Telegram Pi Bot

About

This is my personal Telegram Bot to run on my RaspberryPi at home. It's supposed to be a proxy and an easy interface for all the home automation paraphernalia that we might end up getting in the future.

The bot can also be used in any system that has Python 3 support but the setup instructions provided are focused on getting it to work on the ARM architecture running on ArchLinux.

Features

• Answers to only pre-configured chat rooms
• Webhooks configured via a JSON config file
• Configures an endpoint to call for a given command
• Works great with IFTTT Maker channel
• Basic multilingual support
• en pt-br

Setup

Hardware requirements

• RaspberryPi
• Power cable
• MicroSD card
• Internet connection

Installing things

This is a guide for the complete setup on ArchLinux, if you're just intested in running the script you can jump to Process management setup.

Remember to replace occurrences of username with your own user name.

Base system setup

A more complete step-by-step guide on how to set up ArchLinux on a RaspberryPi Zero is available here: https://gist.github.com/ruyadorno/08a04f5fcb37204767ce0942c9df8f91

• Install archlinux
• Add new user and change default passowrds
• Setup ssh
• Setup sudo
• Setup iptables, easier guide here (make sure to open ports for ssh)
• systemctl enable iptables
• Configure static ip address

Python setup

• Install Python: sudo pacman -S python
• Install pip: sudo pacman -S python-pip

Process management setup

• sudo pacman -S gcc
• sudo pacman -S python-setuptools
• Get circus for process management
• sudo pip install circus

Bot setup

• Install the bot: sudo pip install telegram-pi-bot
• Setup the json config file
• Test that the bot runs with the current config:
• telegram-pi-bot /home/username/config.json
• CTRL+C to quit the process

Process management config

• Configure a /home/username/circus.ini file:

[circus]

[watcher:telegram-pi-bot]
cmd = telegram-pi-bot /home/username/config.json
numprocesses = 1

• Configure a /etc/systemd/system/circus.service file for autoload on boot:

[Unit]
Description=Circus process manager
After=syslog.target network.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecReload=/usr/bin/circusctl reload
ExecStart=/usr/bin/circusd /home/username/circus.ini
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

• Reload systemd: systemctl --system daemon-reload
• Starts circus for the first time: systemctl start circus
• Enable circus to autostart on boot: systemctl enable circus
• More info on how to Start circus on boot

Maintenance

• sudo pacman -Syu Updates the system

Config file

Telegram Pi Bot is configured through a json file, in which you can set your bot token and configure webhooks/commands to invoke from your bot.

Here is an example of what a config.json file looks like:

{
    "bot_token": "<insert bot token>",
    "chat_ids": [
        "<insert chat id in which the bot should respond to>"
    ],
    "language": "<bot language>",
    "webhooks": [
        {
            "command_name": "dosomething",
            "url": "https://example.com/dosomething",
            "method": "POST",
            "headers": {
                "Content-Type": "application/json"
            },
            "data": { "value1": "%s" }
        }
    ]
}

Locate config file

The config file will try to be loaded in the following order:

• The first argument provided:
• telegram-pi-bot /home/username/config.json
• A location specified using the TELEGRAM_PI_BOT_CONFIG environment variable:
• export TELEGRAM_PI_BOT_CONFIG=/home/username/config.json
• A file named config.json placed inside the telegram_pi_bot folder

Using Circus

For improved process handling:

• systemctl start circus
• systemctl stop circus
• systemctl reload circus

Autostart on device boot:

• systemctl enable circus

License

MIT © Ruy Adorno