Fauxmo README

master: dev:

Python 3 module that emulates Belkin WeMo devices for use with the Amazon Echo.

Originally forked from https://github.com/makermusings/fauxmo, unforked to enable GitHub code search (which currently doesn't work in a fork), and because the libraries have diverged substantially.

• Documentation: fauxmo.readthedocs.org

Introduction

The Amazon Echo is able to control certain types of home automation devices by voice. Fauxmo provides emulated Belkin Wemo devices that the Echo can turn on and off by voice, locally, and with minimal lag time. Currently these Fauxmo devices can be configured to make requests to an HTTP server such as Home Assistant or to run other commands locally on the device and only require a JSON config file for setup.

As of version v0.4.0, Fauxmo uses several API features and f-strings that require Python 3.6+. I highly recommend looking into pyenv if you're currently on an older Python version and willing to upgrade. Otherwise, check out the FAQ section at the bottom for tips on installing an older Fauxmo version (though note that I will not be continuing development or support for older versions).

For what it's worth, if you're concerned about installing pyenv on a low-resource machine like the Raspberry Pi, I encourage you to review my notes on the size and time required to install Python 3.6 with pyenv on a Raspberry Pi and the nontrivial improvement in speed (with a simple pystone benchmark) using an optimized pyenv-installed 3.6 as compared to the default Raspbian 3.5.3.

Terminology

faux (\ˈfō\): imitation

WeMo: Belkin home automation product with which the Amazon Echo can interface

Fauxmo (\ˈfō-mō\): Python 3 module that emulates Belkin WeMo devices for use with the Amazon Echo.

Fauxmo has a server component that helps register "devices" with the Echo (which may be referred to as the Fauxmo server or Fauxmo core). These devices are then exposed individually, each requiring its own port, and may be referred to as a Fauxmo device or a Fauxmo instance. The Echo interacts with each Fauxmo device as if it were a separate WeMo device.

Usage

Installation into a venv is highly recommended, especially since it's baked into the recent Python versions that Fauxmo requires.

Additionally, please ensure you're using a recent version of pip (>= 9.0.1) prior to installation: pip install --upgrade pip

Simple install: From PyPI

1. python3 -m venv .venv
2. source ./.venv/bin/activate
3. python3 -m pip install fauxmo
4. Make a config.json based on config-sample.json
5. fauxmo -c config.json [-v]

As of v0.6.0, you can optionally install uvloop for potentially better performance, which might be helpful if you have a large number of devices or a network with lots of broadcast mdns traffic. If it is present, fauxmo will take advantage. It is not terribly difficult to install uvloop but you are on your own: https://github.com/MagicStack/uvloop.

Simple install of dev branch from GitHub

This is a good strategy for testing features in development -- for actually contributing to development, clone the repo as per below)

1. python3 -m venv .venv
2. source ./.venv/bin/activate
3. pip install [-e] git+https://github.com/n8henrie/fauxmo.git@dev

Install for development from GitHub

1. git clone https://github.com/n8henrie/fauxmo.git
2. cd fauxmo
3. python3 -m venv .venv
4. source ./.venv/bin/activate
5. pip install -e .[dev,test]
6. cp config-sample.json config.json
7. Edit config.json
8. fauxmo [-v]

Set up the Echo

1. Open the Amazon Alexa webapp to the Smart Home page
2. With Fauxmo running, click "Discover devices" (or tell Alexa to "find connected devices")
3. Ensure that your Fauxmo devices were discovered and appear with their names in the web interface
4. Test: "Alexa, turn on [the kitchen light]"

Set Fauxmo to run automatically in the background

NB: As discussed in #20, the example files in extras/ are not included when you install from PyPI* (using pip). If you want to use them, you either need to clone the repo or you can download them individually using tools like wget or curl by navigating to the file in your web browser, clicking the Raw button, and using the resulting URL in your address bar.

* As of Fauxmo v0.4.0 extras/ has been added to MANIFEST.in and may be included somewhere depending on installation from the .tar.gz vs whl format -- if you can't find them, you should probably just get the files manually as described above.

systemd (e.g. Raspbian Jessie)

1. Recommended: add an unprivileged user to run Fauxmo: sudo useradd -r -s /bin/false fauxmo
   • NB: Fauxmo may require root privileges if you're using ports below 1024
2. sudo cp extras/fauxmo.service /etc/systemd/system/fauxmo.service
3. Edit the paths in /etc/systemd/system/fauxmo.service
4. sudo systemctl enable fauxmo.service
5. sudo systemctl start fauxmo.service

launchd (OS X)

1. cp extras/com.n8henrie.fauxmo.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.n8henrie.fauxmo.plist
2. Edit the paths in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.n8henrie.fauxmo.plist
   • You can remove the StandardOutPath and StandardErrorPath sections if desired
3. launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.n8henrie.fauxmo.plist
4. launchctl start com.n8henrie.fauxmo

Plugins

Plugins are small user-extendible classes that allow users to easily make their own actions for Fauxmo to run by way of Alexa commands. They were previously called Handlers and may be referred to as such in places in the code and documentation.

Fauxmo v0.4.0 implements a new and breaking change in the way Handlers were implemented in previous versions, which requires modification of the config.json file (as described below).

A few plugins and the ABC from which the plugins are required to inherit may be included and installed by default in the fauxmo.plugins package. Any pre-installed plugins, like the rest of the core Fauxmo code, have no third party dependencies.

So far, the pre-installed plugins include:

• fauxmo.plugins.simplehttpplugin.SimpleHTTPPlugin
• fauxmo.plugins.commandlineplugin.CommandLinePlugin
• fauxmo.plugins.homeassistantplugin.HomeAssistantPlugin

SimpleHTTPPlugin responds to Alexa's on and off commands by making requests to URL endpoints by way of urllib. Example uses cases relevant to the IOT community might be a Flask server served from localhost that provides a nice web interface for toggling switches, whose endpoints could be added as the on_cmd and off_cmd args to a SimpleHTTPPlugin instance to allow activation by way of Alexa -> Fauxmo.

As of Fauxmo v0.4.5, the FauxmoPlugin abstract base class (and therefore all derivate Fauxmo plugins) requires a get_state method, which tells Alexa a device's state. If you don't have a way to determine devices state, you can just have your get_state method return "unknown", but please review the notes on get_state below.

Also, see details regarding plugin configuration in each class's docstring, which I intend to continue as a convention for Fauxmo plugins. Users hoping to make more complicated requests may be interested in looking at RESTAPIPlugin in the fauxmo-plugins repository, which uses Requests for a much friendlier API.

User plugins

Users can easily create their own plugins, which is the motivation behind most of the changes in Fauxmo v0.4.0.

To get started:

1. Decide on a name for your plugin class. I highly recommend something descriptive, CamelCase and a Plugin suffix, e.g. FooSwitcherPlugin.

2. I strongly recommend naming your module the same as the plugin, but in all lower case, e.g. fooswitcherplugin.py.

3. Note the path to your plugin, which will need to be included in your config.json as path (absolute path recommended, ~ for homedir is okay).

4. Write your class, which must at minimum:

   • inherit from fauxmo.plugins.FauxmoPlugin.
   • provide the methods on(), off(), and get_state().
     • Please note that unless the Echo has a way to determine the device state, it will likely respond that your "device is not responding" after you turn a device on (or in some cases off, or both), but it should still be able to switch the device.
     • If you want to ignore the actual device's state and just return the last successful action as the current state (e.g. if device.on() succeeded then return "on"), your plugin can return super().get_state() as its get_state() method. Some of the included plugins can be configured to have this behavior using a use_fake_state flag in their configuration (please look at the documentation and source code of the plugins for further details). Note that this means it won't update to reflect state changes that occur outside of Fauxmo (e.g. manually flipping a switch, or toggling with a different program), whereas a proper get_state implementation may be able to do so.
     • If using fake state or if your device cannot readily report its state upon request (for example if you poll for state with a background process like mqtt), you should also set an initial_state in your config. As of August 2023, prior to adding a newly discovered device, Alexa requests its state and will fail to add the device if it can't report a state.

5. Any required settings will be read from your config.json and passed into your plugin as kwargs at initialization, see below.

In addition to the above, if you intend to share your plugin with others, I strongly recommend that you:

• Include generous documentation as a module level docstring.
• Note specific versions of any dependencies in that docstring.
  • Because these user plugins are kind of "side-loaded," you will need to manually install their dependencies into the appropriate environment, so it's important to let other users know exactly what versions you use.

Be aware, when fauxmo loads a plugin, it will add the directory containing the plugin to the Python path, so any other Python modules in this directory might be loaded by unscrupulous code. This behavior was adopted in part to facilitate installing any plugin dependencies in a way that will be available for import (e.g. cd "$MYPLUGINPATH"; pip install -t $MYPLUGINDEPS).

Notable plugin examples

NB: You may need to manually install additional dependencies for these to work -- look for the dependencies in the module level docstring.

• https://github.com/n8henrie/fauxmo-plugins
  • RESTAPIPlugin
    • Trigger HTTP requests with your Echo.
    • Similar to SimpleHTTPPlugin, but uses Requests for a simpler API and easier modification.
  • MQTTPlugin
    • Trigger MQTT events with your Echo
  • User contributions of interesting plugins are more than welcome!

Configuration

I recommend that you copy and modify config-sample.json. Fauxmo will use whatever config file you specify with -c or will search for config.json in the current directory, ~/.config/fauxmo, ~/.fauxmo/, and /etc/fauxmo/ (in that order). The minimal configuration settings are:

• FAUXMO: General Fauxmo settings
  • ip_address: Optional[str] - Manually set the server's IP address. Recommended value: "auto".
• PLUGINS: Top level key for your plugins, values should be a dictionary of (likely CamelCase) class names, spelled identically to the plugin class, with each plugin's settings as a subdictionary.
  • ExamplePlugin: Your plugin class name here, case sensitive.
    • path: The absolute path to the Python file in which the plugin class is defined (please see the section on user plugins above). Required for user plugins / plugins not pre-installed in the fauxmo.plugins subpackage.
    • example_var1: For convenience and to avoid redundancy, your plugin class can optionally use config variables at this level that will be shared for all DEVICES listed in the next section (e.g. an API key that would be shared for all devices of this plugin type). If provided, your plugin class must consume this variable in a custom __init__.
    • DEVICES: List of devices that will employ ExamplePlugin
      • name: Optional[str] -- Name for this device. Optional in the sense that you can leave it out of the config as long as you set it in your plugin code as the _name attribute, but it does need to be set somewhere. If you omit it from config you will also need to override the __init__ method, which expects a name kwarg.
      • port: Optional[int] -- Port that Echo will use connect to device. Should be different for each device, Fauxmo will attempt to set automatically if absent from config. NB: Like name, you can choose to set manually in your plugin code by overriding the _port attribute (and the __init__ method, which expects a port kwarg otherwise).
      • example_var2: Config variables for individual Fauxmo devices can go here if needed (e.g. the URL that should be triggered when a device is activated). Again, your plugin class will need to consume them in a custom __init__.

Each user plugin should describe its required configuration in its module-level docstring. The only required config variables for all plugins is DEVICES, which is a List[dict] of configuration variables for each device of that plugin type. Under DEVICES it is a good idea to set a fixed, high, free port for each device, but if you don't set one, Fauxmo will try to pick a reasonable port automatically (though it will change for each run).

Please see config-sample.json for a more concrete idea of the structure of the config file, using the built-in SimpleHTTPPlugin for demonstration purposes. Below is a description of the kwargs that SimpleHTTPPlugin accepts.

• name: What you want to call the device (how to activate by Echo)
• port: Port the Fauxmo device will run on
• on_cmd: str -- URL that should be requested to turn device on.
• off_cmd: str -- URL that should be requested to turn device off.
• state_cmd: str -- URL that should be requested to query device state
• method / state_method: Optional[str] = GET -- GET, POST, PUT, etc.
• headers: Optional[dict] -- Extra headers
• on_data / off_data / state_data: Optional[dict] -- POST data
• state_response_on / state_response_off: str -- If this string is in contained in the response from state_cmd, then the devices is on or off, respectively
• user / password: Optional[str] -- Enables HTTP authentication (basic or digest only)
• use_fake_state: Optional[bool] -- If True, override the plugin's get_state method to return the latest successful action as the device state. NB: The proper json boolean value for Python's True is true, not True or "true".

Security

I am not a technology professional and make no promises regarding the security of this software. Specifically, plugins such as CommandLinePlugin execute arbitrary code from your configuration without any validation. If your configuration can be tampered with, you're in for a bad time.

That said, if your configuration can be tampered with (i.e. someone already has write access on your machine), then you likely have bigger problems.

Regardless, a few reasonable precautions that I recommend:

• run fauxmo in a virtulaenv, even without any dependencies
• run fauxmo as a dedicated unprivileged user with its own group
• remove write access from the fauxmo user and group for your config file and any plugin files (perhaps chmod 0640 config.json; chown me:fauxmo config.json)
• consider using a firewall like ufw, but don't forget that you'll need to open up ports for upnp (1900, UDP) and ports for all your devices that you've configured (in config.json).

For example, if I had 4 echo devices at 192.168.1.5, 192.168.1.10, 192.168.1.15, and 192.168.1.20, and Fauxmo was configured with devices at each of port 12345-12350, to configure ufw I might run something like:

$ for ip in 5 10 15 20; do
    sudo ufw allow \
        from 192.168.1."$ip" \
        to any \
        port 1900 \
        proto udp \
        comment "fauxmo upnp"
    sudo ufw allow \
        from 192.168.1."$ip" \
        to any \
        port 12345:12350 \
        proto tcp \
        comment "fauxmo devices"
done

You use Fauxmo at your own risk, with or without user plugins.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

Your first step in troubleshooting should probably be to "forget all devices" (which as been removed from the iOS app but is still available at alexa.amazon.com), re-discover devices, and make sure to refresh your device list (e.g. pull down on the "devices" tab in the iOS app, or just close out the app completely and re-open).

• How can I increase my logging verbosity?
  • -v[vv]
  • -vv (logging.INFO) is a good place to start when debugging
• How can I ensure my config is valid JSON?
  • python -m json.tool < config.json
  • Use jsonlint or one of numerous online tools
• How can I install an older / specific version of Fauxmo?
  • Install from a tag:
    • pip install git+git://github.com/n8henrie/[email protected]
  • Install from a specific commit:
    • pip install git+git://github.com/n8henrie/fauxmo.git@d877c513ad45cbbbd77b1b83e7a2f03bf0004856
• Where can I get more information on how the Echo interacts with devices like Fauxmo?
  • Check out protocol_notes.md
• Does Fauxmo work with non-Echo emulators like Alexa AVS or Echoism.io?
  • Apparently not.
• How do I find my Echo firmware version?
  • https://alexa.amazon.com -> Settings -> [Device Name] -> Device Software Version

Installing Python 3.10 with pyenv

sudo install -o $(whoami) -g $(whoami) -d /opt/pyenv
git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv /opt/pyenv
cat <<'EOF' >> ~/.bashrc
export PYENV_ROOT="/opt/pyenv"
export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
EOF
source ~/.bashrc
pyenv install 3.10.6

You can then install Fauxmo into Python 3.10 in a few ways, including:

# Install with pip
"$(pyenv root)"/versions/3.10.6/bin/python3.10 -m pip install fauxmo

# Show full path to Fauxmo console script
pyenv which fauxmo

# Run with included console script
fauxmo -c /path/to/config.json -vvv

# I recommend using the full path for use in start scripts (e.g. systemd, cron)
"$(pyenv root)"/versions/3.10.6/bin/fauxmo -c /path/to/config.json -vvv

# Alternatively, this also works (after `pip install`)
"$(pyenv root)"/versions/3.10.6/bin/python3.10 -m fauxmo.cli -c config.json -vvv

Docker (alpha)

I'm not a heavy docker user, but I thought it might be helpful to also provide a docker image.

The Dockerfile can be run locally from a copy of the repo; you'll obviously need to change config-sample.json to an absolute path to your config.json.

$ docker run --network=host --rm -it \
    -v $(pwd)/config-sample.json:/etc/fauxmo/config.json:ro \
    "$(docker build -q .)"

As far as I'm aware the network=host will be unavoidable due to the need to listen (and respond) to UPnP broadcasts.

Buy Me a Coffee

☕️

Acknowledgements / Reading List

• Tremendous thanks to @makermusings for the original version of Fauxmo!
  • Also thanks to @DoWhileGeek for commits towards Python 3 compatibility
• http://www.makermusings.com/2015/07/13/amazon-echo-and-home-automation
• http://www.makermusings.com/2015/07/18/virtual-wemo-code-for-amazon-echo
• http://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-control-fake-wemo-devices
• https://developer.amazon.com/appsandservices/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play
• http://www.makermusings.com/2015/07/19/home-automation-with-amazon-echo-apps-part-1
• http://www.makermusings.com/2015/08/22/home-automation-with-amazon-echo-apps-part-2
• https://www.rilhia.com/tutorials/using-upnp-enabled-devices-talend-belkin-wemo-switch