bairy

Display data from Raspberry Pi.

Suppose you have a Raspberry Pi IoT-style device that measures and records data. bairy provides a framework to share the data across a local network. bairy also has the ability to combine, centralize, and display results from multiple devices.

A screenshot of the bairy web app.

Install

This package requires at least Python 3.7. The following instructions work for Raspbian 10 running on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+.

1. Install the dependencies for the numpy-pandas-scipy suite.

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install libatlas-base-dev
   

2. Install bairy with pip3 install bairy. If pip3 is not recognized, try python3 -m pip install bairy.

3. Try out bairy with random configurations.

   # initialize bairy with sensors providing random readings
   bairy --set-random-configs
   # run the app
   bairy
   

4. Point your web browser to localhost:8000/status. The sensor readings (a random walk) update every second. Refresh your browser to get the latest reading. Try other endpoints as well.

5. To stop bairy, go back to your terminal and press CTRL + C. Simply run bairy again to continue recording and displaying.

6. To remove stored data and configurations, run bairy --remove all. Run bairy --help to see other command line options.

Details

Configuration

Once your Raspberry Pi is equipped with sensors, bairy must be configured to be made aware of those sensors. Run bairy --configs-template to create a file named template_configs.json which can be edited to include details about your sensors. After modifying the template, add the configurations to bairy with bairy --set-configs template_configs.json. Now run bairy to capture sensor readings.

App endpoints

When bairy is initialized, several distinct processes start. Through an asynchronous event loop, bairy reads the values of the sensors at specified time intervals and writes them to a data.csv file. Concurrently, bairy serves a FastAPI-backed web app with which the user can interact. This web app can be accessed on the Raspberry Pi itself through at least one of 127.0.0.1:8000 or 0.0.0.0:8000 or localhost:8000.

The app includes various endpoints, described below. To navigate to the endpoint /logs, point your browser to localhost:8000/logs.

• /docs Shows endpoint schemas and API documentation.
• /data Returns a streaming response of the data.csv file. Optional selection argument can be used to access preprocessed data.
• /logs Returns the bairy logs as plaintext.
• /status Displays a json object showing active configurations and device status. See the json example below.
• /remote/update Update the bairy software with pip. Requires the Raspberry Pi does not prompt for sudo password, which is the default setting.
• /remote/reboot Reboot the Raspberry Pi. See run at startup to ensure bairy restarts.
• /remote/remove-data Remove device data from Raspberry Pi.
• /remove/remove-logs Clear log file on Raspberry Pi.
• /set-configs An HTTP POST endpoint for setting device configurations.
• /table Renders a Dash table showing resampled data. The resampling window depends the overall size of the data.csv file. Raw data should be obtained through the /data endpoint.
• /plot Renders an interactive Dash plot showing resampled data.

As an example, the json response of a /status endpoint appears below.

{
  "device_configs": {
    "name": "eye of sauron",
    "sensors": [
      {
        "sensor_type": "air",
        "i2c_address": 18
      },
      {
        "sensor_type": "digital",
        "bcm_pin": 17,
        "header": "ir_state"
      }
    ],
    "update_interval": 1
  },
  "data_details": {
    "file_size": "1.44 MiB",
    "n_rows": 33994
  },
  "latest_reading": {
    "time": "2021-01-17 21:46:40",
    "pm_1.0": 3,
    "pm_2.5": 5,
    "pm_10": 5,
    "ir_state": 1
  }
}

LAN access

The web app can be accessed on the LAN. When bairy is run in the command line, it will print its local IP address. This IP address might take the form 192.168.0.17. To access the bairy web app on a different machine on the network, navigate to 192.168.0.17:8000/status. Here /status can be replaced with any of the endpoints above.

Run at startup

To enable bairy to launch as the Raspberry Pi boots, follow the steps below. This is especially useful in headless mode, that is, when the Raspberry Pi is not attached to a monitor. See the official documentation for more information on working with systemd on Raspberry Pi.

1. Run bairy --create-service to put a bairy.service file in the /etc/systemd/system directory.

2. Run sudo systemctl start bairy.service to check if the service works.

3. Run sudo systemctl stop bairy.service to stop the service. When you restart the Raspberry Pi, bairy should automatically start in the background. You can run ps -aux | grep bairy to verify bairy is working.

A central hub

If you have several Raspberry Pis simultaneously collecting and sharing data, bairy allows you to merge and share the data through a common web app. This central hub can be run on one of the Raspberry Pis, or on an independent device that is not capturing sensor data.

1. You will need to the know the IP addresses of the Raspberry Pi devices which are capturing data with bairy. Create a simple text file with these IP addresses. If the hub host is also acting as a sensing device, include the word self in this file.

   192.168.0.17
   192.168.0.34
   self
   

2. Register these IP addresses with bairy. If the file is named ip.txt, run the command below.

   bairy hub --set-configs ip.txt
   

3. Now run bairy hub to launch the hub web app. Data is periodically requested from devices (every hour), then merged into a single plotly plot. Point your browser to localhost:8000 to view the app. Use the /docs endpoint to view other available endpoints.

4. Run bairy hub --service to create a startup service to run the hub. This will override any previously created device service.

More screenshots of the dash portion of the bairy app.

License

MIT License