Grafana for Visualization

Grafana is an open platform for beautiful analytics and monitoring. It allows you to create a nice looking dashboards that will give you quick insights into your sensor data.

Requirements

You will need these components to make it work:

Debian-based Linux, or macOS
Mosquitto - MQTT broker

{% hint style="warning" %}

This setup has been tested on:

Raspberry Pi 3 + Raspbian Jessie
Turris Omnia + Ubuntu 16.04 (via LXC container)
macOS 10.13

Installing InfluxDB on Linux

Step 1: Install dependency packages

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl -y

Step 2: Add repository key

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -

Step 3: Add repository to source list

{% tabs %} {% tab title="Debian / Raspbian" %}

echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stretch stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Ubuntu" %}

echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/ubuntu/ xenial stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Step 4: Update the package list and install the packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt install influxdb

Step 5: Now you can start the InfluxDB service

sudo systemctl start influxdb

Installing Grafana on Linux

Step 1: Install dependencies

sudo apt install adduser libfontconfig -y

Step 2: Based on your taget platform, select the appropriate procedure

{% tabs %} {% tab title="Raspberry Pi and Omnia LXC" %}

Step 1: You can manualy download latest version from Grafana, or you can use the following helper to download it for you

wget $(wget "https://api.github.com/repos/fg2it/grafana-on-raspberry/releases/latest" -q -O - | grep browser_download_url | grep armhf.deb | head -n 1 | cut -d '"' -f 4) -O grafana.deb

Step 2: Then install the package

sudo dpkg -i grafana.deb

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Desktop (Ubuntu and Debian" %}

Step 1: Add repository key

curl -sL https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

Step 2: Add repository to source list

echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Step 3: Then update the package list and install the package

sudo apt update && sudo apt install grafana -y

{% endtab %} {% endtabs %}

Step 3: Reload the systemd configuration

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Step 4: Enable Grafana on boot

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

Step 5: Now you can start the Grafana server

sudo systemctl start grafana-server

Continue in the section Connect Mosquitto and InfluxDB.

Installing InfluxDB on macOS

Step 1: Open the Terminal application.

Step 2: Make sure you have Homebrew installed.

Step 3: Install InfluxDB

brew install influxdb

Step 4: Enable InfluxDB service

brew services start influxdb

Installing Grafana on macOS

Step 1: Open the Terminal application

Step 2: Make sure you have Homebrew installed

Step 3: Install Grafana

brew install grafana

Step 4: Enable Grafana service

brew services start grafana

Connect Mosquitto and InfluxDB

Step 1: Install the MQTT to InfluxDB service

sudo pip3 install --upgrade mqtt2influxdb

Step 2: Create the `/etc/bigclown` directory

sudo mkdir /etc/hardwario

Step 3: Open the configuration file

{% hint style="info" %} For text editing, we use nano editor. You can save changes by pressing key combination Ctrl + O and exit editor by pressing Ctrl + X. {% endhint %}

sudo nano /etc/hardwario/mqtt2influxdb.yml

Step 4: Paste this snippet to the configuration file

Configuration possibilities and structure are described at article about mqtt2influxdb.

{% code title="/etc/hardwario/mqtt2influxdb.yml" %}

mqtt:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 1883

influxdb:
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 8086
  database: node

points:
  - measurement: temperature
    topic: node/+/thermometer/+/temperature
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]
      channel: $.topic[3]

  - measurement: relative-humidity
    topic: node/+/hygrometer/0:4/relative-humidity
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]

  - measurement: illuminance
    topic: node/+/lux-meter/0:0/illuminance
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]

  - measurement: pressure
    topic: node/+/barometer/0:0/pressure
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]

  - measurement: co2
    topic: node/+/co2-meter/-/concentration
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]

  - measurement: voltage
    topic: node/+/battery/+/voltage
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]

  - measurement: button
    topic: node/+/push-button/+/event-count
    fields:
      value: $.payload
    tags:
      id: $.topic[1]
      channel: $.topic[3]

{% endcode %}

{% hint style="info" %} In the section tags you can your identifiers, e.g.: tags: room: bedroom {% endhint %}

Step 5: Configuration file test

mqtt2influxdb -c /etc/hardwario/mqtt2influxdb.yml --test

Step 6: Start the MQTT to InfluxDB service

pm2 start `which python3` --name "mqtt2influxdb" -- `which mqtt2influxdb` -c /etc/hardwario/mqtt2influxdb.yml

Step 7: Save the PM2 state (so it will start after reboot)

pm2 save

{% hint style="info" %} If you want to see temperature records from database in CSV format, use this command:

influx -database node -execute "select * from temperature;" -format csv

Then you must restart the service when you change the configuration file

pm2 restart mqtt2influxdb {% endhint %}

Configure Grafana

Step 1: Open the Grafana web interface at http://localhost:3000/ or http://hub.local:3000/ or http://ip:3000/ and log in

Enter the User admin
Enter the Password admin

Step 2: Create a data source

Select Add data source and then:

Enter the Name: node
Select the Type: InfluxDB
Enter the URL: http://localhost:8086
Enter the Database: node

Finish by clicking on the Add button. At this moment Grafana will try to connect to the data source and replies back with the message Data source is working.

Step 3: Download `dashboard.json` or copy the content of this file to clipboard

{% file src="../.gitbook/assets/dashboard.json" caption="dashboard.json" %}

Files

grafana-for-visualization.md

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