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SetupRaspianForOhd.md

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Initial Instructions

This is the initial set of instructions on how to get from 'nothing but a Pi' to a fully functional garage door monitor using ohd. You will, of course, have to wire in a couple of switches and alternatively some LEDs for indicators. The schematic is here .

ohd is a program that tells me when the status of my garage door changes. It monitors the status of a reed switch on the door, and also a pushbutton switch on the housing of the Pi. It also monitors the time and writes everything to a log file. If the ByPass button is left on past a specified time (9PM at my house), I get notified.

Notifications happen by way of a Gmail account created for this particular Raspberry Pi. It sends emails, and also can notify by SMS through the cell carrier's email-to-SMS gateway. They all have one, you can find it easily.

I found it's best to buy a Realtime Clock module. Follow the instructions for that hardware to get it set up. I also found it necessary to put my Pi on a UPS. Otherwise, if the power blips, it reboots.
Not a huge deal, but it's not good, and it's easy to fix with a small cheap UPS.

Next get the OS and get it set up:

1. Download Raspbian (I prefer the one without the graphical interface)

2. Burn to SD card

3. Insert the SD card into the Pi hardware

4. Boot

5. Login - username: pi, password: raspberry

6. Run "sudo raspi-config" at a command prompt

    6a. Select Network
    6b. Select Hostname - give your Pi a name.
    6c. Select wifi: SSID and password - provide the SSID and password to connect to your network.
    6d. Select localization option: set to your area (en_US_utf-8)
    6e. Select localization option: set timezone
    6f. Select Interfacing options: enable SSH

7. Install pip3:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install python3-pip

8. Get the RPi.GPIO module for python3

$ sudo apt-get install python3-rpi.gpio

9. Change default user/password:

By default your raspberry pi pi comes with an account 'pi' with the password 'raspberry'. For security reasons it's probably a good idea to change the password, but you may also wish to change the username as well. There are a couple of different ways to change the default username but I found the following method the easiest.

In order to change the username 'pi' we will have to log in as the root user since it's not possible to rename an account while your logged into it. To log in as root user first we have to enable it, to do so type the following command while logged in as the default pi user:

$ sudo passwd root

Choose a secure password for the root user. You can disable the root account later if you wish. Now logout of the user pi using the command:

$ logout

And then logout back in as the user 'root' using the password you just created. Now we can rename the the default pi user name. The following method renames the user 'pi' to 'newname', replace this with whatever you want. Type the command:

$ usermod -l newname pi

Now the user name has been changed the user's home directory name should also be changed to reflect the new login name:

$ usermod -m -d /home/newname newname

Now logout and login back in as newname. You can change the default password from raspberry to something more secure by typing following command and entering a new password when prompted:

$ passwd

If you wish you can disable the root user account again but first double check newname still has 'sudo' privileges. Check the following update command works:

$ sudo apt-get update

If it works then you can disable the root account by locking the password:

$ sudo passwd -l root

And that's it.

Attribution: https://www.modmypi.com/blog/how-to-change-the-default-account-username-and-password

10. Get msmtp and set up mail (Formerly: Get ssmtp and set up mail)

ssmtp worked great on Raspbian Jessie, but not on Buster. So we have to change mail utilities. You can learn more here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Msmtp . Here is the homepage for msmtp: https://marlam.de/msmtp/ .

(All the posts I read on getting msmtp to work did not include this: $ sudo apt-get install mailutils I'm not sure at this point whether or not to use it. I already have, so I'm going to leave it in here just in case it prompts someone to a solution for some issue.)

Install msmtp and msmtp-mta:

$ sudo apt-get install msmtp msmtp-mta

After it finishes installing, run this next command to get a basic config file. It doesn't create the file, but it provides you with stuff to put in one.

msmtp --configure [email protected]

    # - copy this to your configuration file /home/greg/.msmtprc
    # - encrypt your password:
    #   gpg -e -o ~/.msmtp-password.gpg
    account [email protected]
    host smtp.gmail.com
    port 587
    tls on
    tls_starttls on
    auth on
    user yourEmail
    passwordeval gpg --no-tty -q -d ~/.msmtp-password.gpg
    from [email protected]

11. Create /etc/msmtprc

You have the choice to use individual config files for individual users, or one system-wide config file. The information in the above section is generated by msmtp for use in a individual user config file (you can tell because it tells you to put it in a user folder).

There is only one user in my setup, so I chose the system-wide configuration file. It is housed in the /etc folder. You will need to create it using the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/msmtprc

Then paste in this block of stuff and edit the personal items to reflect your current reality.

NOTE: Go to your gmail account and enable 2FA if you haven't already. Then create an App Password to use here.

    # Set default values for all following accounts.
    defaults
    auth           on
    tls            on
    tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
    #logfile        ~/.msmtp.log
    syslog LOG_MAIL

    # Gmail
    account        gmail
    host           smtp.gmail.com
    port           587
    from           yourEmail @gmail.com
    user           emailUserName
    password       password-in-plaintext

    # Set a default account
    account default : gmail

CTRL-X Y Enter

It is relatively safe to leave the email password in plainText IF you are using the hardware in a safe place (limited access by outsiders). In order to make it a bit safer, follow these instructions from the README.Debian file found in /usr/share/doc/msmtp:

    The system-wide configuration file (/etc/msmtprc) can contain SMTP credentials
    that are best kept secret. To let regular users use msmtp while preventing them
    from reading the file, the permissions can be adjusted that way:

    # chmod 0640 /etc/msmtprc
    # chgrp msmtp /etc/msmtprc

    So that msmtp's binary executing as the "msmtp" group (setgid) can access it.

12. Edit the /etc/aliases file

This is a new step brought on by the need to use msmtp in Raspbian Buster. If you installed mailutils, the aliases file should be in /etc. If it isn't, running this command will create it and set you to editing. Whether the file is blank, or already there, add the line "root: [email protected]".

$ sudo nano /etc/aliases

    # /etc/aliases
    root: [email protected]
    mailer-daemon: postmaster
    postmaster: root
    nobody: root
    hostmaster: root
    usenet: root
    news: root
    webmaster: root
    www: root
    ftp: root
    abuse: root
    noc: root
    security: root

CTRL-X Y Enter

13. Put ohd in the ohd folder

In your user's folder in Raspian (if you're not sure you're there, do cd ~ to be sure), create the ohd folder.

$ mkdir ohd

Acquire the ohd code files (from the folder with the largest version number) from Github using your favorite method. As of this update, the folder is named v2.x.x_code.

Paste the contents of your downloaded ohd folder into the new empty ohd folder in your user's folder.

Rename ohd_example.conf to ohd.conf.

Edit ohd.conf to configure the system for your particular situation.

14. Set ohd to run on boot

We're using the "systemd" method for running things as a service. It's not that hard. Don't be afraid.

We need to create three files in the /etc/systemd/system/ folder.

There is a folder in the repo called _lib_systemd_system_Files. That folder contains templates for the three .service files you need to create.

One is called "ohd.service", and I'm going to walk you through that one as an example.

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/ohd.service

That file tells the system different things about ohd.py. It tells it where it lives, and how and when to run it.

[Unit]
Description=Garage door monitor, 2019 update. ohd.service
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=put_the_path_here/ohd/ohd.py  
WorkingDirectory=put_the_path_here/ohd/
StandardOutput=syslog
StandardError=syslog
User=put_the_user_name_here
ExecStop = /bin/kill -2 $MAINPID

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

For example, my ExecStart line is: ExecStart=/home/greg/ohd/ohd.py and my User line is: User=greg

Save the file, and then we need to make sure it has the proper ownership.

$ sudo chown root:root /etc/systemd/system/ohd.service

I always list the directory to verify things are as they should be.

$ ls -la /etc/systemd/system

Now there are two commands that we need to run in order to get this file recognized and incorporated into the system's boot processes:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

$ sudo systemctl enable ohd.service

At this point ohd.py should be run when your Pi reboots.

You can also control it by using the "service" command set:

$ sudo service ohd start

$ sudo service ohd stop

$ sudo service ohd restart

$ sudo service ohd status

You'll need to follow the same process for the other files you found in the _lib_systemd_system_Files folder.

You can always learn more about commands by typing something like: $ man service

At this point, things should be working as expected. If not, well . . . something's wrong. We'll have to figure it out. But I'm pretty sure we've covered all the bases here.