Grafana
is an analytics platform that can provide alternative graphs for readsb
.
In this guide we will be using Prometheus
as the data repository.
Using Grafana and Prometheus in this configuration does not require a plan, account, or credentials for their respective cloud offerings.
Prometheus will store a lot of data, and Grafana will do a lot of data queries. As a result, it would be better if you run these containers on a different system than your feeder Raspberry Pi. This will leave your Pi focused on data collection and processing, and unbothered by the CPU and Disk IO load that Prometheus/Grafana will cause.
You can do it on a single system. We're assuming below that you are not. If you do it on a single system, then you can combine the docker-compose.yml
components in a single file
- Edit your ShipXplorer's
docker-compose.yml
file and ensure that the following is set for theshipxplorer
service:
environment:
- PROMETHEUS_ENABLE=true
ports:
- 9273:9273
Now recreate the ShipXplorer container (docker-compose up -d shipxplorer
) and it will generate Prometheus data.
You can skip this if you already have Prometheus and Grafana installed.
On the machine where you will run Prometheus and Grafana, create a docker-compose file in the /opt/grafana
directory:
sudo mkdir -p -m777 /opt/grafana/grafana/appdata /opt/grafana/prometheus/config /opt/grafana/prometheus/data
cd /opt/grafana
cat > docker-compose.yml
Now paste in the following text *):
<‐‐ Click the arrow to see the docker-compose.yml
text
version: '3.9'
volumes:
grafana:
driver: local
driver_opts:
type: none
device: "/opt/grafana/grafana/appdata"
o: bind
prom-config:
driver: local
driver_opts:
type: none
device: "/opt/grafana/prometheus/config"
o: bind
prom-data:
driver: local
driver_opts:
type: none
device: "/opt/grafana/prometheus/data"
o: bind
services:
grafana:
image: grafana/grafana-oss:latest
restart: unless-stopped
container_name: grafana
hostname: grafana
# uncomment the following section and set the variables if you are exposing Grafana to the internet behind a rev web proxy:
environment:
# snuids-radar-panel plugin is needed for polar plots:
- GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=snuids-radar-panel
# uncomment and set the following variables if you are exposing Grafana to the internet behind a rev web proxy:
# - GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL=https://mywebsite.com/grafana/
# - GF_SERVER_SERVE_FROM_SUB_PATH=true
ports:
- 3000:3000
volumes:
- grafana:/var/lib/grafana
prometheus:
image: prom/prometheus
container_name: prometheus
hostname: prometheus
restart: unless-stopped
tmpfs:
- /tmp
volumes:
- prom-config:/etc/prometheus
- prom-data:/prometheus
ports:
- 9090:9090
*) The volume definition structure is written this way purposely to ensure that the containers can place files in the persistent directories. Do not try to "directly" map volumes (/opt/grafana/grafana/appdata:/var/lib/grafana
).
You should be able to see the following directories:
/opt/grafana/grafana/appdata
/opt/grafana/prometheus/config
/opt/grafana/prometheus/data
Download and create Grafana and Prometheus for the first time with this command:
docker compose up -d
Prometheus needs to be told where to look for the data from the ShipXplorer. We will create a target prometheus configuration file that does this, please copy and paste the following. Make sure to replace ip_of_ShipXplorer_machine:90
with the IP address or hostname of the machine and the web port where shipxplorer
is running:
docker exec -it prometheus sh -c "echo -e \" - job_name: 'ais'\n static_configs:\n - targets: ['ip_of_ShipXplorer_machine:90']\" >> /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml"
docker restart prometheus
(If you screw this up, do NOT re-run the command. Instead, try sudo nano /opt/grafana/prometheus/config/prometheus.yml
and fix it that way.)
You should be able to point your web browser at:
http://docker.host.ip.addr:9090/
to access theprometheus
console.http://docker.host.ip.addr:3000/
to access thegrafana
console, use admin/admin as initial credentials, you should be prompted to change the password on first login.
Remember to change docker.host.ip.addr
to the IP address of the machine where Prometheus and Grafana are located.
After you have logged into the grafana
console the following manual steps are required to connect to prometheus
as the data source. You must do this even if you are already connected to Prometheus for other purposes (such as for getting readsb
/ultrafeeder
/tar1090
data)
- In Grafana, click
Configuration
(cogwheel) ->Data Sources
- Click
Add a new data source
in the main panel - Click
Prometheus
from the list of options provided - Input or select the following options, if the option is not listed, do not input anything for that option:
Option | Input |
---|---|
Name | ais |
URL | http://prometheus:9090/ |
Clicking Save & Test
should return a green message indicating success. The dashboard can now be imported with the following steps
- Hover over the
four squares
icon in the sidebar, click+ Import
- Enter
18417
into theImport via grafana.com
section and clickLoad
- Select
readsb
from the bottom drop down list - Click
Import
on the subsequent dialogue box
At this point you should see a very nice dashboard, you can find it under General
in the Dashboards
section.
This description presumes that you already do the following:
- have a working Grafana setup as per the instructions above
- have configured an About page as per the instructions here
- If your AIS-Catcher/ShipXplorer website is exposed outside your intranet, you should also have an externally accessible link to your Grafana instance.
This is not 100% mandatory, but since "anonymous" access enables seeing all Dashboards of an Organization, it's recommendable to isolate your AIS-Catcher dashboard in a separate Organization.
- Log in to Grafana with an Admin account
- Go to
Server Admin
(Shield icon) ->Organizations
- Click
+ New org
and create a new Organization. You can call it whatever you want; for simplicity, we've called it "public
". Click on it to select it. - Now you have to import your Prometheus Data Source and Grafana Dashboard again. Follow the instructions above; make sure it says "
Organization: public
" at the top of the page. If you have made adjustments to your Grafana Dashboard in your other organization, you can go there, export the JSON "for external use", and then copy this JSON code into a new Dashboard in thepublic
organization.
You should now be able to see your Grafana AIS-Catcher Dashboard in the public
organization.
This enables Grafana to show and embed dashboards without logging in, limited to a single organization.
Add the following parameters to the environment:
section of your Grafana Service definition in docker-compose.yml
. If you have named your Organization something else than public
, you'll have to adjust that below:
environment:
- GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED=true
- GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ORG_NAME=public
- GF_SECURITY_ALLOW_EMBEDDING=true
Then restart the Grafana container with docker restart grafana
.
Once you have done this, you need to do a Hard Reload of the Grafana Dashboard in your Web Browser. If you use Chrome, this would be CTRL-SHIFT-R (Windows) or CMD-SHIFT-R (Mac).
- In your Grafana Dashboard page (
public
organization), click the "Share Dashboard or Panel" button next to the title of the Dashboard - In the Link tab of the pop-up box, make sure that you deselect
Lock time range
and optionally selectShorten URL
. If you usually render a Dark Mode Dashboard, you may want to select "Light Mode" because this fits better with the About page. Then copy the resulting URL - Edit
about.md
in the/data
directory that previously created using the instructions. Wherever you want the Dashboard to appear, add the following Markdown/HTML code block:
<iframe src="http://copied/link/from/grafana" width="100%" height="1300" frameborder="0"></iframe>
Of course, replace http://copied/link/from/grafana
by the Dashboard link you copied.