Cumulus MX base OS and set-up advice

[SunDial]

Hi All,

Pardon my inexperience here but I purchased an Orange Pi Lite for the purpose of running Cumulus MX with my OS WMR928. I couldn't find system requirements for Cumulus MX on either Ubuntu, Linux or Raspberry PI but I guess it's on the Sandysoft forum somewhere. Assuming my Orange Pi Lite is compatible, could someone direct me to a link or post that suggests the best OS for my Orange Pi on which to run Cumulus MX? Additionally, I understand that I may need a data logger to be able to feed the data to Cumulus MX, unless Cumulus MX has this built in? Any advice gratefully received.

Tony

[steve]

The system requirements are in the announcement post which contains the download file. For Linux, you need libudev0 and a suitable version of Mono. The version of Linux you use is up to you, as long as you can also install the required packages. This may not be straightforward, as libudev0 may not be available, and there are compatibility issues with later versions of Mono. The Mono issue should not affect your WMR928. There are ways around the lack of libudev0, by using libudev1 and symlinks, a search of the forum should find some useful information.

As you will have seen from my posts, I have not had a lot of time to spend on Cumulus in recent times, hence the difficulties associated with the installation. This may change in the future.

You don’t need anything else to be able to use your station with MX.

[SunDial]

Hello Steve,

Thank you very much for your advice. I wondered if there might be different hardware specs depending on the OS chosen but I will follow your advice regarding the announcement post. I was thinking I would like to install Ubunto or Raspberry Pi as I believe these are the most user-friendly OSs supported on the Orange Pi Lite. Would you know if Ubunto server or desktop or either would be compatible in this case (as Orange Pi offer both as downloads)? Is Cumulus officially supported on Raspberry Pi? I just noticed a thread that somehow I missed on the Cumulus forum (https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=16931).

Thanks for your help and I hope things are settling down for you.

Tony

[steve]

It shouldn’t matter what hardware you use or what version of Linux, as long as you can install the required packages, and connect your station to it.

A Raspberry Pi running Raspbian (Wheezy, I think) was what I used for testing MX on Linux, and for runnng my own weather station until it closed.

[SunDial]

Ah okay. Got it. Thanks Steve.

[philpugh]

Just be aware that Raspberry Pi 'look alikes' aren't. They have kernel's that are not kept up to date with the releases of the operating systems. I fell for that when I bought my BananaPi Pro a few years ago. Great machine - but it has reached the end of life as far as the OS (Debian) is concerned. It continues to run my Davis VantageVue very well - but running the webserver is getting problematic as it struggles to run CERTBOT for HTTPS compliance. A modern Orange/Banana ... system will be OK but don't expect great support from the makers.

[ConligWX]

I'm running mine on an Intel NUC DN2820FYKH 8GB Ram and a 120GB SSD. It seems to work well.

[SunDial]

Hi All,

Sorry, I know it's been a while since I originally sent this post, but it makes sense to me to keep everything in one place.

I finally got my OPi Lite working. Unfortunately, it turned out to be DOA and I discovered it had a short to ground. Long story short I isolated the fault to the 1.2V/2A regulator (U7) for the system power line. Fortunately the regulator (SY8089A) was available via a single China-based seller on eBay and I was able to replace it. I'm pleased to report that I am sending this very post from Chromium running on the latest Armbian image for the OPi Lite (Linux orangepilite 3.4.113). I op-ed for Armbian as it appears to me to be have the best support and advice for OPi Lite owners right now and was easy to install and get running.

The next step is to install Cumulus MX so I was wondering about what Steve advised about libudev0 and perhaps Mono (though Steve mentioned it shouldn't affect my WMR928N). I've Google-ed libudev0 and found it here (https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/libudev0) but I'm not certain of which ARM package to download. The OPi Lite uses a H3 ARM CPU but does this equate to the "armel" or "armhf" package?

Any advice on this please?

Adam

[SunDial]

Any thoughts on this? I'm keen to get Cumulus MX installed.

[steve]

For your station you shouldn't need libudev0 and the version of Mono shouldn't matter.

[SunDial]

Ah! Many thanks, Steve. I'll give the installation a go then. Thanks again.