I’ve done quite a bit with WebIOPi and so far I’m a little confused as to what is possible with Cayenne. I can see that it easily connects to sensors and can make graphs but is there any part that will allow us to create a webpage to interact with IO from the Pi like WebIOPi? Or is the dashboard that we have the extent of Cayenne? I’m interested to see what other people have done to get a better understanding of what can actually be done.
Hey Adam,
Good to see you on the Cayenne Community Forum.
Have you checked out our GPIO ‘tab’? It’s near the top left corner of the dashboard. Cayenne would allow you to create a widget for an IO and you could interact with that widget from the dashboard too.
Also in our pipeline is a scheduling feature (turn on lights at 6pm) and Triggers & Alerts (if motion detected, then turn on lights).
Hopefully we’ll get some of our project examples up on the forum sometime, or maybe the community will start posting some of their projects?? Hint Hint everyone 
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Me too…
I am keen on Direct Wired (e.g. digital passive Ird motion sensor) switches, LED’s and motors. I am an avid WebIOPi user and demonstrate this all over the place on coourses I take. It SURE impresses esp those that have never tinkered with wires…
Cayenne is going to be good, I think I am battling having spent too much time behind switchboards and control systems so have been programmed to a certain way of looking at things. So look forward to some mini tutes ?
Idea: - Perhaps these uVideo could pop up in a learner mode or can be clicked into as and when needed when working though the step by step process ?
“Getting It” - I find it can take a long time sometimes for people to grasp ‘I’ from ‘O’ IP from OP or 1 from 0. E.g. not telling something to be a 1 is not the same as ‘assuming’ it will be a 0 when it comes to Real Time control. I.e. getting one bit (!) sorted at a time and which direction it is heading INto or OUTof a system when learning will be key for those new to mechatronic type concepts.
So in short… YES to those mini tutes and video clips
~ Andrew
Being basically a software person, I am wondering if you plan some kind of Domain Specific Language (DSL) for Cayenne. The Ruby community use quite a few ‘dialects’ of Ruby to fit a certain Domain. Maybe a DSL of Python?
Good question for you @eptak
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Sounds like a good scheme. Not sure If this is relevant but just adding my thoughts…
- Python is used a lot within the Pi to talk to the hardware easily
- As a lazy novice, beginner, I find it pretty easy to at least open chunks of py and ‘read’ at least the general sense of what is going on.
- Here in NZ python is probably the main language moved onto after scratch.
Between Cayenne and the Pi devices might even need a few as there is such a rich mix of hardware and other things going on.
~ Andrew
Are there any plans to open up the WebIOPi side of this project? I must admit I miss being able to interact with the IO data however I may need to rather than just send and receive it. From what I have seen so far I don’t really have much use for what the product is now. There are 2 things I like about this product the way it is: being able to quickly test new sensors or devices, and charts for temp sensors. In WebIOPi I never really felt the urge to spend the amount of time needed to create my own temp charts so that is cool. How long is the chart data stored? Where is it stored? Anyway, back to the product, it seems like a good learning tool but I think most of the WebIOPi users are far beyond that point and require more customization.
@eptak should have some comments here.
We are coming out with a ‘history graph’ that will store your chart data for you. Will be stored in cloud. And you can view over days / weeks / months. The chart graph right now is only real time with no storage.
We will be providing much more customization in future. This release for the ‘A-Team’ is really the product at its infancy, beginning stages. When Triggers & Alerts, Scheduling, and the ability to bring on other ‘non-Pi’ devices, Cayenne will have offer much more customization. We have opened it up to you in early stages so you can help mold what you want…what kind of customization were you looking for ?? Would be great to get more ideas from you.
Well currently I am working on a project using the current release of WebIOPi that from what I have seen is not currently possible with Cayenne. A brief overview: I need to copy an excel file from a network share to local storage nightly, read that excel file using python, and populate an HTML table with JS based on that info. From there I will have a push button that will manipulate the data in the HTML table and update the excel file. Basically being restricted to only the dashboard items would be an issue for me.
Sorry for delay in responding !
What Cayenne does ?
- Connect the Pi for remote access with no hassle
- Provide a drag-and-drop widget based UI, with web dashboard, Android and iOS apps.
- Allows to setup setup, Alerts, Trigger, and Scheduled tasks accros devices
We are still working on 2 and 3, that will be completed with final release. Then more features will come progressively :
- More sensors and devices supported (much more)
- Open the platform with more protocols supported (REST API, MQTT, …)
- …
Your feedback is very important to make sure you have what you need to make your IoT project.
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oooh Im liking the idea of webiopi/myDevices with MQTT , I currently use python paho installed in my webiopi script to communicate with esp8266 based sensors and actuators, I just wonder if it will use the webiopi server as the broker or if it will still require a seperate broker like mosquitto etc.
The very good news is that we use that protocol to push data onto the platform from that chip and other constrained devices, but I can’t share implementation details right now.