Ansible Automation to automatically provision Raspberry Pi as Blinkstick LED Visualizer devices.
Primary use case is to provision a single transmit node and numerous receive nodes quickly. Although can be used for a default install. The Application repo includes an install script.
Assuming a virgin Raspberry Pi running Raspios Buster Lite. Boot and run.
As pi user
sudo raspi-config
Interfacing Options -> SSH -> Enable "yes"
Be sure to set this up before configuring the Wifi.
In my case, I'm in the United State. Raspberry Pi defaults to U.K. locale. Obviously, tailor to your region locale.
- Localisation options ->
- Change Locale -> en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 -> en_US.UTF-8
- Change Time Zone -> US -> Region (e.g. Mountain)
- Change Keyboard Layout -> Generic 101-key PC or Generic 104-key PC (with Windows key) -> Other -> English (US) -> English (US) top choice -> The default for the keyboard layout -> No compose key
If you would desire wireless connectivity. Be sure to setup localisation options first (otherwise you may mistype password for wifi).
Network Options -> Wireless LAN -> US United State (or your country) -> SSID (2.4ghz only without dongle) -> Password
sudo apt install -y python3 python3-pip ssh
On the machine you will be running Ansible from create an SSH Public/Private key pair if you haven't already.
cd ~/.ssh/
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
Do not create with password (unless you like typing the password every time).
Copy the public key
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Back on the Raspberry pi, add the public key to authorized_keys (as pi user)
mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Paste the public key you copied from the cat earlier command.
vi ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Type the following to grab the ip address of the Raspberry Pi
ifconfig
Note the IP address down, as it will be used for Ansible inventory shortly.
Reference secrets.yml.example
cp secrets.yml.example secrets.yml
Modify the ansible_sudo_pass variable if using non-default password.
vi secrets.yml
Encrypt the file with a password.
ansible-vault encrypt secrets.yml
Your other choice is to setup a password file and use that instead, which won't prompt.
Create a password file, so you won't be prompted every time you run Ansible automation.
sudo mkdir /secrets
touch /secrets/.vaultpw
chown -R youruser:youruser /secrets
chmod -R 600 /secrets
If you don't like this location, place it elsewhere. But, we be sure to update the Makefile VAULTPW variable with the new location (optional).
vi Makefile
Modify variables in ./group_vars/all.yml to your liking.
Modify ./inventory to point to the targeted hosts you noted earlier.
Install blinkstick led visualizer script (could take a long time on a virgin install). Defaults to network mode.
make bsv
Install blinkstick LED Control App (same deal, modify inventory prior, as bsvapp targets transmit nodes). Default to network mode.
make bsvapp
If you get error, you may need to re-run the automation. For some reason apt packages sometimes borks. If it still fails, on the node manually run
apt -y update
apt -y upgrade
apt -y dist-upgrade
apt -y autoremove
Includes startup script, which launches the application at boot (if told to do so - set in ./group_vars/all.yml). Set,
install_as_startup_service: True
This will install an update cronjob that runs at 5:05AM Mountain, provided an update exists. Mind you the defaults of the code will override any customizations (thus, fork if you want to maintain those customizations).
The update script will determine what type of node it is (transmit, receive, django app) and download the latest Ansible (to insure dependencies are met) and code base.
The method is via Makefile bsv_local (for script only / local install) or bsvapp_local (for django app / local install). Note: Local install modifies the original code base. Thus, a fresh clone is required for non-local installs.