Build.md

Weatherstation

This describes the way how to build and run the software.

Prerequisites for Raspbian

• First of all get your Raspi up to date

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get upgrade

• Add prerequisites for .NET Core framework

  sudo apt-get install curl libunwind8 gettext

• Install the .NET Core runtime

  curl -SL -o dotnet.tar.gz https://dotnetcli.blob.core.windows.net/dotnet/Sdk/master/dotnet-sdk-latest-linux-arm.tar.gz
  sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/dotnet
  sudo tar -zxf dotnet.tar.gz -C /usr/share/dotnet
  sudo ln -s /usr/share/dotnet/dotnet /usr/bin/dotnet

• Test the .NET Core installation

  dotnet --help

The result should be something like

        Usage: dotnet [host-options] [path-to-application]
path-to-application:
The path to an application .dll file to execute.

host-options:
--additionalprobingpath <path>      Path containing probing policy and assemblies to probe for
--depsfile <path>                   Path to <application>.deps.json file
--runtimeconfig <path>              Path to <application>.runtimeconfig.json file
--fx-version <version>              Version of the installed Shared Framework to use to run the application.
--roll-forward-on-no-candidate-fx   Roll forward on no candidate shared framework is enabled
--additional-deps <path>            Path to additonal deps.json file

Common Options:
-h|--help                           Displays this help.
--info                              Displays the host information

See also here for more information. Maybe this here is also necessary.

Common prerequisites

• Download and install the Tinkerforge Brick daemon for the operating system where you will run the datacollector and connect the weather station to. For Raspbian this looks for example

  sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0 libudev0 pm-utils
  wget http://download.tinkerforge.com/tools/brickd/linux/brickd_linux_latest_armhf.deb
  sudo dpkg -i brickd_linux_latest_armhf.deb

• Install a MQTT broker somewhere. In my case I'm running Mosquitto on my Synology NAS.

Build the project

• The complete code can be build on any Windows system. There is a cross compile possible and everything is prepared in the buildscript.bat script. Possible options for the build script are

  • linux-arm
  • linux-x64
  • win-x64

• The build process will build the datacollector as well as the remotedevice and all available plugins for the given destination/architecture.

• Compile the code for the desired destination(s).

• After the build process is finished, copy the folder ./build/linux-arm/ to your Raspi.

• For the remotedevice you need to remove the following plugins from the Plugins folder:

  • Lcd.dll - Remove this because on the remotedevice you usually don't have the Tinkerforge display of the weather station.
  • MQTT.dll - Remove this unless you want to re-publish the data to another broker/topic. Don't remove M2Mqtt.dll because it's used by the remotedevice to deal with MQTT.

First run

On the first run some config files with default values are created. Start the datacollector

datacollector.exe

or the remotedevice

remotedevice.exe

Execute this commands on the command line in the build path of your architecture. Then abort the loop by pressing the escape button. In the next step configure each *.config file to fit your needs. For further details see the plugins documentation.

Abort the program

Both programs, the datacollector as well the remotedevice, are running in an endless loop. To abort the loop, just hit the escape button.

Configuration

The config files are named like the plugins with Config.config at the end. See the plugins and their configs for more details.

The description for configuring the datacollector or the remotedevice can be found in their respective directories.

Caveats

• You cannot run the datacollector and the remotedevice at one machine using the same plugin directory. The plugins cannot be used simultaneously by the datacollector and the remotedevice. If you want to run both on the same machine, you need to have two plugin directories and to configure one for the datacollector and the other for the remotedevice.

• Some of the plugins are using NuGet packages. During the deployment the plugins have a different deployment location than the datacollector program. Some of the DLLs will load additional dependencies - but somehow they are not taken from the plugin path. Caused by this the NuGet packages are also added to the datacollector/remotedevice project. This solved the issue, but it's not a good solution.

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