AstroPlant kit

This repository contains the code for the AstroPlant kit growth system framework.

The AstroPlant kits communicate with the AstroPlant back-end for configuration and publishing measurements.

Documentation

Full documentation can be found here.

Install the kit

To install the kit through setuptools, run

$ python3 setup.py install

This installs the AstroPlant kit on your system, allowing you to use the AstroPlant kit CLI through:

$ astroplant-kit --help

Install kit dependencies through pip

To install the kit dependencies through pip, run

$ python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

This allows you to use the AstroPlant kit CLI through:

$ ./scripts/astroplant-kit --help

Configure AstroPlant

The kit requires some basic configuration to function.

Copy kit_config.sample.toml to kit_config.toml and edit the configuration.

For example, a basic configuration for connecting the kit to the official AstroPlant network is as follows. The message_broker.auth.serial and message_broker.auth.secret are obtained by registering a new kit on the My AstroPlant website.

[message_broker]
host = "mqtt.astroplant.io"
port = 1883

[message_broker.auth]
serial = "k-********"
secret = "********"

[debug]
level = "INFO"

[debug.peripheral_display]
module_name = "astroplant_kit.peripheral"
class_name = "BlackHoleDisplay"

If your kit should log in to the MQTT broker with a username different than its serial, you can specify the username for MQTT separately:

#...
[message_broker.auth]
username = "mqtt_username"
serial = "k-********"
secret = "********"

Debug configuration

Log messages are printed to stdout, and can additionally be sent to a peripheral device. The level field configures the minimum level of log messages that are sent to the peripheral display device. See the Python documentation for available log levels. A peripheral display device also displays recent measurements.

The debug.peripheral_display entry is used to configure the peripheral device for display. The module_name field refers to a module where the implementation of the peripheral display device can be found, and class_name is the specific class to instantiate. The module and class are then dynamically imported and instantiated. Additional configuration can be performed on class instantiation by adding a configuration table.

The default BlackHoleDisplay ignores all log messages. For debugging purposes, class_name can be set to DebugDisplay, which will send all display messages to stdout.

To display messages on a standard I2C LCD device, you can use the following configuration (requires astroplant-peripheral-device-library):

# ...

[debug]
level = "INFO"

[debug.peripheral_display]
module_name = "astroplant_peripheral_device_library.lcd"
class_name = "LCD"

[debug.peripheral_display.configuration]
i2cAddress = "0x27"

Set i2cAddress to the address used by the device.

Run the kit

To run the kit, perform:

$ astroplant-kit run kit_config.toml

or

$ ./scripts/astroplant-kit run kit_config.toml

Timekeeping

Note that the kit uses the system time, and this time is reported in measurements. On low power devices (such as the Raspberry Pi) this system time is often wrong until the system has been running and connected to the internet for some time. Using systemd, you can delay running the kit until after the time has been synchronized using time-sync.target.