Whatsapp on your Raspberry Pi: Yowsup

Did you think Whastapp is only for your smartphone? Wrong! You can use it also on your RPi and it works quite well!

Yowsup is a python library developed for accessing Whatsapp without the original app (and on a machine that is not a smartphone, just like a RPi).

Unfortunately you still need a smartphone and a sim card for configuring Yowsup, but after the first steps you can leave it alone.

The first thing to do is an update of the RPi. It's always a good practice to make an update before installing a new software so you can be sure to have the most recent libraries.

It could also be a good idea to upgrade RPi firmware, but it's not really needed for installing Yowsup, so i will skip it this time.

To make an update type as usual:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Eventually answer Yes to continue and wait for the tasks to complete.

Now you have to install some dependencies used by Yowsup installation:

sudo apt-get install python-dev libncurses5-dev

Now you can download Yowsup from the git repository:

git clone git://github.com/tgalal/yowsup.git

and wait for completion. If there are no issues, you can find a subfolder named yowsup.

Just after downloading the package you need to execute the setup. This way all the needed dependencies will be downloaded automatically:

cd yowsup
sudo python setup.py install

The setup will take a while, so be prepared to wait several minutes.

Before using Yowsup you need to create the configuration file using a text editor. Note that You can put the configuration file wherever you wish. Just remember that you will have to specify the path when using Yowsup.

In case you are just upgrading from old version to the new Yowsup 2, you can skip this steps and reuse the old configuration file.

nano config

Of course you can also use another name for the file.

Into this file you have to type four rows:

cc=00
phone=00tttttttttt
id=0000000000
password=

Let's see what they are for and what you need to change to match your sim card:

In the first line you have to specify the country code of the phone number without the +. For example if you have a number from Italy you have to type:

cc=39

if your number is from France just type:

cc=33

and so on. Next you specify the phone number with the country code, but without the +. Again as an example, a number from Italy will be something like:

phone=391111111111

One thing you really have to consider: the number cannot be used for Whatsapp on another device (smartphone or whatever) as Whatsapp can have just one account for every telephone number.

The next two rows can be ignored for a while.

Now it's time to create the account and to do this you need a phone that can receive sms. You could do this also with a voice call if there are problems with the sms.

Type (from the yowsup/src folder):

python yowsup-cli -c config -r sms

If your configuration file is placed into another folder or has a different name, just put the right path after the -c parameter. This has to be done every time you invoke yowsup-cli.

With this command you are requesting the pass code from Whatsapp to enable the account. After a while you should receive the sms with the code.

To register type:

python yowsup-cli -c config --register 123-456

where 123-456 is the received code. If everything went right, Yowsup should display a text like the following:

status: ok
kind: free
pw: jg7w4fewhb7TFGErcm2sQCfSLgXM=
price: 0,89
price_expiration: 1362803446
currency: EUR
cost: 0.89
expiration: 1391344106
login: 391111111111
type: new

Copy the text after pw: up to the = from that reply. This is the password that we need to put in the configuration file.

Edit the file and in the last line put the password. Now the configuration should look like this:

cc=00
phone=00tttttttttt
id=0000000000
password=jg7w4fewhb7TFGErcm2sQCfSLgXM=

Yowsup is now ready to send and receive Whatsapp messages. Using yowsup-cli you can test some demo functions. For example let's send a message:

python yowsup-cli demos -c config -s 392222222222 "Message"

where 392222222222 is the destination number and "Message" is the text you wish to send.

Another demo function waits for a message and reply with the same message to the sender:

python yowsup-cli demos -c config -e

For all the options you can refer to Yowsup website.

From time to time Whatsapp will update communication protocols, so remember to check from the git repository if there are update files. In that case just download them and replace the old ones.