Helium Dashboard

Note

If you have any questions, feel free to create an issue. I won't be able to hand-hold anyone through the setup, but I will be happy to answer simple questions.

Overview

This dashboard setup collects data from Helium API and stores it in InfluxDB. Grafana reads the data from InfluxDB and presents it on the dashboard.

Data capture

This node package collects data from Helium API. It's designed for AWS Lambda but can be run on any machine with Node.js. (If running on a machine with node, use npm start). This script does a single data collection and, therefore, must be run periodically (e.g., every 10 mins). Some example on how to do that:

• AWS Lambda function triggered by CloudWatch event
• Cron job on remote server (perhaps same one that runs Influx & Grafana)
• Cron job on local machine (if machine is asleep, it won't run)

Env file

The supplied .env.sample contains necessary environment variables to be defined. Copy this file to .env and update with your parameters. Note that .env file is .gitignore'd.

Server

The setup below assumes a Linux-like environment.

Firewall

• allow-influx 0.0.0.0/0 TCP 8086

HTTPS Certs (optional)

• Use Let's Encrypt instructions to get HTTPS certs. Specifically certbot.
• Allow reading domain cert directories:
  • sudo chmod ugo+x /etc/letsencrypt/live/{domain}/
  • sudo chmod ugo+x /etc/letsencrypt/archive/{domain}/

Influx

Install

• https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/get-started/

Configure

• Influx 2.x - Update /etc/influxdb/config.toml with your config
• Restart influx: sudo service influxdb start
• Check for errors: journalctl -f -u influxdb

Create influx bucket (if from scratch)

• See Influx docs
• This should match INFLUX_BUCKET env variable

Import database backup (if restoring)

• Influx 2.x: influx restore [path]

Create users

Influx 2.0

• Create user as per Influx docs

Grafana

Install

• https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/installation/debian/
• Allow Grafana to bind on port 443 (if using HTTPS)
  • sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/sbin/grafana-server

Configure

• Update /etc/grafana/grafana.ini with your config

Install plugins

sudo grafana-cli plugins install marcusolsson-json-datasource

Import dashboard json (if new)

• InfluxDB needs to be the default datastore of the grafana server. If not, replace the datastore name on the json file

Migrate previous dashboards (if restoring)

• Copy /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db

Start as service

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl status grafana-server

To start on startup:

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service