Installing Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi

Getting Domoticz up and running on your Raspberry Pi is not that hard. Especially when you follow this tutorial (Installing Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi) to install Domoticz, you should be good to go!

What do you need for Domoticz?

Hardware

	Raspberry Pi 3 – Of course you need a Raspberry Pi. This can be any version but if you have the choice please choose version 3. This is currently the most powerful hence energy efficient version.
	Protective case for your Raspberry Pi – You need to protect the center of your Domoticz setup against dust, shocks and all other environmental factors. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you buy a case.
	Power supply for your Raspberry Pi – the Pi is not shipped with an included power supply. Therefore you need to buy a suitable micro USB power supply. For the Raspberry Pi 3,  you need a 5V supply with a minimum of 3A, we recommend at least 4A, so you can feed more than one USB device from the Pi.
	A micro SD card – the Pi version 3 only accepts micro SD. The needs to be class 10 card with a minimum capacity of 8 GB.
	A network cable – for installation you need a network cable. We recommend keeping the Pi connected through a network cable (instead of a WiFi USB stick) for the most stable connection.

Software

	A Linux image – your Raspberry Pi needs an operating system to run Domoticz (or to do anything at all). We need a light and reliable OS and therefore choose for a special Raspberry Pi version of Debian Linux. This is called Raspbian Stretch Lite, does not contain a Graphical interface and is the most downloaded version for this application. It can be downloaded here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ (choose the Raspberry Stretch Lite version, without Desktop).
	Putty, an SSH remote access client – to connect from your Windows PC to the Raspberry Client we need an SSH client. More info can be found on https://www.putty.org/. The client can be downloaded here: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
	Win32 Diskimager – To write the Raspberry Image to an SD card, we need a tool. This can be downloaded here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
	Network watcher – Only needed if you are not familiar to check the IP-address of your devices in your network. A useful tool to determine the IP address that was assigned to your Pi is Wireless Network Watcher. It lists all the devices in your network and the Raspberry Pi will pop up as ‘RASPBERRYPI’. You then can note down the IP Address. Download the latest version of Wireless Network Watcher at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/wireless_network_watcher.html

Installation steps

Give the Pi a fixed IP address 

Setting a fixed IP address for your Pi in your internet router makes your life much easier. It is useful for initial configuring your Pi, to set up port forwarding, and administer your Pi using Putty. You need to configure this in your router, so refer to your router documentation.

Write the Raspbian Image to the SD card

Use the W32 Disk Imager to write the downloaded Raspbian Jessie Lite image to your SD card.

Enable SSH on your Pi

Because SSH is disabled by default, place an empty filename ‘ssh’ on the SD-card to enable SSH on boot. This file cannot be a renamed text file (because it will contain metadata), so create one in Notepad ++ and save it as a file without extension (or download the file here and unzip).

Put this file in the root directory of the SD card, then put it in the Raspberry PI and power on the Pi.

Connect to your Pi with Putty

to configure your Pi connect to it using the Putty tool.

Open Putty.

• Enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi
• Leave Port number on 22.
• Connection Type on SSH.

Press the Open button.

Press ‘Yes’ when a Putty Security Alert pops up.

The default username and password are pi and raspberry

When the login is successful you will see the following screen with a command prompt:

Configure your Raspberry Pi

Now we are logged in, we can change some of the settings of the Raspberry Pi.

To open the Configuration Tool you have to enter the following command in the command prompt of Putty.

You can type it in or copy and paste it in Putty (pasting can be done by right-clicking in the Putty window). Press Enter and the Configuration Tool will open.

• We strongly recommend changing the password.
• Change the timezone to match your locale. Timezone settings can be found under Localisation Options
• Because the Raspberry Pi is running headless (no monitor keyboard and mouse attached), you don’t have and need a GUI. that’s the reason to can go to: Option 7 Advanced Options > Memory Split and change the value to 16.
• Expand the root file system. click Advanced Options –>A1. Expand Filesystem
• Select Finish and choose to Reboot.

The Pi will drop the connection. If you want to reconnect you can click with the right mouse button on the Putty program bar.
In the menu, click on ´Restart Session´ (rebooting of the Raspberry Pi may take a while).

Update your Raspberry Pi

Just like other devices the operation system of the Raspberry Pi have some updated components now and then.
To get them, we have to log in the Pi again. Then we have to update the package list with the newest versions and their prerequisites.
Next, we can download the latest versions of the components and install them.

Reconnect to your Pi via Putty and perform each of the following commands:

After installing the updates reboot the Pi by using the following command:

Time to Installing Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi itself

Reconnect to the Raspberry Pi using Putty and copy and paste the following command:

This downloads and executes the install script that is located on install.domoticz.com.

After installation Putty will show you something like this:

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Point your browser to either:                           

HTTP:         192.168.0.100:8080                         

HTTPS:        192.168.0.100:443     

                     

Wiki:  https://www.domoticz.com/wiki                    

Forum: https://www.domoticz.com/forum                   



The install log is in /etc/domoticz.

Normally Domoticz should be up and running and you can access it by using your internet browser to go to the displayed HTTP address: http://IP-ADDRESS:8080.

This paragraph is obsolete since version 4 (released 23 June 2018)

Fix the error in Raspbian Stretch – But there is a minor problem in the current release so we must perform some additional steps. When starting up you get an error that the libssl.so.1.0.0 library is missing:

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<span class="crayon-e">error </span><span class="crayon-st">while</span> <span class="crayon-e">loading </span><span class="crayon-e">shared </span><span class="crayon-v">libraries</span><span class="crayon-o">:</span> <span class="crayon-v">libssl</span><span class="crayon-sy">.</span><span class="crayon-v">so</span><span class="crayon-sy">.</span><span class="crayon-cn">1.0.0</span><span class="crayon-o">:</span> <span class="crayon-e">can </span><span class="crayon-st">not</span> <span class="crayon-e">open </span><span class="crayon-e">shared </span><span class="crayon-t">object</span> <span class="crayon-v">file</span><span class="crayon-o">:</span> <span class="crayon-e">No </span><span class="crayon-e">such </span><span class="crayon-e">file </span><span class="crayon-st">or</span> <span class="crayon-v">directory</span>

We have to install the library manually, not a big deal. The command to download the package:

After that, start the installation with the following command:

After installing the package, reboot the Raspberry.

Switch to the Beta stream – If you did install Domoticz and you are planning to use all kinds of sensors and other peripherals that not yet in the stable, you can choose to switch to the beta stream. But be carefull it’s beta and it’s for testing purposes.

After that, do again a reboot.

Congratulations – you did it!

Just point your browser to the IP address of your Raspberry Pi, and use port 8080.
From your Pi’s browser, you could surf to http://YOURIP:8080

You completed the Installing Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi tutorial.

Check out the buy list if you want a list of cheap products that are compatible with Domoticz.