Running Unify on Raspberry Pi

Introduction

Here we explain how to get up and running quickly to test out Unify on the Raspberry Pi reference platform. Depending on the protocol(s) used this setup may vary so there are several sections that go into more detail for each protocol controller. This page contains the steps to install Unify on the Raspberry Pi regardless of the protocol(s) used.

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi 4

  • SD card for Raspberry Pi

  • SD card reader

• IP router with built-in DHCP

• Software tools

  • VNC Viewer

  • Filezilla

  • Raspberry Pi Imager

  • Putty

  • Raspberry Pi Bullseye OS 64 bit image

Set up Raspberry Pi

• Prepare the SD card

  • Insert SD card into SD reader

  • Use Raspberry Pi Imager to load the image to the SD card

  

  • Click on settings and set the following

    • Enable SSH

    • Set username and password

    • Set hostname

  

Connect to Raspberry Pi

• Power up the router. Connect your PC to the router using ethernet or WiFi. Connect the Raspberry Pi to the router using ethernet.

• Open a terminal with ssh (such as Putty), and type in either raspberrypi.local or the IP address of the Raspberry Pi in the host name field. After clicking open, click yes to accept the security key, and the default user name is pi and password is raspberry (unless any of this was changed in the previous step when loading the OS image).

• Now we can enable the VNC server. Run raspi-config by typing the command “sudo raspi-config” in the ssh command line. Select “Interfacing Options”, “VNC”, and “yes” to enable. This may also be a good time to increase the screen resolution. Select “Display Options”, “resolution”, and select a suitable resolution. Finally select “Finish” and “yes” to reboot.

• Wait for the Raspberry Pi to reboot and then open VNC Viewer. Connect to raspberrypi.local, or use the IP address. Use the same username and password as previously. Upon success you will see the Raspberry Pi desktop.

Copy Unify to Raspberry Pi

• Download the Unify release file from https://github.com/SiliconLabs/UnifySDK/releases

• Open Filezilla and connect to sftp://raspberrypi.local entering the same username and password again

• On the left side (local) locate the unify zip file, and on the right side (remote) choose a location to copy to

• Right click on the zip file and “Upload” to transfer the file

• Go to VNC Viewer and open a terminal on the Raspberry Pi

• Use the command “unzip” to extract the zip file contents

Install Unify

• Enter the directory of the extracted files and install Unify

  • Remove the libunify-dev file from the directory then run:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd unify_*
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt install mosquitto
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt install ./*deb

To finish installing and running Unify choose a protocol to continue with and following the remaining steps

Z-Wave (ZPC)

Zigbee (ZigPC)

Matter

Multiprotocol

Portable Runtime

Unify targets our reference platform, a Raspberry Pi 4 (RPi4). It is therefore recommended to set up a RPi4 for evaluating the full set of functionalities. If you instead want a quick demo of a Z-Wave only Unify IoT gateway running on your Windows, MacOS or Linux desktop, please try our experimental Portable Runtime environment User guide.