voice controlled smarthome. Anyway, i've added some brief documentation to give you something to start with. I'm looking forward to get in contact for questions, feedback or collaboration!

Prerequisites

• Some device to use Amazon Alexa (Echo, Echo Dot, etc.) and requirements from go-alexa
• For Homematic devices you need a CCU2, CCU3 or RaspberryMatic including xmlapi
• For Philips Hue lights you need a Philips Hue Bridge (optionally a Hue developer account to access API documentation)
• E.g. a Raspberry Pi to run the application
• Either a static IP or some dynamic DNS to connect with Marvin from a AWS Lambda Function
• Basic go knowledge to compile the project
• Optional marvin-ui

Setup

Prepare Amazon Alexa

That's the tricky part, you need to follow Amazon's Steps to Build a Smart Home Skill. We will use the Lambda function to implement a proxy which forwards all alexa smarthome events to your local running Marvin instance.

Example Node.js 10.x index.handler implementation

var https = require("https");

exports.handler = function (event, context) {
  console.log("Input", event);

  var options = {
    hostname: process.env.HOSTNAME,
    path: process.env.PATH,
    port: 443,
    method: "POST",
    rejectUnauthorized: false,
    headers: {
      Authorization: "Basic " + process.env.AUTH_TOKEN,
    },
  };

  var request = https.request(options, function (response) {
    var body = "";
    response.on("data", function (d) {
      body += d;
    });
    response.on("end", function () {
      console.log("Response: " + body);

      context.succeed(JSON.parse(body));
    });

    response.on("error", function (e) {
      console.log("Got error: " + e.message);
    });
  });

  request.write(JSON.stringify(event));
  request.end();
};

This example uses environment variables you also need to declare for your lambda function.

Variable	Description	Example
PATH	URI for directive requests, not important since Marvin doesn't distinguish between request URIs	/alexa/smarthome/directive
HOSTNAME	Either a static IP or some dynamic DNS to connect Marvin (e.g. some myfritz.net address if you are using AVM Fritz!Box)	-
AUTH_TOKEN	Base64 encoded Basic-Authentication token (Make sure Marvin is running with HTTPS!)	d2lraTpwZWRpYQ==

Install on Raspberry Pi

• checkout this repository using Mac or Linux (Makefile will not work on Windows) with go installed
• add your individual config.json and endpoints.json to project folder
• create folder /home/pi/marvin on raspberry pi
• run make deploy-rpi RPI_HOST=<ip or name> to compile and copy resources to raspberry pi
• on raspberry pi, copy /home/pi/marvin/resources/marvin.sh to /etc/init.d/marvin to install start scripts
• run sudo update-rc.d marvin defaults to install rc-scripts for system startup
• restart raspberry pi

Note: Resources are transfered using raspberry user pi, edit Makefile in case that doesn't suites you.

Web-Interface

A very rudimentary UI to check log and current state is included in this project. Check optional marvin-ui for more UI features.

Configuration (config.json)

{
  "alexaServerPort": 6443,
  "uiServerPort": 8080,
  "uiRoot": "webapp",
  "log": "marvin.log",
  "endpoints": "config/endpoints.json",
  "validationEnabled": false,
  "sslCertificate": "./resources/ssl/certificate.pem",
  "sslKey": "./resources/ssl/private-key.pem",
  "amazonClientID": "amzn1.application-oa2-client....",
  "amazonClientSecret": "...",
  "restrictedUsers": ["[email protected]"],
  "basicAuthUser": "user",
  "basicAuthPassword": "password",
  "philipsHueHost": "philips-hue",
  "philipsHueUser": "...",
  "homematicHost": "homematic-ccu3"
}

Key	Type	Description	Default
alexaServerPort	Port	Port to listen for alexa directives (optional)	6443
uiServerPort	Port	Port to serve web-ui (optional)	8081
uiRoot	Folder	UI web-root folder (optional)	./webapp
log	File	Logfile (optional)	stdout
endpoints	File	Device configuration (required)	./config/endpoints.json
validationEnabled	Boolean	Enable schema validation for alexa responses (debugging)	false
validationSchema	File	Schema to use for validation	./resources/schema.json
sslCertificate	File	SSL certificate to use HTTPS	./resources/ssl/certificate.pem
sslKey	File	SSL certificate private key	./resources/ssl/private-key.pem
amazonClientID	String	Amazon Client ID	$MARVIN_AMAZON_CLIENT_ID
amazonClientSecret	String	Amazon Client Secret	$MARVIN_AMAZON_CLIENT_SECRET
restrictedUsers	List of E-Mail	Restrict access to certain amazon user profiles	$MARVIN_BASIC_AUTH_USER
basicAuthUser	String	Username for basic authentication to use with AWS Lambda proxy function	$MARVIN_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD
basicAuthPassword	String	Password for basic authentication to use with AWS Lambda proxy function	$MARVIN_RESTRICTED_USERS (CSV)
philipsHueHost	Hostname/IP	Hostname/IP of Philips Hue Bridge	philips-hue
philipsHueUser	String	User to access Philips Hue Bridge	$MARVIN_PHILIPSHUE_USER
homematicHost	Hostname/IP	Hostname/IP of Homematic CCU/RaspberryMatic	homematic-ccu3

Note: Since we are using Basic-Auth to authorize requests it's highly recommed to configure SSL to use HTTPS!

Devices (endpoints.json)

Devices (Endpoints) are defined in a JSON configuration file which is based on Amazon Alexa API.

[
  {
    "endpointId": "homematic-1834",
    "friendlyName": "My gorgeous switch",
    "description": "The best switch they ever made.",
    "manufacturerName": "Homematic",
    "displayCategories": ["OTHER"],
    "cookie": {
      "type": "homematic",
      "id": "1834",
      "name": "Switcherino"
    },
    "capabilities": [
      {
        "type": "AlexaInterface",
        "interface": "Alexa.PowerController",
        "version": "3",
        "properties": {
          "supported": [
            {
              "name": "powerState"
            }
          ],
          "proactivelyReported": false,
          "retrievable": true
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "endpointId": "hue-3",
    "friendlyName": "My shiny light",
    "description": "The best light they ever made.",
    "manufacturerName": "Philips Hue",
    "displayCategories": ["LIGHT"],
    "cookie": {
      "type": "hue",
      "id": "3",
      "name": "Lighterino"
    },
    "capabilities": [
      {
        "type": "AlexaInterface",
        "interface": "Alexa.PowerController",
        "version": "3",
        "properties": {
          "supported": [
            {
              "name": "powerState"
            }
          ],
          "proactivelyReported": false,
          "retrievable": true
        }
      }
    ]
  }
]

cookie section is used by Marvin to distinguish device vendors. Currently homematic and hue are supported for type. id field is used for device id required to idenify the device in vendor API (use xmlapi or Hue API to check for device ids).