IoT Bubble Maker

Bubbles Right Now: An IOT Bubble Maker!

Making an Internet of Things Bubble Maker is a surefire way to make any space more exciting. For most, following these instructions shouldn't take more than an afternoon. Here are some more photos/videos of what it all looks like.

Overview

Below are the DIY instructions to make your own! You can find it my GitHub also.

Our goal is a bubble maker that can be controlled from the web, just like bubblesrightnow.com. We'll be using Python on a Raspberry Pi to start a server so Post requests from a webpage can switch GPIO pins on the pi– that will switch the relay, which in turn will power on or off the bubble maker.

Along the way we'll have to configure a dynamic DNS server, add some security protections to the Pi, and experiment a bit with Daemons. The hardware and software for this project are pretty simple, but the networking is actually a little challenging.

Hardware

These are the parts you'll need to get started:

Raspberry Pi Zero°

Relay Module

A bubble maker°°

°or almost any other Raspberry Pi

°°ideally one that's not battery operated. I used this one.

System Setup

To start, you'll need to make sure your RPi is running the latest version of Raspbian and connected to your network with SSH enabled. There are a bunch of ways to do this, so go ahead with whatever your preferred way of is!

Hardware Setup

To start, plug that bubble maker in and enjoy some bubbles! Next, turn the on/off switch to off, unplug the unit, and while unplugged, turn on/off switch back to on— we want bubbles to blow whenever power is provided to the machine. Again with the power off (power unplugged) we'll want to connect the rest of the components in the following way:

The relay signal pin is connected to Pi pin 7, and the power for the bubble maker is attached to the relay, in the "NO" or "Normally Open" direction. Now power everything up! The bubble maker should not be blowing at this point.

Bubble_Server

Getting the server going is actually the easiest part of all of this!

SSH into your Pi, and update/download all the required packages

sudo apt-get install apache2 git python-requests RPi.GPIO

Then navigate to /home/pi and make a new folder called bubbles

mkdir bubbles

enter the repo and clone this github repository

cd bubbles

git clone https://github.com/taylortabb/IOT-Bubble-Maker.git

Enter the directory

cd IOT-Bubble-Maker

And open bubble_server.py to get an idea what's going on nano bubble_server.py and follow the notes in the code.

sudo nano bubble_server.py

That's it! you're ready to run the server with python bubble_server.py

The Webpage

The Python server accepts Post requests including the duration to turn on the bubble maker. It's very easy to set up your on page to send this request, but if you'd like to use the template, follow these steps, otherwise skip to Making it Remotely Accessible.

On your computer, download this github repo and open index.html (in the main repo folder, not the docs folder) in a text editor. Scroll down to the bottom and be sure to enter your Pi's IP in the form of 192.168.1.18:8080 (8080 is the port the python server is on, so be sure to include that) where you see REPLACE THIS WITH YOUR SERVER ADDRESS.

You can also change the duration the bubble maker remains on by changing "5" to another integer in <input type="hidden" name="duration" value="5">

Save and close the file.

Making it Remotely Accessible

At this point, if you open index.html in a web browser on the same network as your Pi, pressing the button should make bubbles flow! To make it accessible from anywhere, you'll need to set up port forwarding and a dynamic DNS service. Note: setting up port forwarding in an inherent security risk, and every router and ISP works differently. Should you wish you make the bubble blower accessible from the internet, it's totally at your on risk.

Port forwarding works differently on every router, but you'll most likely need to log into your router's admin panel and follow specific instructions associated with that device— your goal is to forward TCP/UDP traffic on port 8080 to your Pi's local IP address.