[Version 2 Release] RaspberryPints - Digital Taplist Solution

[troyp42]

Hi guys, thanks for the updates RandR+

Does anyone know how to minimize Chromium when connecting via VNC?

 

[troyp42]

Hi guys, Im using an old Raspberry Pi B model for my RPints install and although its really slow to boot up and when doing changes in the settings etc it seems to do the job. But Im worried that once I connect up an arduino UNO and 3 flow meters it might not be adequate.

Will the B model handle this or should I upgrade to the Pi 3B +

 

[garzlok]

Does anyone know how to minimize Chromium when connecting via VNC?

Are you using VNC Viewer? If so, you should see an icon (bottom left). Open that and it should give you a virtual keyboard option. Open the keyboard and select <ALT> <F4> and the browser will close. If you don't have the icon, I'm not certain what's wrong.

Will the B model handle this or should I upgrade to the Pi 3B +

I started this build using an RPi0W. Though it would run a web server no issues, as I started to add devices it struggled more and more. RPints with Temp Probe...no problem. When I added an Arduino and Flow Meters...things would just not work and soon even my temp probe stopped working with any regularity.

I went to the store to buy a new RPi. I wanted to buy a 3B+. When I got to the store, all they had were 3B's and a 3B+ in a Starter Pack. I decided to spend $35 USD more on the 3B+ Starter Kit (even though I didn't need the kit) then to settle for the 3B....just remember, if you move to a 3B+...you'll have to start all over again, so save your index.php, style.css, and anything else you might have modified.

 

[troyp42]

Are you using VNC Viewer? If so, you should see an icon (bottom left). Open that and it should give you a virtual keyboard option. Open the keyboard and select <ALT> <F4> and the browser will close. If you don't have the icon, I'm not certain what's wrong.



I started this build using an RPi0W. Though it would run a web server no issues, as I started to add devices it struggled more and more. RPints with Temp Probe...no problem. When I added an Arduino and Flow Meters...things would just not work and soon even my temp probe stopped working with any regularity.

I went to the store to buy a new RPi. I wanted to buy a 3B+. When I got to the store, all they had were 3B's and a 3B+ in a Starter Pack. I decided to spend $35 USD more on the 3B+ Starter Kit (even though I didn't need the kit) then to settle for the 3B....just remember, if you move to a 3B+...you'll have to start all over again, so save your index.php, style.css, and anything else you might have modified.

Thanks mate, ill order the RPI3B+ now.

Im at work now but will check the VNC keyboard option when I get home. I think it has a drop down menu at the top which might have a keyboard.

So is there a way to back up my current SD card and then copy it to a new SD card?

 

[garzlok]

So is there a way to back up my current SD card and then copy it to a new SD card?

Yes, SD Card Copier. Should be Menu>Accessories>SD Card Copier

I don't think you can make a duplicate image from 1 RPi and use it in a different RPi.

 

[troyp42]

Yes, SD Card Copier. Should be Menu>Accessories>SD Card Copier

I don't think you can make a duplicate image from 1 RPi and use it in a different RPi.

So what does the Sd card copier do?

 

[garzlok]

So what does the Sd card copier do?

It makes a back-up of your RPi, so if the SD card your RPi is running on craps-out...you have a backup at the ready...I just don’t think you can use that backup on another RPi. (I don’t think it’s transferable, but someone with more knowledge will need to chime in)

 

[ba-brewer]

I don't think you can make a duplicate image from 1 RPi and use it in a different RPi.

I have two of the same kind and was able to do it.

I think these are my notes on how I did it. Last thing may not be needed, I have a USB stick to save the database.

change these two files to give unique names
/etc/hostname
/etc/hosts
change /etc/fstab to make changes to mounted drives

 

[troyp42]

I have two of the same kind and was able to do it.

I think these are my notes on how I did it. Last thing may not be needed, I have a USB stick to save the database.

change these two files to give unique names
/etc/hostname
/etc/hosts
change /etc/fstab to make changes to mounted drives

Thanks but I have no idea how to change those files? Can you give a more detailed procedure please? Where and when do I change these file names and how do I actually change them?

Do I do make a back up of the SD card from the old Pi using sd card copier to a usb stick?
Then copy the contents to my new SD card and right click the files in windows and change the names to say
/etc/hostnamenew
/etc/hostsnew

Will that work?

 

[day_trippr]

The 60000 is the Timeout for the window.location.reload function...in milliseconds.

fwiw, I have a couple of Model Bs, a Zero W, five 2Bs, a 3B+, and all but the last one are running the same SD card image. Only the differentiating details are changed from one system to the next (system names, static IP addresses, NAS folder pointers, etc). The 3B+ needed a more recent build for both the SOC and the embedded wireless stuff.

Use SD Card Copier with any decent card reader to do live cloning of the SD card. It's quite easy and highly reliable. Just plug the reader and card into the USB port, launch the Copier tool, and the rest is intuitive.

As for running RaspberryPints with flow meters and temperature probes - and motion sensor and a few instances of BrewPi, all on a Model B....been there, done that. It really wasn't all that sluggish, though there were times that a pour took a couple of seconds to complete a screen update.

That said, the 2B handles everything with aplomb, as should any of the multi-core SOC boards...

Cheers!

 

[troyp42]

The 60000 is the Timeout for the window.location.reload function...in milliseconds.

fwiw, I have a couple of Model Bs, a Zero W, five 2Bs, a 3B+, and all but the last one are running the same SD card image. Only the differentiating details are changed from one system to the next (system names, static IP addresses, NAS folder pointers, etc). The 3B+ needed a more recent build for both the SOC and the embedded wireless stuff.

Use SD Card Copier with any decent card reader to do live cloning of the SD card. It's quite easy and highly reliable...

Cheers!

So I can copy the old sd card to a usb stick using sd card copier? But then what do I do? Copy it back to the new SD card via a windows PC and a card reader?

 

[day_trippr]

I honestly haven't even attempted that (and don't even know if the tool supports that) as I have a multitude of both SD cards and card readers and it's just so freakin' easy to plug the reader in with an SD card and let the copier rip.

When done, shut down, put the clone in the RPi, and boot up from that. If it works you know you're holding a working SD card as a backup...

Cheers!

 

[ba-brewer]

Thanks but I have no idea how to change those files? Can you give a more detailed procedure please? Where and when do I change these file names and how do I actually change them?

Do I do make a back up of the SD card from the old Pi using sd card copier to a usb stick?
Then copy the contents to my new SD card and right click the files in windows and change the names to say
/etc/hostnamenew
/etc/hostsnew

Will that work?

Let me take a look, and flesh it out a bit more.
​

Thanks to all of the excellent information provided by @day_trippr in this thread my down rev pi came up quickly and has been working fine for the last years without much intervention so some of the stuff is dusty.

Basically you make a backup via a USB SD memory stick adapter then just plug it into the SD slot of the new unit.

Names changes in the host files are needed to make VNC happy I think or to run two at the same time.

 

[day_trippr]

Am I understanding that someone is using VNC to view the tap list?
Or is it to view the actual desktop for some reason?

Cheers!

 

[ba-brewer]

VNC to view the taplist and or desktop, I removed the keyboard and mouse once it was up and running.

I think you can bring them up completely headless, but I have the keyboard and mouse and found that out later.

 

[troyp42]

I honestly haven't even attempted that (and don't even know if the tool supports that) as I have a multitude of both SD cards and card readers and it's just so freakin' easy to plug the reader in with an SD card and let the copier rip.

When done, shut down, put the clone in the RPi, and boot up from that. If it works you know you're holding a working SD card as a backup...

Cheers!

Ok cheers ill try that and see how it goes. thanks.

 

[day_trippr]

VNC to view the taplist and or desktop

Ok, if access to a desktop is needed that would make sense. Tap list - not so much: it's on a web server
Between Putty and WinSCP running on my peecee, desktop access is rarely necessary...

Cheers!

 

[ba-brewer]

@troy42,
How comfortable are you with working from the unix command line?
Do you plan to run both pi at once or just have one as a back up?

 

[day_trippr]

Can't stress this enough because I'm a hella old computer platform architecture and design engineer and have seen a hella lot wrt "backups" over the decades: just as in the days of old and unverified tape backups which were a total crapshoot as to viability when needed, an untested SD card copy is not a backup at all. Whenever you clone an SD card, boot off the clone to make sure you actually have a viable copy...

Cheers!

 

[troyp42]

@troy42,
How comfortable are you with working from the unix command line?
Do you plan to run both pi at once or just have one as a back up?

Im comfortable with it but just don't know much about it. I can ssh into my pi and perform basic commands but that's about it.

EDIT:- Ill only use the new Pi 3b+ I just brought and the old one will be scrapped.

 

[troyp42]

Are you using VNC Viewer? If so, you should see an icon (bottom left). Open that and it should give you a virtual keyboard option. Open the keyboard and select <ALT> <F4> and the browser will close. If you don't have the icon, I'm not certain what's wrong.

Im using VNC viewer on an IMAC but don't have that virtual keyboard option for some reason. I tried to find it in settings but nothing.

 

[ba-brewer]

Ok, if access to a desktop is needed that would make sense. Tap list - not so much: it's on a web server
Between Putty and WinSCP running on my peecee, desktop access is rarely necessary...

Cheers!

Not sure why I don't use a browser to look at the taplist, vnc is setup and a few clicks and it pops up. I do go through a browser window to look at the database stuff. I recall playing around with using an old tablet as a display, think sometimes the displays can be out of sync without a hard refresh. Probably just a muscle memory thing though.

I do backups and resets from the desktop and not too often, the thing just works. I may be taking it for granted not sure when I made a backup image last. Just checked the USB drive I attached for database backups that seems to still be running.

Can't stress this enough because I'm a hella old computer platform architecture and design engineer and have seen a hella lot wrt "backups" over the decades: just as in the days of old and unverified tape backups which were a total crapshoot as to viability when needed, an untested SD card copy is not a backup at all. Whenever you clone an SD card, boot off the clone to make sure you actually have a viable copy...

Cheers!

When I do make a backup of the pi image the new image is verified then becomes the working image. The old previous working image becomes the backup. Figure if there is something subtle wrong it is not hidden in the backup.

I believe it was one of your posts I used to setup a cron task to backup the MySQL database, but cant find the reference in my notes. I did a quick test to see if I could replace the database when I first set things up but have not gone back to verify the integrity of backups since.

Are you doing a MySQL database backups, if so do you do anything to verify those too?​

 

[troyp42]

Ok Im trying to update Rpints to the latest version and Im getting this error message
pi@rpints:~ $ curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rtlindne/RaspberryPints/master/util/installRaspberryPints | sudo bash

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current

Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed

100 43539 100 43539 0 0 157k 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 158k


***Script rpints_install.sh starting.***

RPints Install Detected. Do you wish to Update RPints? [Y/n]: y


Searching for default web location.


Found /var/www/html in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default*.

Installing to: /var/www/html

/home/pi /home/pi

error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:

index.php

Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge.

Aborting


Ive google this and tried git stash and a few other options but no luck

EDIT:- Ok I solved that problem but now I can't upload my brewery logo anymore and keep getting an error message?

 

[garzlok]

Im using VNC viewer on an IMAC but don't have that virtual keyboard option for some reason. I tried to find it in settings but nothing.

Ok...just downloaded VNC Viewer on my wife’s Mac. To get Chromium out of full screen mode, you need to depress the [fn] + [f11] keys. Because you’re on a Mac, you don’t need a virtual keyboard (I use the iPad App, so I need an emulated keyboard)

 

[RandR+]

(What does the 60000 represent?)

60 seconds. its in milliseconds

 

[garzlok]

60 seconds. its in milliseconds

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

In a nutshell, whenever the temp probe updates and logs a new data point, the page is supposed to refresh in a minute and display that new data point. Yes?

I know my meta tag page refresh is more of a hack job and the refresh time is dependent on when the web page is accessed, and not the best solution.

 

[ba-brewer]

Im comfortable with it but just don't know much about it. I can ssh into my pi and perform basic commands but that's about it.

EDIT:- Ill only use the new Pi 3b+ I just brought and the old one will be scrapped.

I see you are going from 3B to 3B+, I was moving the SD card between two 3Bs. I am not sure if you can move a 3B to the 3B+. Only a guess, but because you are using @RandR+ version you maybe be able to, but I really am not sure.

I know there were some OS and application dependencies with the older version of raspberrypints and 3B+ which lead me go with 3B instead as Rand's version was not yet available. Backward compatibility is easier than predicting the future.

 

[troyp42]

I see you are going from 3B to 3B+, I was moving the SD card between two 3Bs. I am not sure if you can move a 3B to the 3B+.

No Im going from a standard original B to a 3B+. Ill give it a try but if it doesnt work its not too hard to start again I suppose. especially with RandR+ awesome install procedure.

 

[troyp42]

Ok...just downloaded VNC Viewer on my wife’s Mac. To get Chromium out of full screen mode, you need to depress the [fn] + [f11] keys. Because you’re on a Mac, you don’t need a virtual keyboard (I use the iPad App, so I need an emulated keyboard)

Thanks mate, will give that a try. Its a pain having to go to the Pi and use the wireless keyboard everytime. Although it doesnt help that the Pi B is so slow.

 

[troyp42]

So I backed up the SC card to a USb stick on the pi using SD card copier. Now do I just put my new SD card in a card reader, connect it to my PC and copy the contents of the USB stick across to the new Sd card?

 

[day_trippr]

Ugh. You're making this so much more difficult than need be.
And that won't work, anyway, because it's partition-based cloning and simply "copying" the USB stick will not result in a bootable SD card.

Go back and read what I wrote. There is no need to use a USB stick, just a USB card reader with your fresh SD card...

 

[troyp42]

Ugh. You're making this so much more difficult than need be.
And that won't work, anyway, because it's partition-based cloning and simply "copying" the USB stick will not result in a bootable SD card.

Go back and read what I wrote. There is no need to use a USB stick, just a USB card reader with your fresh SD card...

I just read a how to using win32 disk imager so will give that a try. Thanks again.

 

[day_trippr]

Sigh....
No, you don't want to do that, either.

A 16GB SD card never, ever provides exactly 17179869184 bytes of usable storage. There will be tens of thousands of unusable storage locations on any SD card, and the meta data that the file system uses is aware of how much is left that's usable. So, no two SD cards of the same stated capacity will actually have exactly the same capacity.

wind32diskimager is a block-by-block disk image creator. It will create an image file based on the contents of every single byte of usable space on your original SD card - even if the file system never used some of it.

Later, if you try to load the image on an SD card with even one fewer usable byte than the original image, it will not fit, and win32diskimager will fail. So you have a nice image on your peecee but nowhere to put it if you're unlucky - and it happened to me a couple of times before I quit using the stupid thing. It's not a good solution for system backups, imo.

What is the problem with simply attaching your SD card reader - with a fresh SD card in it - directly to your RPi, and using the SD Card Copier utility the way it is intended to be used? Why are you looking to make this so much more difficult than it needs to be?

 

[troyp42]

Sigh....
No, you don't want to do that, either.

What is the problem with simply attaching your SD card reader - with a fresh SD card in it - directly to your RPi, and using the SD Card Copier utility the way it is intended to be used? Why are you looking to make this so much more difficult than it needs to be?

Well because...At first when you said SD card copier I thought you were talking about a windows version of a program with the same name. (Which is what eventually led me to Win32diskimager.) I understand your explanation of why it wont work though. I also thought you could copy to USB then copy to a new SD card on a PC. I now also understand why that wont work either thanks to your detailed explanation.

I received my Pi 3b+ today so will copy the SD card from the B to the new 3B+ SD card using the Pi utility and see how that goes. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[RandR+]

the page is supposed to refresh in a minute and display that new data point. Yes?

Yes but it is relying on when the page is accessed also but using javascript instead of meta. Eventually I should put it something that when the temp changes refresh the page right away

 

[troyp42]

What a difference the Pi 3b+ makes over the old clunky B I had. Heaps faster. I was able to clone the Sd card and use it in the new Pi without any issues. Thanks @day_trippr for the advice.

 

[day_trippr]

yay!

Yes, quad core, faster clock and double the ram makes a huge difference indeed...

Cheers!

 

[DaniFilth]

As i seemed to have fried the alamode by it's usb port (workds via pi power but not when i plug it into the alamode), i'm needing a new one but i see they're $39 and Arduiono Uno is only $16 so is there a great deal of difference? Would i need to do anything different when wiring everything up compaierd to the alamode?

 

[day_trippr]

You can find legit Uno R3 boards for $10 or even less if you look around.
If you have the room the Uno is clearly the better option wrt cost to implement.

One difference is the Uno will communicate via USB to the RPi while the Alamode used a direct 2-wire serial connection (via the IO header).
Another is the preferred choice of powering the Uno is not via the USB port but via its barrel connector using a 9VDC wall wart power supply.

Otherwise the software side is easier as well, as there's no need to install Alamode support on the RPi. A couple of configuration pointer changes to let the RPi know to listen for a USB device instead of serial and you should be ready to go...

Cheers!

 

[garzlok]

Another is the preferred choice of powering the Uno is not via the USB port but via its barrel connector using a 9VDC wall wart power supply.

Well FFS! I wonder if that's been my issue with the Pi and Arduino not wanting to connect on a regular basis and sometimes the Arduino going to ttyACM1?

All the builds I looked at and none (that I saw) had the Arduino powered through the barrel connector...off to find a 9V wall wart (I know I got one somewhere)