Category:Cumulus MX: Difference between revisions

• Raspberry Pi Zero W

o A faster Pi is NOT needed for running Cumulus. Pi Zero W has WiFi and one USB port which is all that is needed for headless running.

o Using a faster Pi might speed parts of the installation process, but are overkill for actual ‘production’ running. A faster Pi will work fine though if you have one going spare and don't mind the extra power use.

o Case if desired

• Micro SD card eg 16 GB, decent quality. Adapter if needed to put Micro SD card in PC

• OTG cable (micro USB plug to standard USB socket) to connect a USB weather station to Raspberry Pi [you may have got one free with a mobile phone or tablet] if it's a USB weather station. Not needed if you have a WiFi or ethernet weather station. An Ethernet weather station will need connected to your router, not the Pi.

• Suitable Micro USB power supply (it does not need to be a high power 2.5A version for Pi Zero W with only the weather station attached; it will be powered on 24/7, so a low power consumption ‘switched mode’ type is preferred – ie one that does not become warm when plugged in with nothing attached. You may have a suitable one from a mobile phone.

• SD Formatter (the Windows Format facility will NOT do)

o https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html

• balenaEtcher (for unzipping and burning images to SD cards) [Previously named 'Etcher']

o https://etcher.io/

• Win32DiskImager (for backup & restore of SD card images)

o https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

• PuTTY (an SSH client for Windows)

o https://www.putty.org/

• FileZilla (an FTP file transfer program for Windows)

o https://filezilla-project.org/download.php

'''

Download Raspbian Pi Operating System'''

• Save it on your PC, from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

• "RaspBIAN Buster Lite" is probably OK, but other than small file size it offers no advantage over installing the full version of RaspBIAN Buster. These instructions are being tested using "Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software", the largest of all, which could allow you to do other things more easily.

• Just click on “Download Zip” (torrent might be faster if you have the ability, but not worth installing just for this)

• Do not unzip it

• These instructions have been tested with kernel version 4.14, released 18 April 2018 and with kernel version 4.14, released 13 November 2018 [March 2019] and kernel version 4.19 released 10 July 2019

'''

Install Pi Operating System onto Micro SD card'''

Format the SD card

• Put Micro SD card in PC (use adapter if needed)

o If re-using a previous Pi SD card, click ‘Cancel’ on the warning about needing to format the card

• Run SD Card Formatter (click Yes to ‘Allow to make changes to your device’).

o Need to use this program rather than the Format tool in File Explorer, because Pi SD cards end up with a very small ‘Windows accessible’ partition and a large partition containing Linux. SD Card Formatter allows reclaim of the large partition.

• Your SD card should automatically populate in the ‘Drive’ box. In case you have another SD card in your PC, ensure the correct card is selected!

• Click ‘Format’ and check and accept the Warning messages

• Run balenaEtcher on your PC

• Click ‘Select Image’ and choose the ‘Raspbian Buster’ operating system zip file that was downloaded earlier

• SD card should be automatically populated. In case you have another SD card in your PC, ensure the correct card is selected!

• Click ‘Flash!’. The operating system will be copied to the card. This takes about 10 minutes, followed by another 8 minutes to ‘Verify’

• Cancel any messages about needing to Format the card - they are just indicating that Etcher has installed the partition that cannot be read by Windows

• On completion, the card is ‘ejected’ from the PC. Physically remove it and then straight away reinsert it so that the content can be viewed in File Explorer

• TWO drives will now be visible for the SD card. You will likely see a warning that one of the drives needs to be formatted before it can be used. ‘Cancel’ that warning and ignore that drive.

• View the other drive, which is named ‘boot’ in File Explorer

• On the View tab, ensure the ‘File Name extensions’ is ticked

• Right click and select ‘New’, ‘Text document’. Change its name to SSH (deleting the .txt extension; you need to make an empty file called SSH not SSH.txt). Click ‘Yes’ to ‘Are you sure you want to change the extension?’

• Right click and select ‘New’, ‘Text document’. Change its name to wpa_supplicant.conf (deleting the .txt extension; you need to make a file called wpa_supplicant.conf not wpa_supplicant.conf.txt). Click ‘Yes’ to ‘Are you sure you want to change the extension?’

• Right click on this new file and select ‘Open with Notepad’ or ‘Open with …’ then select Notepad. Enter the following content exactly as below (copy and paste) then edit your country code (if needed), WiFi network’s SSID and password: NOTE: Change GB as needed to be the code for your country. The quote marks should appear in the file, that is ssid="YourNetwork" not ssid=YourNetwork . Same for psk.

• Not essential, but I like to keep copies of both those files for future use. They can be on the SD card with different names eg ‘SSH - Copy’ and ‘wpa_supplicant.conf - Copy’ as well as on your PC

• The function of these 2 files is to connect your Raspberry Pi to your network as soon as it boots, and allows you to connect to and control it from your PC by SSH using PuTTY. This avoids needing to connect a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the Raspberry Pi. It is particularly useful for Pi Zero W (or Pi Zero) which hasn’t got enough USB connections and no Ethernet (wired network) connection. This is called ‘Headless operation’.

• Right click on the ‘boot’ SD card in left pane of File Explorer and ‘Eject’ it safely.

• With nothing plugged into the Raspberry Pi, take the Micro SD card from your PC and put it in the Pi.

• In a later step, you will need to find out the Raspberry Pi’s IP address by looking at your network router’s web interface. I can’t help you with doing that. If you don’t know how to, an alternative is to connect a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the Raspberry Pi at this stage

• Plug the power supply into the Raspberry Pi. It will boot up (note flashing red and/or green LEDs depending on model).

• On your PC, log into your network router’s web interface and identify the Pi’s IP address, which will be in the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, for example 192.168.1.123

o NOTE: If you will be switching from a faster “build” Raspberry Pi to a “production” Raspberry Pi Zero W, the IP address will change, so you’ll need to repeat this step later

o While in your network router for the ‘production’ Pi you will be using, set up some port forwarding that will be needed later.

o Forward port 8998 to your Pi’s IP address for TCP protocol if you want to be able to access the Cumulus web interface from the external internet (this brings potential security risk though). [Forwarding port 8002 as well was previously needed].

• Start PuTTY on your PC. In the box for ‘Host Name or IP address’, enter the Pi’s IP address from above. In the adjacent ‘Port’ box, enter 22. Connection type should be SSH. Click ‘Open’.

• A window opens. The first time you do this you will probably see a long message asking to confirm it is OK to connect to a not-previously-known device. Click ‘Yes’.

• Login to the Pi. Username is pi [lower case] and password is raspberry [lower case]

• You will see a warning that SSH is enabled but the password has not been changed, which is a security risk. We will change the password in a moment

• Type

• Simplification: Mono is a package which allows programs to be written cross-platform so that they will run on Linux (including Raspberry Pi), Windows and Mac OS, similar to the Windows ‘.NET Framework’.

• The previous anomaly with the USB library not working with later versions of mono, affecting Fine Offset stations and the later Oregon Scientific stations (WMR88/100/200 etc) has been fixed (''in CumulusMX build 3044 onwards'') and these and other stations should now be fine with later/current versions of mono. I am currently using a Fine Offset with mono v5.18

• Process is to install a security certificate, add the mono server to the list of software sources [sources.list] that the Pi searches, then install the mono-complete package:

First, stop CumulusMX as above by editing crontab.

Then remove the present version of mono:

Then install the new version

Finally re-enable auto running by editing crontab to remove the # and finally