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
Direct Download
Read full article as PDF:
Price $2.95
News
-
Another New Linux Laptop has Arrived
Slimbook has released a monster of a Linux gaming laptop.
-
Mozilla VPN Now Available for Linux
The promised subscription-based VPN service from Mozilla is now available for the Linux platform.
-
Wayland and New App Menu Coming to KDE
The 2021 roadmap for the KDE desktop environment includes some exciting features and improvements.
-
Deepin 20.1 has Arrived
Debian-based Deepin 20.1 has been released with some interesting new features.
-
CloudLinux Commits Over 1 Million Dollars to CentOS Replacement
An open source, drop-in replacement for CentOS is on its way.
-
Linux Mint 20.1 Beta has Been Released
The first beta of Linux Mint, Ulyssa, is now available for downloading.
-
Manjaro Linux 20.2 has Been Unleashed
The latest iteration of Manjaro Linux has been released with a few interesting new features.
-
Patreon Project Looks to Bring Linux to Apple Silicon
Developer Hector Martin has created a patreon page to fund his work on developing a port of Linux for Apple Silicon Macs.
-
A New Chrome OS-Like Ubuntu Remix is Now Available
Ubuntu Web looks to be your Chrome OS alternative.
-
System76 Refreshes the Galago Pro Laptop
Linux hardware maker has revamped one of their most popular laptops.