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SensiNact/Tutorial Studio

This tutorial aims at discovering the sensiNact Gateway and the sensiNact Studio. In this tutorial, you will mainly use the Studio or the RESTful API enabling to interact with the Gateway.

Required knowledge

This tutorial does not require any specific knowledge.

sensiNact environment overview

sensiNact is a horizontal platform dedicated to IoT and in particularly used in various smart city and smart home applications. sensiNact aims at managing IoT protocols and devices heterogeneity and provides synchronous (on demand) and asynchronous (periodic or event based) access to data/actions of IoT devices, as well as access to historic data with generic and easy-to-use API. To achieve these objectives, sensiNact comes with two complementary frameworks:

  • sensiNact Gateway interconnects IoT devices using different southbound IoT protocols such as Zigbee, EnOcean, LoRa, XBee, MQTT, XMPP, as well as platforms such as FIWARE and allows access to them with various northbound protocols such as HTTP REST, MQTT, XMPP, JSON RPC and CDMI. The gateway can also host applications and manage them using an application manager module.
  • sensiNact Studio proposes an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) based on Eclipse to manage the existing devices, in addition to develop, deploy and manage IoT applications.

Configure the Studio

First of all, launch the Studio by clicking its icon or by using the following command line in a terminal:

sensinact-studio

Once the Studio is launched, you should obtain something like this:

Start screen

On the right, in the Gateway Status view, click on update gateway configuration. In the new window, add a new gateway. Provide the name of your choice, the address of the gateway, the port of the gateway and then, click on OK. Click OK again to return to the main window of the Studio. Finally, click on connect to connect to the gateway.

//TODO step-by-step image with arrows explaining where to click

Click add gateway

Popup

Connect to gateway

Connected to gateway

In the Device Navigator view, the gateway should appear and list the available devices connected on the gateway.

Create an application

Once the Studio has been configured, you can create an application. Click on the Project Explorer view on the left side of the Studio.

Right click on the window and select the menu New -> Project.... Then create a new project: select General -> Project. Provide a name for the project (for example: my_project) and click Finish.

//TODO step-by-step image with arrows explaining where to click or fulfill text area

In the newly created project, create a sNa file: right click on the newly created project, then New -> File and finally provide a name for your application (be careful to use an unique name for your application in order to avoid conflict with others applications from others participants). End the name of the file with the extension .sna.

You may have a popup window asking: "Do you want to add the Xtext nature to the project ?". Answer Yes.

//TODO image the popup

The Studio should have opened a text view, with the name of your file, in the bottom of the main window. You can now write your application.

To ease the development of an application, the Studio provides an auto-completion feature using the Ctrl + Space key combo.

Now, we will explain the structure of an application. A sensiNact application is based on the Event-Condition-Action axiom. First your define the resources you are going to use in your application. To do this, you use the resource keyword followed by a custom name for reusing your resource later in your application. Next, you associate your custom name with the URL of the real resource. For example, you can have something like that:

resource myCustomeName1=[nameOfTheGateway/device/service/resource1]
resource myCustomeName2=[nameOfTheGateway/device/service/resource2]

Next, you define on which event the application will be triggered. You use the on keyword followed by the resource the application will listen for events. You end your sentence by the subscribe() keyword. For example:

on myCustomResource1.subscribe()

Then, you define the condition that will enable to perform the actions. You use the if keyword followed by a condition and ended by the do keyword. For example:

if myCustomName1.get() == true do

You can also use the else if <condition> do or the else do keywords to create more complex applications.

And finally, you perform the action using the act() keyword. You can perform multiple actions in the same condition, simply separate them using a comma.

myCustomName2.act()

Each sNa application ends with the end if keyword. Save your work, your first application has been created.

At the end, your sNa application should look like the following example (running on a local gateway):

resource button=[localhost/button/switch/state] // The button sensor
resource ON=[localhost/light/switch/turn_on]	 // The ON actuator of the light
resource OFF=[localhost/light/switch/turn_off]	 // The OFF actuator of the light
on button.subscribe()                           // The button that will trigger the application
if button.get() == true do                      // The condition to satisfy to perform the action
 ON.act()                                       // Turning on the light
else do 
 OFF.act()                                      // Turning off the light
end if

This example turn on a light when the button is pressed the first time (returning true value) and switch off the light when the button is pressed a second time (returning false value).

Deploy and start an application

To deploy an application, you just have to be connected to the gateway (follow the Configure Studio section). In the Project Explorer view, right click on the file you just created and fulfilled with your sNa application and select Deploy IoT application. This will send your application into the gateway and install it. A window should pop, notifying you that the application has been successfully installed.

//TODO step-by-step image with arrows explaining where to click

Returns to the Device Navigator view and roll out the AppManager device. Your application should be there. Roll out your application and double click the START button. Your application is now started, thus when the event is sent, the action is performed.

//TODO step-by-step image with arrows explaining where to click

Access the Gateway using the RESTful API

The gateway can be accessed using a RESTful API. The Swagger API web interface provides the REST access methods to interact directly with the gateway. Hence, any third party developer can use this API to create application using any others languages or platforms.

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