bairy 0.0.7

Display data from Raspberry Pi.

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.

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 update every second. Refresh your browser to get the latest reading.

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

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

Details

Configuration

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

App endpoints

When bairy is run, several processes start. Through an asynchronous event loop, bairy reads the values of the sensors 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 the url 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.

• /data Returns a streaming response of the data.csv file.
• /logs Displays the app logs as plaintext.
• /status Displays a json object showing active configurations and device status.
• /experimental Can be used to update bairy and reboot the Raspberry Pi. See the app source.
• /table Renders a Dash table showing recent data.
• /plot Renders a Dash plot showing averaged data.

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 run when the Raspberry Pi starts, 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 create 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 works.

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.

1. You will need to the know the IP addresses of the Raspberry Pi devices which are running bairy to capture data. 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.

   # ip.txt
   
   192.168.0.17
   192.168.0.34
   self
   

2. Register these IP addresses with bairy.

   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.

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

License

MIT