Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
184 lines (135 loc) · 6.41 KB

README.adoc

File metadata and controls

184 lines (135 loc) · 6.41 KB
Raw

ertgateway

ertgateway is responsible for receiving telemetry data messages and images transmitted by ertnode and for providing network APIs and a user interface (with ertgateway-ui-web) to view the received data. The device running ertgateway can be used as a fixed base station or, in the case of tracking high-altitude balloons, as a mobile station in a chase car.

Features

The received telemetry data messages are stored in JSON format to local log files, identically to ertnode, and all received images are also stored on local disk. In addition to collecting telemetry data from the node, ertgateway runs a telemetry data collector thread similar to ertnode: it logs the gateway location (if GPS is installed), data transfer statistics and system information to separate log files. The latest telemetry data message received from the node is also stored with each gateway log message to make correlation easy for data analysis later.

To aid mobile use of the gateway device, most useful details of the telemetry can be displayed on a ST7036-compatible SPI-bus-based LCD-screen. The screen driver code is mainly aimed to be used with the Display-O-Tron HAT where the buttons control the data displayed on the screen and the signal level is represented in the LED array. If there is only a bare ST7036-compatible screen (without additional buttons) connected to the SPI bus, ertgateway can be configured to cycle through all available data automatically.

Hardware requirements

The minimum hardware requirements for running ertgateway are:

  • A Raspberry Pi model A+, B+, Zero, 2B, 3B, 3B+ or 4B (any model with the 40-pin GPIO connector)

    • Other single-board computers can be used by implementing support for accessing GPIO pins and registering GPIO interrupts.

  • A Semtech SX127x / HopeRF RFM9xW LoRa transceiver connected to Raspberry Pi SPI port.

  • Optional: A GPS receiver supported by gpsd — any receiver outputting NMEA format data through serial port should work.

    • Tracking of gateway location and the distance between the node and the gateway will naturally work only if using a GPS receiver

    • For exmaple: Raspberry Pi GPS HAT from ModMyPi

Installation

The installation instructions assume use of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian). The current codebase has been tested on Raspberry Pi OS version 10.8, which is based on Debian 10.8 released on February 6th, 2021.

Installing dependencies

Install library dependencies:

apt-get install build-essential git cmake ntp gpsd libgps23 libgps-dev libyaml-0-2 libyaml-dev wiringpi

Configuring Raspberry Pi

Enable peripheral interfaces in Raspberry Pi by adding the following to /boot/config.txt:

# Enable I2C
dtparam=i2c_arm=on

# Enable SPI
dtparam=spi=on

# Enable SPI1 1CS (for the SPI1 bus)
dtoverlay=spi1-1cs

# Enable serial port UART for GPS (only if GPS is used)
enable_uart=1

# Enable use of PPS time signal through GPIO (if exposed by GPS receiver)
dtoverlay=pps-gpio,gpiopin=4

Configuring GPSd and NTP (optional: only if GPS is installed)

Configure GPSd to use Raspberry Pi internal serial port (assuming GPS is connected to it). Replace the contents of file /etc/default/gpsd with the following configuration:

# Default settings for the gpsd init script and the hotplug wrapper.

# Start the gpsd daemon automatically at boot time
START_DAEMON="true"

# Use USB hotplugging to add new USB devices automatically to the daemon
USBAUTO="true"

# Devices gpsd should collect to at boot time.
# They need to be read/writeable, either by user gpsd or the group dialout.
DEVICES="/dev/ttyAMA0"

# Other options you want to pass to gpsd
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n"

The time data and signals from a GPS receiver can be used to feed the NTP daemon, so that Raspberry Pi can keep correct time as long as it has GPS lock.

Some GPS receivers expose PPS signal, which can be fed to Raspberry Pi GPIO for extra accuracy. There is more information about using PPS signal on these sites. To use the PPS signal, an additional utility needs to be installed:

git clone https://github.com/flok99/rpi_gpio_ntpd.git
cd rpi_gpio_ntpd
make
sudo make install

Run the utility at boot time by adding the following to /etc/rc.local:

# Use GPIO18 (pin 12) for GPS PPS signal
/usr/local/bin/rpi_gpio_ntp -N 1 -g 18

Add the following configuration to /etc/ntp.conf:

# GPS Serial data reference
server 127.127.28.0 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4
fudge 127.127.28.0 time1 0.0 refid GPS

# GPS PPS reference
server 127.127.28.1 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4 prefer
fudge 127.127.28.1 refid PPS

Enable GPSd and NTP daemon by executing:

systemctl enable gpsd
systemctl start gpsd

systemctl enable ntp
systemctl start ntp

Reboot Raspberry Pi to make all config changes take effect.

Building ertgateway

Check out source code and build it:

git clone https://github.com/mikaelnousiainen/ert.git
cd ert
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd ..
mkdir -p build/ertgateway
cd build/ertgateway
cmake ../../ert/ertgateway
make

Configuring ertgateway

Configure the application by editing ertgateway.yaml in the build/ertgateway directory.

Running ertgateway

Run ertgateway: (uses sudo with root privileges, which are needed for GPIO access)

./ertgateway-start-dev.sh # Run on foreground

./ertgateway-start.sh # Run as a background daemon

Installing the user interface ertgateway-ui-web

ertgateway-ui-web is a web-based user interfaces that provides access to the telemetry data messages and images received and collected by ertgateway. The user interface source code is in another repository and it has to be built and installed separately from the rest of the application.