- Using Ultrafeeder with Grafana and Prometheus
- Introduction
- Ultrafeeder Image Tag
- Hardware requirements
- Steps to install Prometheus, Grafana, and the Grafana Dashboard
- Step 1: Make Prometheus data available for the Ultrafeeder
- Step 2: create a container stack for
prometheus
andgrafana
- Step 3: Configuring Prometheus
- Accessing Prometheus and Grafana via your browser
- Configuring data source and dashboard in Grafana
- Making the feeder's heatmap and graphs pages available in Grafana
- Advanced Configuration: support for dashboards for multiple ultrafeeder instances
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.
When using the :telegraf
tag, the image contains Telegraf, which can be used to capture metrics from readsb
if an output is enabled.
NOTE - READ CAREFULLY: As of 27 April 2023, the latest
image no longer contains Telegraf. If you want to send metrics to InfluxDB or Prometheus, please use the :telegraf
tag like this in your docker-compose.yml
file:
services:
ultrafeeder:
image: ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-adsb-ultrafeeder:telegraf
...
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
- Edit your Ultrafeeder's
docker-compose.yml
file and ensure that the following is set for theultrafeeder
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.
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=snuids-radar-panel,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
# The following variables are needed if you want to expose and embed any dashboards publicly:
- GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED=true
- GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ORG_NAME=public
- GF_SECURITY_ALLOW_EMBEDDING=true
- GF_PANELS_DISABLE_SANITIZE_HTML=true
- GF_FEATURE_TOGGLES_ENABLE=publicDashboards
# The following variables will allow you to "share/render" dashboards as PNG graphics.
# You should also enabled the renderer container below.
- GF_RENDERING_SERVER_URL=http://renderer:8081/render
- GF_RENDERING_CALLBACK_URL=http://grafana:3000/
- GF_LOG_FILTERS=rendering:debug
ports:
- 3000:3000
volumes:
- grafana:/var/lib/grafana
# The `renderer` container is needed if you want to share images of your dashboard as a graphic:
renderer:
image: grafana/grafana-image-renderer:latest
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
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_xxxxxxx
with the IP address or hostname of the machine where ultrafeeder
is running:
docker exec -it prometheus sh -c "echo -e \" - job_name: 'ultrafeeder'\n static_configs:\n - targets: ['ip_xxxxxxx:9273', 'ip_xxxxxxx:9274']\" >> /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml"
docker stop prometheus
docker compose up -d
This will add the following to the bottom of the prometheus.yml
file:
- job_name: "ultrafeeder"
static_configs:
- targets: ["ip_xxxxxxx:9273", "ip_xxxxxxx:9274"]
(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.)
If you are using the docker-dump978
container to receive UAT data (USA only!), you can add a Prometheus scraper for this also needs to be told where to look for the data from the ultrafeeder. We add a target to the prometheus configuration file to do this. Please copy and paste the following. Make sure to replace ip_xxxxxxx
with the IP address or hostname of the machine where dump978
is running:
docker exec -it prometheus sh -c "echo -e \" - job_name: 'dump978'\n static_configs:\n - targets: ['ip_xxxxxxx:9273']\" >> /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml"
docker stop prometheus
docker compose up -d
This will add the following to the bottom of the prometheus.yml
file:
- job_name: "dump978"
static_configs:
- targets: ["ip_xxxxxxx:9273"]
(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.)
You should be able to point your web browser at:
http://docker.host.ip.addr:9090/
to access theprometheus
console.http://docker.host.ip.addr:3000/
to access thegrafana
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.
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 | ultrafeeder |
URL | http://prometheus:9090/ |
Clicking Save & Test
should return a green message indicating success. The dashboard can now be imported with the following steps:
- Click the
+
icon at the top right and selectImport dashboard
- Enter
18398
into theFind and import dashboards
section and clickLoad
- Select
ultrafeeder
from the bottom drop down list underPrometheus
- Click
Import
at the bottom
At this point you should see a very nice dashboard, you can find it under General
in the Dashboards
section.
The dashboard comes preconfigured with panels that show the tar1090 heatmap and graphs1090 stats pages. These panels need to be configured to look for this data at the correct URL.
Note that these URLs need to be accessible from the browser that you use to see the Grafana dashboard - they should work if you enter them in your browser's URL box.
If you don't have access to these URLs, it'd be safe to simply delete these panels from your dashboard.
- Step a: Log into Grafana and open the Ultrafeeder dashboard that you already created
- Step b: Click on the cogwheel (
Dashboard Settings
) in the top of the screen - Step c: Choose
JSON Model
from the tabs underSettings
and click anywhere in the JSON text - Step d. Press CTRL-F (Window/Linux) or CMD-F (Mac) and click the
>
icon to show Find and Replace: - Step e: Find all (2) instances of
feeder_url
and replace them with the IP or hostname of your graphs1090 map URL (eg.adsb.local:8080
) - Step f: Click
Save changes
at the bottom of the JSON code section - Step g: Press
Save dashboard
at the top right of the screen, followed bySave
on the next screen - Step h: Press ESC to go back to your dashboard
If you have multiple feeder stations with multiple instances of ultrafeeder
, you can configure a dashboard for each of them. Here's how. In our example, we have two ultrafeeder
instance called heerlen
and trenton
. You can adjust these names in accordance with your needs.
First execute all steps above, and then continue here.
- job_name: "heerlen"
static_configs:
- targets: ["10.0.0.100:9273", "10.0.0.100:9274"]
- job_name: "trenton"
static_configs:
- targets: ["10.0.0.101:9273", "10.0.0.101:9274"]
Here, 10.0.0.100
is the IP address of the heerlen
station, and 10.0.0.101
is the IP address of the trenton
station. Yours will be different. Please keep the ports as you mapped them for Ultrafeeder in each instance. You should have a - job_name
block for each ultrafeeder instance.
You can remove the ultrafeeder
section as it will probably be a duplicate of what you just created.
Once you are done editing, restart Prometheus (docker restart prometheus
).
In the previous step, you replaced the ultrafeeder
job name by two or more new names. Now, we need to create a copy of the dashboard for each of the job names and make sure they each use the data source from the correct ultrafeeder
instance.
- Step 2a: Log into Grafana and open the Ultrafeeder dashboard that you already created
- Step 2b: Click on the cogwheel (
Dashboard Settings
) in the top of the screen - Step 2c: Choose
JSON Model
from the tabs underSettings
and click anywhere in the JSON text - Step 2d. Press CTRL-F (Window/Linux) or CMD-F (Mac) and click the
>
icon to show Find and Replace: - Step 2e: Find all instances of
job=\"ultrafeeder\"
and replace them withjob=\"heerlen\"
(or whatever name your first feeder has) - Step 2f: Click
Save changes
at the bottom of the JSON code section - Step 2g: Press
Save dashboard
at the top right of the screen, followed bySave
on the next screen - Step 2h: Press ESC to go back to your dashboard
Now your first Grafana dashboard gets its data from the your first ultrafeeder
instance.
If you followed the steps above, you should be at your updated (first) dashboard. We'll now clone and adapt it for your second ultrafeeder
instance:
- Step 3a: Press the
Share
icon (to the right of the star, next to the page title) - Step 3b: Click the
Export
tab. Switch onExport for sharing externally
- Step 3c: Press
View JSON
andCopy to Clipboard
- Step 3d:
X
out of the popup box, leave the Dashboard, and go back to theBrowse Dashboards
page. - Step 3e: Click
New
->Import
. Right-click in theImport via panel json
box, and paste your clipboard. PressLoad
- Step 3f: Change the
Name
anduid
(pick anything you want), and selectPrometheus
as data source. IMPORTANT: if you do not change theName
anduid
, it will overwrite your existing dashboard. CHANGE BOTH OF THEM! Then pressImport
- Step 3g: You will see your new dashboard, but it's still getting data from your first one. Follow steps 2b - 2g above to change the data source from
heerlen
(or whatever you named it) totrenton
(or whatever name you want to give to it)
Now you have 2 dashboards for 2 instances of Ultrafeeder!