Archive: emonSD-07Nov16 RELEASE :tada:

Dave · 2016-11-07T16:25:55.530Z

Hi Glyn
Can the emonpi be updated just with using the update button or do you have to download a new image?

Kind Regards
Dave

Andy_Taylor · 2016-11-07T16:36:34.634Z

Downloading at the moment, I’ll see if I can do anything with the 1.5GB download size…

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-07T17:03:57.558Z

You will get all the important security updates and Emoncms updates by running:

Admin > emonpiupdate in local Emoncms and upgrading Debian packages

rpi-rw
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 
sudo reboot

When given the option choose to keep the version of php.ini currently installed

Jon · 2016-11-07T17:30:14.052Z

glyn.hudson:

sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get upgrade

the 2nd command line is the same command twice… should be this?

rpi-rw
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

Andy_Taylor · 2016-11-07T18:18:07.033Z

glyn.hudson:

rpi-rw
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

changes to the corrected lines…

Andy_Taylor · 2016-11-07T18:24:14.295Z

Andy_Taylor:

Downloading at the moment, I’ll see if I can do anything with the 1.5GB download size…

Crushed it down to an 825MB download…
825MB download version
MD5: 3961e96cf2e1ab46d750d0a0cae72a2e emonSD-07Nov16.zip
MD5: cf8537e90ffd98ffb5838fbe3c878d4d emonSD-07Nov16.img

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-10T11:50:01.944Z

Did you try and boot the image? Does your version boot ok?

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-10T11:50:55.108Z

Jon:

the 2nd command line is the same command twice… should be this?

Yes, correct. Update then Upgrade. I’ve fixed my post above

Andy_Taylor · 2016-11-11T12:35:21.528Z

Yes and yes, I’m planning to write some full instructions on how I manage to compress the image so far, its not that complex, but there are a few steps to it.

I’ll re-download your version and make up a full how to with all the steps in it, plus the commands etc, that should help you (or anyone else) understand how to really pull the size down prior to putting images up for download.

Jon · 2016-11-11T16:24:09.007Z

Glyn - I started my testing last night but quickly found this was a 4GB image instead of the 8GB image discussed here: Increase emonSD pre-built SD card to 8GB min

I had been writing (trying to write?) a migration script that captures the items not grabbed by the backup/export script. And I quickly ran out of space on the /data directory:

/dev/mmcblk0p3  194M   37M  147M  21% /home/pi/data

Is it possible to create the 8GB image instead?

Jon · 2016-11-11T18:39:17.327Z

I booted the emonPi with the beta 4GB image, let it do the first boot emonPi update, and then did the expand for an 8GB card (thank you Paul!):

sudo emonSDexpand

After the emonPi reboot I saw this on the display:

ERROR: MQTT
Not connected

It is easily corrected with:

sudo service emonPiLCD restart

I tried a sudo reboot and a paperclip shutdown. Sometimes it boots fine and other times I get the above mqtt display error.

Jon · 2016-11-11T18:58:13.698Z

for the sudo raspi-config area - Can the en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 be clicked on by default?

Screen Shot 2016-11-11 at 12.51.43 PM.png1394×956 88.7 KB

Screen Shot 2016-11-11 at 1.00.18 PM.png1394×956 82 KB

Jon · 2016-11-11T19:38:49.492Z

Can the update-nodejs-and-nodered command be run as part of the build?

Updates:

Node-RED version: v0.15.2 (I think the Nov build already had v0.15.2)
node.js version: v4.6.2 (from version 0.10.x)
npm version: v2.15.11 (from version 1.4.x)

PS - my apologies for the rapid fire posts!

Jon · 2016-11-11T21:08:37.972Z

This error is in the first boot emonPi Update:

Screen Shot 2016-11-11 at 3.06.28 PM.png1194×568 104 KB

(I do not have a huawei device)

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-14T20:39:40.852Z

Andy_Taylor:

Crushed it down to an 825MB download…
825MB download version
MD5: 3961e96cf2e1ab46d750d0a0cae72a2e emonSD-07Nov16.zip
MD5: cf8537e90ffd98ffb5838fbe3c878d4d emonSD-07Nov16.img

Hi @Andy_Taylor, just tested your packed down version. It seems to work great for me. It would be interesting to hear what you did to it to shrink it down!

Hi @Jon , thanks a lot for your testing. Sorry for the delay in getting back I’ve been away.

Jon:

Glyn - I started my testing last night but quickly found this was a 4GB image instead of the 8GB image discussed here: Increase emonSD pre-built SD card to 8GB min

As mentioned in the change log for the emonSD 07Nov16, I decided to keep the image 4GB. This was party due to @Andy_Taylor 's space optimisations. The image can be expanded to fill 8GB with sudo emonSDexpand.

Jon:

After the emonPi reboot I saw this on the display:

ERROR: MQTT
Not connected

Interesting, did the message say forever or if you left it for 5min or so would MQTT connect?

Jon:

for the sudo raspi-config area - Can the en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 be clicked on by default?

What benefit would this have?

Jon:

Can the update-nodejs-and-nodered command be run as part of the build?

Nodejs and nodered should be updated via apt for the stable versions. IMO I would prefer to stick to the stable builds released via apt and the Debian packages. Keen users can always update manually if desired.

Jon:

This error is in the first boot emonPi Update:

Thanks for letting me know, however this is not a big issue since there have been no changes to the huawei repo, however I have fixed the permission error during the update script:

github.com/openenergymonitor/emonpi

fix permissions

committed 08:16PM - 14 Nov 16 UTC

glynhudson

+1 -0

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-14T23:16:43.442Z

Download file has been updated to @Andy_Taylor compressed 825MB image:

https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emonpi/wiki/emonSD-pre-built-SD-card-Download-&-Change-Log#emonsd-07nov16

Jon · 2016-11-15T04:42:08.084Z

glyn.hudson:

Interesting, did the message say forever or if you left it for 5min or so would MQTT connect?

small forever - the ERROR: MQTT message was there for a few hours.

glyn.hudson:

What benefit would this [en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 clicked on] have?

I am assuming this is a locales configuration related to the US:

Screen Shot 2016-11-14 at 10.17.12 PM.png1658×310 165 KB

I believe this is something like the format of mm/dd/yyyy versus dd/mm/yyyy.

Is this a bad?!? Should I not be picking the US locales?

glyn.hudson:

Nodejs and nodered should be updated via apt for the stable versions. IMO I would prefer to stick to the stable builds released via apt and the Debian packages. Keen users can always update manually if desired.

Per the Node-RED website: “We recommend the use of node.js LTS.”

Screen Shot 2016-11-14 at 10.28.52 PM.png1614×844 82.5 KB

NodeJS v0.10 does not work with some nodes (like the Nest node: node-red-contrib-nest v0.1.9)

dweston · 2016-11-15T05:56:23.514Z

I’m a rank newbie with emon. By way of feedback though; I managed to download and build the emonSD-07Nov16 BETA SD card. It ran flawlessly through the install, partition expansion and initial registration of Emoncms 9.7.7 | 2016.10.29.

Architecture:          armv7l
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
Model name:            ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)

glyn.hudson · 2016-11-15T15:29:53.859Z

Jon:

small forever - the ERROR: MQTT message was there for a few hours.

Mmm ok, I’ll have to do some more testing. I have been unable to re-create this.

Jon:

I believe this is something like the format of mm/dd/yyyy versus dd/mm/yyyy.

Is this a bad?!? Should I not be picking the US locales?

We don’t all life in the US. Personally, I much prefer the European dates dd/mm/yyy. I vote to stick with the default local and let users change if they prefer. Do you know if the Pi does any autodetection of IP location to infer NTP time timezone? I don’t think it does. When we power up a new Pi with the pre built SD card here in the UK it gets the correct time from NTP. Do you know what happens in the US? Is it essential for you to set the timezone to make Emoncms work? What happens if you don’t set the timezone? / locale?

Jon:

Per the Node-RED website: “We recommend the use of node.js LTS.”

Ok, good point. However, node-RED does work fine (and is proven stable) with the flows that we use with the version of node currently installed. I have just installed the LTS version of node so I can test. However, it was a hefty 50Mb install. I’m not sure it here is much beneft to force this on all users.

Update: installing nodejs V6.9.1 has broken my nodered :-(. I get error

nodered : Depends: nodejs-legacy (>= 0.10)

pb66 · 2016-11-15T16:26:55.807Z

glyn.hudson:

Do you know if the Pi does any autodetection of IP location to infer NTP time timezone? I don’t think it does. When we power up a new Pi with the pre built SD card here in the UK it gets the correct time from NTP

No it doesn’t change the timezone by IP, the default Raspbian OS image will be using “UTC” ie timezone not set. This will appear correct for UK users now until spring when BST kicks in as GMT is the same as UTC. if you use the date command it will tell you the timezone. Below is a stock Raspbian image before and after setting the timezone to “Europe/London” via raspi-config.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ date
Tue 15 Nov 16:10:29 UTC 2016

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo raspi-config
Current default time zone: 'Europe/London'
Local time is now:      Tue Nov 15 16:10:42 GMT 2016.
Universal Time is now:  Tue Nov 15 16:10:42 UTC 2016.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ date
Tue 15 Nov 16:10:49 GMT 2016

Both emonhub and emoncms use UTC for timestamping data so setting the timezone should make no difference to collecting and persisting energy data (providing the UTC time is correct(ed) by NTP), the emoncms user timezone set in emoncms for the correct midnight and DST will allow data be displayed correctly etc. However the Pi’s logs including emonhub.log (not so sure about emoncms) will all be in local time according to the timezone, so they can be misleading unless the timezone is set or it is understood all logs are in UTC times.

Setting the locale would probably change the logfiles date/time formating too so there maybe some benefit for those used to the US date format, but the majority of the benefit of setting “locale” will be for “Desktop apps” which are absent from the emonSD.

EDIT - Although I can see the image creation guide mentions “setting internationalization”, I couldn’t find any reference to setting the Pi’s timezone in the “users guide” but that could well be that I was looking in the wrong place. It would be worth while users setting the timezone at least to avoid confusion with logs down the line (especially in the summer “DST” months)