tcp – Fun Tech Projects

There are some great communication protocols (MQTT, RabbitMQ, ReDis …) that are excellent for passing data between nodes.

For applications where you only need to do simple communications a couple of lines of Bash can be used with TCP or UDP sockets.

In this blog I wanted to document UDP/TCP communications using Linux Bash commands to:

define periodic 1-way communications
use progress bars to show data from remote nodes
remotely send commands to a Raspberry Pi
setup simple TCP backdoors

NC (NetCat) – for TCP and UDP Connections

In theory you should be able to create a input read via something like:

echo $(read < /dev/udp/127.0.0.1/9999)

Then do a write using:

echo "some text" > /dev/udp/127.0.0.1/9999)

Unfortunately Linux device connections are not fully reliable, especially on the read or listening side. However the write component appears to be fairly solid. Luckily there is a solid solution using the nc (NetCat) command line utility. The nc utility is typically preloaded on most Linux systems.

The nc utility supports both UDP (-u option) and TCP (default) connections.

To setup a UDP listener, use the IP address of the listener node, and select the -k option to allow multiple connections to occur:

nc -u -l -k 192.168.0.111  9999

For this example the listener’s IP is: 192.168.0.111, and port 9999 is used.

To do manual writes from the command line, enter:

 nc -u  192.168.0.111  9999

To send data from a script there are two methods, either using nc or writing to the device:

# writing via nc, -w0 send only 1 message 
echo "456" | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111  9999
# writing via device:
echo "456" > /dev/udp/192.168.0.111/9999

Multiple Writes and Zenity Progress Dialogs

Zenity is command line dialog utility that is typically preinstalled on most versions of Linux.

The data that is sent to the UDP listener can be piped to Zenity progress bar:

nc -u -l -k 192.168.0.111  9999 | zenity --progress --title="Remote Data"

A script to send seconds every second would be:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Press [CTRL+C] to stop..." 
( 
while : 
do
# $(date +'%S') seconds" | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999
 echo "$(date +'%S')" | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999
 sleep 1 
done 
)

When the script echos an integer the progress bar will be updated with the integer value. An echo string starting with a “#” will update the text above the bar.

The progress bar is from 0-100%, but the integer value can be re-scaled to make the information clearer. For example to re-scale 0-60 secs to 0-100:

echo "$(date +'%S')*100/60" | bc | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999

YAD – for Multiple Progress Bars

YAD (Yet Another Dialog) is a command line GUI utility that offers a little more functionality than Zenity. To install YAD on Raspberry Pi’s and Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install yad

A bash command with a UDP listener with YAD 2-bars would be:

nc -u -l -k 192.168.0.111  9999 | yad --multi-progress \
  --bar="CPU Idle" --bar="CPU Temp" --title="Remote CPU Info"

The CPU Idle Time can be found by:

top -n 1 | grep %Cpu | awk '{print $8}'
93.8

The CPU Temperature on a PC can be found by:

sensors | grep CPU | awk '{print substr($2,2,4)}'
44.0

A script to send the CPU Idle Time and Temperature to the UDP listener is:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Press [CTRL+C] to stop..." 
( 
while : 
do
 cpuidle=$(top -n 1 | grep %Cpu | awk '{print $8}') 
 echo "1:"$cpuidle | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999

 cputemp=$(sensors | grep CPU | awk '{print substr($2,2,4)}')
 echo "2:"$cputemp | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999
 echo "2:#"$cputemp" Deg C" | nc -u -w0 192.168.0.111 9999
 sleep 5 
done 
)

For YAD multiple progress bars, an echo of 1: is for bar 1, 2: is for bar 2 etc. Echo-ing “2:# ” updates the text for the 2nd bar.

NC is not the same on Rasp Pi

I found that on the Rasp Pi the nc listening functions would not pass any information to bash scripts. Manual mode still works to view messages, but the messages can’t be piped to other commands.

This mean that things like the Zenity and YAD progress bars would not work on a Raspberry Pi. For many applications this may not be a big problem because the Rasp Pi can still send information via nc.

NC vs. NCAT

The ncat utility is very similar to nc but it offers the ability to run commands. By default nc is preloaded on most systems, but ncat needs to be installed. Installing ncat will vary based on your OS.

The ncat utility allows you to make backdoors so be careful of its use.

To create a backdoor simply (via TCP), define the ncat -c (execute command option) to be /bin/bash:

ncat -l -k 192.168.0.108  9999 -c /bin/bash

If on a remote node you enter: ncat 192.168.0.108 , you can start typing commands that are run on the remote node with the results echoing back. Very cool for test system but super dangerous for real systems.

Remotely Toggle a Rasp Pi GPIO Pin

Rather than opening up the system totally fixed commands can be defined. For example to toggle pin 7 on a Rasp Pi. A listener script is run:

ncat -l -k 192.168.0.108  9999 -c "gpio toggle 7"

A remote button GUI script could be used in conjunction with the listener script to toggle the GPIO pin:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Toggle a Rasp Pi GPIO pin

rc=1 # OK button return code =0 , all others =1
while [ $rc -eq 1 ]; do
  ans=$(zenity --info --title 'Remote Connect to Pi' \
      --text 'Toggle GPIO Pin' \
      --ok-label Quit \
      --extra-button TOGGLE \
       )
  rc=$?
  echo "${rc}-${ans}"
  echo $ans
  if [[ $ans = "TOGGLE" ]]
  then
        echo "Toggle Pin"
        nc -w0 192.168.0.108  9999
  fi
done

Send a Command String to Run Remotely

For this example the Rasp Pi is setup to be TCP listener, and the command (-c option) is /bin/bash, so this allows the remote PC to send custom commands:

ncat -l -k 192.168.0.108  9999 -c /bin/bash

On the remote system a bash script is created with 2 buttons and the custom commands are sent to the Pi to run:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Toggle two Rasp Pi GPIO pins

rc=1 # OK button return code =0 , all others =1
while [ $rc -eq 1 ]; do
  ans=$(zenity --info --title 'Remote Connect to Pi' \
      --text 'Toggle GPIO Pins' \
      --ok-label Quit \
      --extra-button Pin2 \
      --extra-button Pin7 \
       )
  rc=$?
  echo "${rc}-${ans}"
  echo $ans
  if [[ $ans = "Pin2" ]]
  then
        echo "gpio toggle 2" | nc -w0 192.168.0.108  9999
  elif [[ $ans = "Pin7" ]]
  then
        echo "gpio toggle 7" | nc -w0 192.168.0.108  9999
  fi
done

On systems other than Rasp Pi, the nc command can also be used to run remote programs by:

nc -u -l -k 192.168.0.111  9999 | awk '{ system($1 " " $2 " " $3 " " $4)}'

Final Comments

In this blog I’ve kept things focused on TCP/UDP communications with bash script but you could easily include Arduino, Python and Node-Red as either clients or servers.

There are some great Arduino modules with integrated ESP-8266 wireless chips, some of the most popular of these modules are:

Adafruit HUZZAH
NodeMCU
WeMos

Along with these modules comes some excellent libraries.

For Arduino to PC or Raspberry Pi communications that are a few options to choose from. A TCP client/server is simple and straightforward and it is excellent for sending single point information. For sending multiple data points take a look at MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport), it’s a common standard for IoT applications and it’s built into Node-Red.

Arduino TCP Client

The Arduino module can be a simple TCP client that can talk to either a Python or a Node-Red TCP server. Below is an example that sends a random integer to a TCP server every 5 seconds.

/*
Test TCP client to send a random number
 */
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <ESP8266WiFiMulti.h>

ESP8266WiFiMulti WiFiMulti;

void setup() {
    Serial.begin(9600);

    // We start by connecting to a WiFi network
    const char * ssid = "your_ssid";       // your WLAN ssid
    const char * password = "your_password"; // your WLAN password
    WiFiMulti.addAP(ssid, password);

    Serial.println();
    Serial.print("Wait for WiFi... ");

    while(WiFiMulti.run() != WL_CONNECTED) {
        Serial.print(".");
        delay(500);
    }
    Serial.println("WiFi connected");
    Serial.println("IP address: ");
    Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
    delay(500);
}

void loop() {
    const uint16_t port = 8888;          // port to use
    const char * host = "192.168.0.123"; // address of server
    String msg;

    // Use WiFiClient class to create TCP connections
    WiFiClient client;

    if (!client.connect(host, port)) {
        Serial.println("connection failed");
        Serial.println("wait 5 sec...");
        delay(5000);
        return;
    }
   
    // Send a random number to the TCP server
    msg = String(random(0,100));
    client.print(msg);
    Serial.print("Sent : ");
    Serial.println(msg);
    client.stop();    
    delay(5000);
}

Node-Red TCP Server

Node-Red is an excellent visual programming environment that is part of the Raspberry Pi base install. Node-Red is a simple tool to create your own Internet of Things applications. The base Node-Red installation includes a TCP server and client.

To install the web dashboards enter:

sudo apt-get install npm
cd ~/.node-red
npm i node-red-dashboard

To start Node-Red either use the on-screen menus or from the command line enter:

node-red-start &

Once Node-Red is running the programming is done via the web interface at: //localhost:1880 or //your_Pi_ip_address:1880 .

To configure the TCP server, go to the Input nodes section and drag and drop the TCP in node. After the node is inserted double-click on it and edit the port and message settings.

To create a gauge Web dashboard, go to the dashboard nodes section and drag and drop the gauge node. After the node is inserted double-click on it and edit the dashboard group, labels and ranges.

For debugging and testing an output debug node is useful.

To access the Web dashboard enter: //localhost:1880/ui or //your_Pi_ip_address:1880/ui

TCP Python Server

The python TCP server will see the incoming Arduino message as a Unicode (UTF-8) text, so convert message to an integer use: thevalue = int(data.decode(“utf-8”)). Below is the full code.

import socket
import sys

HOST = '' # Symbolic name, meaning all available interfaces
PORT = 8888 # Arbitrary non-privileged port

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
print ('Socket created')

#Bind socket to local host and port
try:
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
except socket.error as msg:
print ('Bind failed. Error Code : ' + str(msg[0]) + ' Message ' + msg[1])
sys.exit()

print ('Socket bind complete')

#Start listening on socket
s.listen(10)
print ('Socket now listening')

#now keep talking with the client
while True:
#wait to accept a connection - blocking call
conn, addr = s.accept()
data = conn.recv(1024)
print ('Connected with ' + addr[0] + ':' + str(addr[1]) + " " )
thevalue = int(data.decode("utf-8"))
print ("Value: ", thevalue)

s.close(

Summary

In our final application we mounted the Arduino module outside and we powered it with a small solar charger. We also include a humidity value with the temperature, and we used a QR code that linked to our web page.

Tag: tcp

Simple TCP/UDP Bash Apps