The Power of Raspberry Pi: over reaching and hitting the wall

For background, see the previous post here. At this point, the Raspberry Pi (RPI) has proven itself aboard Schooner Mahdee by reliably logging data from our Airmar weather station plus other boat data and displaying that data on an HDMI monitor, as well as monitoring that data and sounding alarms as required. We built in the capability for more than one computer to read the Airmar weather/boat data from the RPI network port at the same time. To realize that potential, we needed a Wifi access point. A USB Wifi dongle, supporting the access point protocol, with the right software (in our case HostAPD) turned the RPI into an access point for all Mahdee users. A good access point provides some basic network services that were set up on the RPI–such as IP address assignment DHCP server–and is a domain name server (we used Bind9 server) for all the Wifi-connected computers aboard the boat.

Raspberry Pi and Cat

Further adding to the roles for the RPI, I wanted to be able to read email without turning on any other computer, so we needed to set up internet access on the RPI. We set up the RPI to use either a Sprint phone with a data tethering plan using PPP or our Verizon Wifi hotspot using a second USB Wifi dongle. Since Brenda’s Windows 8 machine can’t tether directly to the Sprint phone, we decided to make the RPI Mahdee’s internet gateway that can be switched between either Sprint or Verizon. That also meant a better firewall setup for the RPI.

The RPI doesn’t have a hardware clock (by design it would rely on an internet connection to set the time on boot), so when we rebooted the RPI, sans-internet, in the middle of nowhere in Alaska, the data logger had the wrong time stamps. To fix that, we setup a USB puck GPS as a time source for the RPI. This meant also running a GPS position server on the RPI which is then available on a network port of the RPI for other computers aboard Mahdee. The fast high resolution GPS data was also setup to be used by a Python anchor watch and position alarm which I’d previously written for the Nokia N810. The sound system on the RPI is not very good nor very loud even with our USB powered amplified speakers.  For the alarms we setup a piezo-electric buzzer which is energized by a RPI GPIO port so that we can hear alarms anywhere aboard the boat. The RPI also uses GPS time stamps to provide a network time basis for other computers aboard.

With the 2TB Passport hard drive attached to the RPI, it only made sense to put a copy of our public file archive on it and thereby make it available to us 24-7. The public file archive includes repair manuals in PDF form for most boat systems (nice to have in an emergency), all of our photos as well as digital books and magazines (nice for passage entertainment). This nicety meant putting PDF and e-book readers on the RPI. Then, to enable access to those files from Windows computers, we setup a Samba server which also requires a network time server. Fortunately we already had the GPS-based network time server on the RPI.

To enable us to read our email when there is no internet connection available, we setup the RPI with OfflineIMAP to sync mail from our main email server (an off-boat/shore-based virtual private server) whenever we have internet access. I read email using Mutt which can run in a terminal on the RPI. Brenda likes to access email using SquirrelMail webmail via her computer’s web browser, so we added an Apache2 web server to the RPI along with Squirrel Mail and an IMAP server.

In among the public archive data is our music collection, so we setup RPI as a network music player. On those long passages, we thought it would be nice to listen to music, but this is where things start to break down. The poor, now very overloaded, RPI just couldn’t make the music sound even decent. I also setup my Bluetooth stereo headset on RPI, but that was even worse than listening to broken up music through the speakers.

Many boaters want their RPI to run a navigation program like OpenCPN. I had managed to compile a version of OpenCPN on our first RPI, but running OpenCPN required all the resources of the RPI and I was not willing to forego all the other important roles our RPI was needed for–simply to use OpenCPN as a backup chart plotter.  Our real chart plotter is used to display radar and chart data including charts for other countries without free official charts (like Canada). Not needing to run OpenCPN helped a little with our overloaded RPI situation.

From the RPI GUI interface, I found web browsing to be very slow and unproductive. I could get email and read it using Mutt just fine, but there was other trouble lurking. Brenda informed me that basic web access from her computer through the RPI Wifi access point was way too slow. I tried it using my main computer and had trouble too. I had had hopes–fantasies perhaps–that RPI would also run a contact and calendar web service. Most people would just use Google for this, but we are often not near internet access and besides, who really wants to trust the big guys with all of your sensitive contacts and scheduling. But, it was not to be–at least not yet.  Stay tuned for the next installment in this series of posts about the RPI and how we turned the corner towards success.

The Power of Raspberry Pi: the blissful beginning

When we first heard about the Raspberry Pi (RPI) credit-card sized computer we thought that it might meet the goal of a low energy usage (just over 1 Watt) server on Mahdee that ran 24-7 and performed some essential functions. Those functions included logging, serving and displaying boat and weather data, as well as monitoring that data and sounding alarms when something isn’t right.  Our first RPI took many months to arrive because of demand exceeding supply in 2013 and the RPI coincidentally arrived at the marina office on Pi day (March 14).  It was late afternoon when I excitedly went to the office to take delivery (possibly just before 1600 and presaging a near obsession with this delicious sounding device).

Screencast of weather program on Raspberry Pi

The first RPI had only 256MB of memory and saw little use before we broke the SD socket. So it was replaced by the upgraded RPI with 512MB memory. With twice the memory of the original RPI and an over-clock ability, I was full of anticipation about what this improved, yet still power sipping lilliputian computer was capable of.  In hind sight, there was much to learn about the RPI.  This is the first in a series of blog posts describing how Raspberry Pi’s are used, and how their use has evolved aboard Schooner Mahdee. For the impatient and those who prefer doing rather than reading, the latest version 2 of the Raspberry Pi (RPI-2) can be purchased here and by following that link, you get a great price and can help to support the Raspberry Pi Foundation mission as well as this site.

Weather data on Mahdee is provided by our mast-top Airmar PB-100 weather station. The Airmar PB-100 provides relative and absolute wind direction and speed, barometric pressure, temperature, humidity and dew point, as well as boat magnetic heading, pitch angle and roll angle, GPS position, GPS course and GPS speed. The Airmar data is multiplexed with some boat data such as depth-sounder, water temperature and boat speed through the water before being sent via USB to the RPI. In order for the RPI to decode the Airmar data, the ftdi_sio kernel module must be loaded. And the crucial trick after loading that module, is to execute this special command:

echo 0403 d9a8 > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/ftdi_sio/new_id

Without that change the data is not a readable serial port stream. With that change, the Airmar data is readable. We wrote a script to capture the USB serial data, time stamp each line with computer time and save it to a file. Initially, that data was saved on the RPI SD card which the RPI uses like a hard disk and also has the operating system and programs on it. SD cards have a fixed number of writes in their life, and after about a year, the limit was achieved and the SD card failed. So, we got a new SD card for the operating system and programs and a Passport USB-2 hard drive to hold data and thus preserve the life of the SD card.

When the weather and boat data are being saved, the data are forked and also sent to a serial-to-network converter that provides a pseudo serial port that is available on a network port of the RPI. We then wrote a QT-based program to connect to that port, read the data and display it on the RPI’s HDMI monitor. The QT program requires a GUI on the RPI and has many alarms including a position/anchor alarm, as well as a wind speed alarm. We cross-compiled the QT program to make different executables that run on the various computer architectures we have on Mahdee. An early version of that program was published on my GIT account, but if anyone wants a copy, please let me know so that I can update the version on my GIT account.

In the first versions of the QT program, we discovered that the displayed data was lagging further and further behind because the QT program could not always keep up with the Airmar data feed. This defect became painfully obvious during three sequential southerly gales while sailing north in March off the Oregon coast on our way to Alaska and striving to not unintentionally gibe–the displayed wind gust directions were just not matching the observed effects. It was pitch dark and freezing cold out in the cockpit with boarding seas and driving rain and we really, really wanted to steer from inside Mahdee’s warm, sheltered chart house and that required a good weather display with real-time information. We fixed that problem (later while recovering in a marina in Alaska) by allowing data to be dropped in the QT program so that the displayed data is the most recent data. If we want to analyze all data, we can then retroactively parse the saved file.

Sometimes the data capture would fail which would freeze the data displayed by the QT program. This required us to first notice the data freeze and then find the source of the problem.  We immediately noticed a data freeze when we were hit by a williwaw in a fjord in BC Canada and the displayed wind speed froze at only 56 knots even though conditions and our control of Mahdee were rapidly deteriorating. At the white-out stage, we knew something was wrong with the display.  The fix was usually to manually restart the data capture program, but there were often long gaps with no saved data because we didn’t notice the failure right away (or alternatively we were too busy fighting to control Mahdee in a williwaw). This was a big problem if we were counting on the RPI to sound an alarm–e.g. if the anchor came unset while we were asleep. So we wrote a Cron script to periodically check for file updates and if too much time passes without an update, a script automatically runs to restart the data stream. Alternatively if the external Passport USB drive becomes unavailable, the logger will automatically switch over and use the SD card for data storage. The automatic scripts greatly improved the reliability of our weather and boat data and improved confidence that the alarms will sound when they should. At this point, the RPI became a key piece of safety equipment aboard Mahdee.

Of course, we want the RPI to do more and in the next post we will discuss our experiences loading up (overloading?) the RPI.

Next In Line…Mote

So I thought Buttercup only had the car Wesley and the boat Mahdee as main competition for things that “we-must-pay-attention-to-and-fix.”  Wrong, bring Mote, the Shuttle computer we purchased in February, into the picture.  Yesterday, the solid state drive (of course the one that we use for the main OS, VMWare, all the installed programs, and anything else of importance) decided it had seen enough action and wasn’t going to take our abuse any longer.  So, that brought both David’s and my work to a halt.  We both use the computer at the same time.  Here’s a link to the discussions about our shared computer on our other blog.  I suppose the important background discussion is this one.  We do have the computer on 24/7 and it is hard at work running programs even when we’re not–so it is not surprising that maybe something gave way.

Last night David worked into the wee hours to get the computer back up and running using the data hard drive while I investigated BIOS updates that might be needed and whether that was the problem.  Today, we went over to our favorite computer store to pick up a USB-to-SATA Hard Drive Adapter so we can test the 2.5″ 128 GB Crucial solid state drive on another computer (the laptop) or via another path on Mote.  I’m hopeful that it is simply the (still under warranty) hard drive or the 2.5″ to 3.5″ adaptor we use–I’d hate to think it’s the SATA hard drive controller.  Though the motherboard and computer are also still under warranty, it would be a big hassle to deal with replacing Mote.

Today, for David, is surprisingly consumed with getting the mirror of the solid state drive (with all our databases and programs) up and running on the larger 2TB “data” drive in the computer.  So–no pictures of Buttercup fuel lines yet.  I suspect that will be delayed until the weekend.

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