Django project & apps that implement the web-app front-end for the Home Control system.

See my blog post for extended description and design.

Additional Home-Control projects:

• HomeControl RPC Agent
• HomeControl Arduino A/C Controller

• Django (developed and tested with v1.5).
• Django JS Reverse.

As a Django project & apps, installation and deployment are not different than other Django projects (several deployment configuration examples below).

1. Clone the repository to the server machine that will serve the site.
2. Optionally, create a local_settings.py file in HomeControlWeb/HomeControlWeb to override settings from the generic settings (feel free to use local_settings.py.sample as a suggestion).
3. Run manage.py syncdb to initialize the DB (and create a super user).
4. Set up your web server of choice to serve the Django site.
5. Deploy the static files to your web server of choice (global static files as well as app-specific static files!).
6. Access the admin interface (e.g. at http://your-deployed-host/admin/) to configure the installed apps (see the app-specific documentation for details on their configurations).
7. Win.

• A/C Control App
• Webcam App

(tested with Ubuntu-Desktop-12.04.2-x64)

Install requirements:

• Python and various dependencies: sudo apt-get install libexpat1 python-pip build-essential python-imaging python-pythonmagick python-markdown python-textile python-docutils
• WARNING: Do not install python-django via apt-get on 12.04 - the default repositories has an old version...
• Django, Django JS Reverse: sudo pip install Django django-js-reverse

Create webmasters group:

• sudo groupadd webmasters
• sudo usermod -a -G webmasters <username>

Create directories for static and media and configure ownerships:

• sudo mkdir -p /var/www/home-control-web/static
• sudo chown www-data:webmasters -R /var/www/home-control-web/static
• sudo mkdir -p /var/www/home-control-web/media/webcam
• sudo chown www-data:webmasters -R /var/www/home-control-web/media

Clone and configure the home-control-web project:

• cd ~
• git clone https://github.com/itamaro/home-control-web.git
• cd home-control-web/HomeControlWeb/HomeControlWeb
• cp local_settings.py.sample local_settings.py
  • Edit local_settings.py till happy.
• cd ..
• python manage.py syncdb
• Create a super user

Deploy Django static files to statically served directory:

• cd ~/home-control-web/HomeControlWeb
• python manage.py collectstatic

After setting up a web server to serve the Django site (and static and media directories) (see web-server-specific examples below), access the Django admin interface (e.g. https://your.domain.com/home-control/admin/) to configure the installed apps (see app-specific README's for further details).

(tested with Ubuntu-Desktop-12.04.2-x64)

Install Apache & mod-wsgi:

• Apache2, mod-WSGI: sudo apt-get install apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork libapache2-mod-wsgi

Add Apache to the webmasters group:

• sudo usermod -a -G webmasters www-data

Create a virtual host conf file for the Apache site:

• cd /etc/apache2
• sudo <your-favorite-editor> sites-available/home-control-web

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin <your@email>

     Alias /static/ /var/www/home-control-web/static/
     Alias /media/ /var/www/home-control-web/media/
     
     WSGIScriptAlias /home-control /home/username/home-control-web/HomeControlWeb/HomeControlWeb/wsgi.py
     WSGIDaemonProcess home-control python-path=/home/<username>/home-control-web/HomeControlWeb
     WSGIProcessGroup home-control

     <Directory />
          Options FollowSymLinks
          AllowOverride None
     </Directory>
     <Directory /var/www/home-control-web/>
          Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
          AllowOverride None
          Order allow,deny
          allow from all
     </Directory>
     <Directory /home/<username>/home-control-web/HomeControlWeb/HomeControlWeb>
          <Files wsgi.py>
               Order deny,allow
               Allow from all
          </Files>
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
     LogLevel warn
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Disable the default site and enable to home control web site:

• sudo a2dissite 000-default
• sudo a2ensite home-control-web

Reload the Apache server:

• sudo service apache2 reload

Soon

(my dev-env is Windows 7 Professional SP1 x64)

1. Install Python, setuptools, pip, Git client (e.g. Git Extensions)
2. pip install Django django-js-reverse south
3. Clone https://github.com/itamaro/home-control-web.git to your local workspace (e.g. C:\Users\<name>\Workspaces\home-control\home-control-web.
4. Copy local_settings.py.win-dev-sample to local_settings.py in the HomeControlWeb\HomeControlWeb directory.
   • Edit it until you're happy.
5. In command prompt, cd to C:\Users\<name>\Workspaces\home-control\home-control-web\HomeControlWeb
6. python manage.py syncdb
   • Create super user.
7. Create media\webcam directory next to the global static directory.
8. python manage.py runserver

The home-control site is now available on http://localhost:8000/ - access /admin/ to configure app-settings, and hack away at the project.

You would probably also want to set up a local development environment of the home-control-RPC project in order to have a fully functional setup.

Please share interesting stuff you do!