SkyPi

Summary

SkyPi is a simple relay written in Python which allows people running FlightAware's PiAware to have the same internally accessible web page be externally accessible without opening any firewall ports. This is accomplished by:

1. Cloning FlightAware's dump1090 GitHub project public_html directory to an externally accessible website

2. SFTP-ing the necessary JSON files to the needed directory on the aforementioned externally accessible website over SSH

Description

Prerequisites

Before you get started, you will need the following already setup:

1. A Raspberry Pi configured with FlightAware's PiAware (directions)
2. An externally accessible website
3. Key-Based SSH authentication setup for the following:
   • Local Computer -> Raspberry Pi
   • Local Computer -> External Host
   • Raspberry Pi -> External Host

Quick Start

1. Open the local_variables.sh file, and modify the values as needed
2. Run ./install.sh install and follow the prompts
3. Profit. Everything should be configured and running as expected.

Configuration

Configuration of SkyPi running on your Raspberry Pi is done through the /etc/skypi/config.local.ini file.

Sane defaults are chosen, but if you would like to override them, please feel free to!

Manpage

pi@skypi:~/skypi/bin$ ./skypi.pyz --help
Usage: skypi.pyz [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -s, --sleep-duration INTEGER    The maximum duration between data sending.
                                  Anything 5 or above may yield 'problem'
                                  notifications for stale data. Default: 4
  --piaware-host TEXT             The hostname of the PiAware server running
                                  dump1090-fa; if not set, we assume dump1090
                                  is running locally, and act accordingly.
  --piaware-data-location PATH    The local path of dump1090-fa output.
                                  Default: /run/dump1090-fa/
  -h, --remote-host TEXT          The remote host where we want to send the
                                  dump1090-fa files.  [required]
  -u, --remote-user TEXT          The remote user for connecting to the remote
                                  host.  [required]
  -k, --remote-key PATH           The SSH key of the remote user used when
                                  connecting to the remote host.  [required]
  -p, --remote-path PATH          The remote path in which to place the files
                                  from dump1090-fa.  [required]
  -d, --skip-remote-dir-creation  If set, we will skip attempting to create
                                  the remote directory upon initialization.
  -r, --reconnect-every INTEGER   The number of times to send data prior to
                                  reestablishing the ssh connection. Default:
                                  300
  -i, --update-history-every INTEGER
                                  The number of iterations between history
                                  updates (history updates take a while).
                                  Default: 240
  --log-level [CRITICAL|ERROR|WARN|INFO|DEBUG]
                                  The log level to use; valid options are:
                                  [CRITICAL, ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG]
                                  Default: INFO
  -help, --help                   Show this message and exit.
pi@skypi:~/skypi/bin$

Developing / Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Below are some quick steps for getting started developing.

Getting Started (for development)

1. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/ChrisCarini/skypi.git

2. Create the virtual environment and activate

   python3.7 -m venv venv
   source ./venv/bin/activate

3. Install the needed dependencies

   pip install -r ./requirements.txt

4. Develop!

5. Once you have made your desired changes, you can test the full cycle by running the installation script from your local development machine.

   ./install.sh install

   (Note: This will (a) prepare the external host, (b) install Python 3.7 on the Raspberry Pi, and (c) prepare the Raspberry Pi. After executing this successfully, you should have a fully working SkyPi setup and running.)

Notes

You need to ensure the following packages are installed on your raspberry pi in order to properly build the shiv.

# Let's update
sudo apt-get update -y

# Needed to compile Python 3.7 - ideally we can remove this once there is a built/distributed version as part of Raspbian
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential tk-dev libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev libreadline6-dev libdb5.3-dev \
                        libgdbm-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev libbz2-dev libexpat1-dev liblzma-dev zlib1g-dev libffi-dev

# Needed for shiv
sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev

# Needed for python3 virtualenv
sudo apt-get install python3-venv