3.3 Setup genmon software

This page describes how to setup your Pi and Genmon. This setup utilizes a setup script. The instructions, if you want to setup your system manually are located here.

The first step is to setup your Raspberry Pi to enable the serial port. This is covered in this wiki page

The next step is to download the genmon project files to your Raspberry Pi. The easiest way to do this is to use the "git" program. Most Raspberry Pi distributions include the git program (except Debian Lite). If your distribution does not include git then type:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install git

It is also recommended to update your system software first with the following commands:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then reboot your pi.

Once git is installed on your system, make sure you are in the home directory of the user you are logged in as, for example for the user named pi it would be the /home/pi directory, then type:

 git clone https://github.com/jgyates/genmon.git

The above command will make a directory in /home/pi named genmon and put the project files in this directory.

To validate your serial port is working properly, use the serialtest.py program in this repository (in OtherApps directory). The software wiki page describes the usage of serialtest.py.

Next, run the genmonmaint.sh script to install the needed libraries. You can do this with the following command:

 cd genmon
 bash ./genmonmaint.sh -i

This script requires internet access and will take a few minutes to download the needed libraries. Once the libraries are installed the script will prompt you if you would like to run genmon on boot. If you select yes, then your crontab script will be modified to run genmon every time the system restarts. You will also be prompted if you want to copy the configuration files to the /etc directory. You can copy them manually if you like, but the software requires the configuration files to be in the /etc directory. If you want to edit the configuration files you can use an editor like nano and you will need to use root permissions (i.e. sudo nano /etc/genmon.conf). You can also edit the configuration via the web interface. The install is designed to be run again if you ever need to so don't worry about multiple crontab entries or multiple copies of libraries since the script will detect these events. The install script will also optionally setup the raspberry pi built in serial port. Note you will still need the TTL to RS-232 level converter once the serial port is setup.

Now test the serial connection with serialtest.py to make sure it works. For the test make sure to loopback tx to rx in your cable.

If the serial test passed you can power down your pi.Then connect your pi to your generator with your cable.

Once the system is connected and powered up you can access the web interface at http://IPaddressOfYouPi:8000. From there you can further modify your settings.