[Note: This is long and boring and probably offensive to some. To avoid being bored and/or offended it might be best to move on to something that you’ll actually enjoy reading.]
I’ve changed my mind about upgrading my Pies. This is mainly because I’m old (75) and somewhat bored and need something challenging to engage my failing brain. (Which is why I started playing with Pies in the first place.) Note that I’m writing this for public consumption mostly to force myself to be accurate and thorough and to expose areas that I may not have thought of or considered properly.
Here’s the situation. I have four Pies. All are currently running Buster. At my home in Northeast Thailand, about 250K from Bangkok, I have one Pi 4 Model B and one Model B Plus. At my place in Cha Am, about 200K south of Bangkok, I have two Pi 4 Model Bs. The main task of all four Pies is to capture images from USB cameras every two minutes, badge those images with date, time, location and weather information and upload the images to a web host. The images are publicly available, but I’m the only one who ever looks at them. (See what I meant about boring?) Every morning, the Pies encode the previous 24 hours worth of images into time lapse videos which are also uploaded to a web host.
Here’s a recent image:
Here’s the link to a time laps video: Cha Am Web Cam
Some of the Pies perform other tasks. The Pi 4 at home hosts an ancient CanoScan LiDE 30 (not supported by Apple for years) which can be accessed by any device on the network. One Pi 4 in each location uses NUT to monitor the local UPS and send me email and Prowl messages periodically and when there is a power outage or restoration. One Pi 4 in each location grabs temperature and humidity data from local bluetooth sensors. That data is used to badge the images.
All the Pi 4s tend to lose contact with their USB cameras. A software watchdog restarts the Pi if it fails to capture an image over a set period of time. The Pi Model B Plus uses a Raspberry Pi camera module which never fails.
The two Pies in Cha Am are behind a double NAT so both are running remote port forwarding (Reverse SSH Tunnel) so that I can log in to them from home. I’m not sure how I will verify that this is working when I’m testing from home.
Of course, all of these Pies make heavy use of systemd services and timers. It will be a time consuming task over at least a week (or a month) to make sure that these are set up and configured properly. (Some things, like log pruning and/or rotation, only run once a month.)
I’m assuming that after I boot with the new SD I will be able to mount the old SD and copy important files and directories from the old to the new. Is that correct?
Bottom line is that each Pi is unique and each has many things that need to be installed, configured and tested before deploying a newly built boot SD. I only visit the Cha Am location for a few days each month and don’t want to spend my time there in front of a keyboard and screen, so I need to get those new boot SDs fully tested before I visit again. (I may never find the time to upgrade those machines.) I decided I needed to buy a new Pi and USB camera in order to create and fully test three new boot SD cards. I still don’t know what to do with the Model B Plus. Maybe I’ll just replace it with the new Pi. I don’t know if the existing Pi camera will work with the Model 4.
Here’s the minor damage. The Pi, power supply and USB camera have arrived. Still waiting on the SD card.
I’ve changed my mind about upgrading my Pies. This is mainly because I’m old (75) and somewhat bored and need something challenging to engage my failing brain. (Which is why I started playing with Pies in the first place.) Note that I’m writing this for public consumption mostly to force myself to be accurate and thorough and to expose areas that I may not have thought of or considered properly.
Here’s the situation. I have four Pies. All are currently running Buster. At my home in Northeast Thailand, about 250K from Bangkok, I have one Pi 4 Model B and one Model B Plus. At my place in Cha Am, about 200K south of Bangkok, I have two Pi 4 Model Bs. The main task of all four Pies is to capture images from USB cameras every two minutes, badge those images with date, time, location and weather information and upload the images to a web host. The images are publicly available, but I’m the only one who ever looks at them. (See what I meant about boring?) Every morning, the Pies encode the previous 24 hours worth of images into time lapse videos which are also uploaded to a web host.
Here’s a recent image:
- Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Some of the Pies perform other tasks. The Pi 4 at home hosts an ancient CanoScan LiDE 30 (not supported by Apple for years) which can be accessed by any device on the network. One Pi 4 in each location uses NUT to monitor the local UPS and send me email and Prowl messages periodically and when there is a power outage or restoration. One Pi 4 in each location grabs temperature and humidity data from local bluetooth sensors. That data is used to badge the images.
All the Pi 4s tend to lose contact with their USB cameras. A software watchdog restarts the Pi if it fails to capture an image over a set period of time. The Pi Model B Plus uses a Raspberry Pi camera module which never fails.
The two Pies in Cha Am are behind a double NAT so both are running remote port forwarding (Reverse SSH Tunnel) so that I can log in to them from home. I’m not sure how I will verify that this is working when I’m testing from home.
Of course, all of these Pies make heavy use of systemd services and timers. It will be a time consuming task over at least a week (or a month) to make sure that these are set up and configured properly. (Some things, like log pruning and/or rotation, only run once a month.)
I’m assuming that after I boot with the new SD I will be able to mount the old SD and copy important files and directories from the old to the new. Is that correct?
Bottom line is that each Pi is unique and each has many things that need to be installed, configured and tested before deploying a newly built boot SD. I only visit the Cha Am location for a few days each month and don’t want to spend my time there in front of a keyboard and screen, so I need to get those new boot SDs fully tested before I visit again. (I may never find the time to upgrade those machines.) I decided I needed to buy a new Pi and USB camera in order to create and fully test three new boot SD cards. I still don’t know what to do with the Model B Plus. Maybe I’ll just replace it with the new Pi. I don’t know if the existing Pi camera will work with the Model 4.
Here’s the minor damage. The Pi, power supply and USB camera have arrived. Still waiting on the SD card.
- Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Statistics: Posted by Ratsima — Tue Oct 29, 2024 8:57 am