Using Ultrafeeder with Grafana and Prometheus

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.

Hardware requirements

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

Step 1: Make Prometheus data available for the Ultrafeeder

Edit your Ultrafeeder's docker-compose.yml file and ensure that the following is set for the ultrafeeder service:

    environment:
      - PROMETHEUS_ENABLE=true
      - TAR1090_ENABLE_AC_DB=true
    ports:
      - 9273-9274:9273-9274

Now recreate the ultrafeeder container (docker-compose up -d ultrafeeder) and it will generate Prometheus data.

Step 2: create a container stack for `prometheus` and `grafana`

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
    tty: true
    # uncomment the following section and set the variables if you are exposing Grafana to the internet behind a rev web proxy:
    environment:
    # windrose panel plugin is needed for polar plots:
      - GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=fatcloud-windrose-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

Step 3: Configuring Prometheus

Prometheus needs to be told where to look for the data from the ultrafeeder. We will create a target prometheus configuration file that does this, please copy and paste the following. Make sure to replace ip_of_ultrafeeder_machine with the IP address or hostname of the machine where ultrafeeder is running:

docker exec -it prometheus sh -c "echo -e \"  - job_name: 'readsb'\n    static_configs:\n      - targets: ['ip_of_ultrafeeder_machine:9273', 'ip_of_ultrafeeder_machine:9274']\" >> /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml"
docker stop prometheus
docker compose up -d

(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.)

Accessing Prometheus and Grafana via your browser

You should be able to point your web browser at:

http://docker.host.ip.addr:9090/ to access the prometheus console.
http://docker.host.ip.addr:3000/ to access the grafana 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 your docker host.

Configuring data source and dashboard in Grafana

After you have logged into the grafana console the following manual steps are required to connect to prometheus as the data source

Click Add your first 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	readsb
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 18398 into the Import via grafana.com section and click Load
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.

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