Remote control from Android

Tags:

• Macrodroid
• curl
• Rest API
• armbian
• debian
• tor
• home assistant
• torrc
• Orbot
• Orfox
• home automation

  2 minute read  

Intro

This is the continuation of HomeAssistant Tor. Here we’ll create a macro to automatically turn our heating on/off from an Android phone. The end result is something which only requires two / three pushes on a button on your android phone to turn on my heating. It works when being connected to a mobile network as well as a wifi network.

Method and tools

• Macrodroid: Android app used for creating the macro. It’s free and can do everything we need.
• Curl commands will be created making use of the REST API from home assistant
• You need a long-lived access token from HomeAssistant. It can be obtained by browsing to http://ip_addr_hass:8123/profile and creating one.

Additional tools to make debugging easier on your phone: Termux

Macro creation

Home Assistant

In configuration.yaml:

• an input_boolean with the name turn_heating_on is defined
• an automation is defined if we see a change from off to on in this variable, an action is defined that runs an automation to turn our heating on

input_boolean:
  turn_heating_on:
    name: Heating Living Day
    initial: off

automation turn_heating_on_living:
  - alias: 'turn heating living on'
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: input_boolean.turn_heating_on
      from: 'off'
      to: 'on'
    action:
      - service: shell_command.set_temp_high
        data:
          message: "Turned living heating on"
      - delay: '00:01:00'
      - service: shell_command.read_ebus

shell script

• Open Macrodroid –> Add macro
• Add an “action” of the type “Applications-Shell Script”
• Create a curl command to change the state of turn_heating_on to off or on

curl  \
-X POST --socks5-hostname localhost:9150 http://xxxxx.onion/api/states/input_boolean.turn_heating_on \
-H "Authorization: Bearer
here_is_your_very_long_lived_token" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"state": "off"}'

• Start Orbot / Tor
• Test your shell script and play with the “state” attribute, you should see the turn_heating_on change accordingly (“off”/“on”)

Incorporate in larger macro

• Create a larger macro which starts and stops Orbot automatically.
• Since my home automation assumes a change from “off” to “on”, the turn_heating_on will be first put “off” and then put to “on”

  

The end result is, I need two/three pushes on the screen to turn my heating on:

• First push: start the macro
• Second push: when the orbot screen launches, push the big onion to connect to the tor network
• Optional third push: when the orbot screen launches for the second time, disconnect from the tor network