RuuviTag AWS CloudWatch dashboard using AWS IoT and Raspberry Pi Zero W

markusl · December 25, 2020, 11:49am

Building a RuuviTag weather monitoring dashboard using AWS IoT

Use case

Setting up a remote-readable dashboard for RuuviTag sensors using off-the-self tools as much as possible.

In the end, you will have the following kind of dashboard for displaying data. You can also add multiple sensors if needed.

What you’ll need for this

An AWS account https://console.aws.amazon.com
A RuuviTag device
A Raspberry Zero W (or a larger one) https://raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w

Architecture

Setup

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Follow the headless setup instructions from the Raspberry Pi site.

Note: You might want to login using SSH keys instead of the default username/password combo.

Setup example repository to Raspberry Pi device

git clone https://github.com/markusl/ruuvitag-aws-iot-monitoring.git
Install the prerequisites:

cd app-old/
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev
npm install

Install NodeJs using the node-install.sh script (there are no official NodeJs binaries for ARMv6).

Configure AWS IoT device

Open awsiot/bin/awsiot.ts and configure the relevant RuuviTag id’s for AWS IoT event rules.

Then deploy the AWS IoT cloud infrastructure:

cd awsiot/
# Install AWS CDK command line
npm i -g aws-cdk
# Install libraries
npm install
# Deploy the IoT device configuration
cdk deploy AwsIotStack
# Deploy the CloudWatch dashboard
cdk deploy AwsIotDashboardStack

Configure and run the application

Go to AWS Secrets Manager in the AWS Console and look for RaspberryPiZeroW-Credentials.

image1268×122 8.34 KB
Use the Retrieve Secret Value button to get certificatePem, privateKey, and publicKey.
Configure proper keys under keys.
Update proper endpoint and client id in start-monitoring.sh

Run the application:

sudo apt-get install screen
screen app-old/start-monitoring.sh

Configure the AWS CloudWatch dashboard for sharing

In AWS Console, go to CloudWatch -> Dashboards to configure sharing.

Enjoy!

That’s it, enjoy

Costs for AWS Usage

With just one device, the AWS IoT usage is almost free. Note that you can utilize the 12-month free trial before charges start applying.

Random notes / lessons learned

NodeJs

The idea was to use the most minimalistic version of Raspberry Pi for synchronizing the data from BLE to AWS IoT. As I had no previous experiences with the devices, I didn’t know they had different processor architectures: ARMv6 in Raspberry Pi Zero models and ARMv8 in RPi3 and newer.

The ARMv6 device comes with a NodeJs 10, and installing NodeJs 14 turned out to be slightly complicated but worked with instructions from https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/111130/how-to-install-nodejs-v12-on-raspi-zero-armv6-not-available-for-download-anymor.

AWS IoT SDK

It seems AWS IoT SDK v2 does not work on RPi Zero: https://github.com/aws/aws-iot-device-sdk-js-v2/issues/119 The issue is still waiting for more details. The instructions, however, work with the SDK v1.

AWS IoT Actions

AWS IoT actions nicely integrate to multiple AWS services automatically.

The Error Action does not seem to be supported in CloudFormation infrastructure automation which prevents deploying automated alerts if something goes wrong. The error action can be added manually after the infra deployment.

Infrastructure automation

Creating AWS IoT keypairs with infrastructure automation turns out to be rather complex. However, after a few iterations, I managed to get a CloudFormation custom resource working with the AWS CDK programming model.

github.com

markusl/ruuvitag-aws-iot-monitoring/blob/master/awsiot/lib/aws-iot-certificate-resource.IotCertificateHandler.ts

import * as AWS from 'aws-sdk';
import * as AWSLambda from 'aws-lambda';
import { OnEventResponse } from './response';

const sm = new AWS.SecretsManager();
const iot = new AWS.Iot();

export async function handler(event: AWSLambda.CloudFormationCustomResourceEvent): Promise<OnEventResponse | void> {
  console.log(event);

  switch (event.RequestType) {
    case 'Create':
      return createUpdateHandler(event);
    case 'Delete':
      return deleteHandler(event);
    case 'Update':
      console.info('Nothing to update');
  }
}

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otso · April 13, 2021, 11:57am

Hello and thank you for sharing the project.

I’m adding this project to our collection of community projects. Could you add an explicit license, e.g. MIT or GPL to the project so everyone knows under which terms they can use the project?

if you’re interested in adding support of the upcoming Ruuvi Gateway email sales@ruuvi.com and we can ship you one prototype for free.