Rat Signal Part 1: Project Overview

August 1, 2020

Earlier this year, I decided to finally do the one thing every young man dreams about: I built my own home sever. I didn’t have any real plans for the server when I built it but it has done a pretty good job taking up space and collecting dust.

I finally came up with a project for the server’s christening. I call it the Rat Signal.

MQTT and the Smart Home

MQTT is a networking protocol used extensively in the world of the Internet of Things. Devices with limited available power and bandwidth use MQTT to efficiently communicate back home and to other fellow resource-constrained devices.

Here’s the gist of how it all works. Data is organized by topic. Devices can publish data to a topic, subscribe to a topic to receive published data, or both. An MQTT server, also called a broker, is responsible for managing and maintaining publications and subscriptions.

MQTT fits well into the smart home ecosystem. Sensors like thermometers and motion detectors and publish data to an MQTT broker while devices like indicators and alarms subscribe to it.

The Rat Signal

I wanted a way to bring surf report data into my smart home. If the conditions are good and there is some rideable surf, I wanted to be alerted. I also wanted a way to make the report data a visual part of my home.

Using MQTT, Rat Signal pushes forecast data from Magic Seaweed to different devices around my connected home. Magic Seaweed is my favorite forecasting website and I’ve been checking their report since high school.

Rat Signal is a modern application following the paradigms of microservice architecture. All this means is tha Rat Signal is composed of several different independent pieces with each piece performing a specific job. From my professional experience I’ve found this method of development much more enjoyable than managing one major monolithic application.

Rat Signal can be broken apart into the back-end and front-end. On the back-end, the Rat Signal server runs an MQTT broker, a data endpoint, and a “middleman”. The front-end is composed of three different different client devices.

The first device is an off-the-shelf smart bulb that lights up whenever there’s some rideable surf. The second device will display the numerical forecast data. I will be designing the device’s hardware and software. The third device is more of a wildcard proof of concept. I haven’t fleshed out all of the details just yet but rest assured I WILL be appropriating traditional Japanese art.

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The Rat Signal Series: