Difference between revisions of "Meteobridge VM"

Revision as of 23:09, 8 May 2024

Meteobridge sets itself apart from other weather monitoring solutions on PCs that it is thought as a dedicated appliance, running independently from your desktop and by that not being impacted from desktop shutdowns, OS changes etc. We still believe the "dedicated appliance" idea is the way to go.

With the increasing spread of virtual machines time has come to transform the appliance idea into the world of virtualization. Let me present Meteobridge as a VM that can be hosted on your virtualization environment of choice, namely: VMware, Virtualbox, KVM, Proxmox. We call this new development "Meteobridge VM". Meteobridge VM is provided as a disk image that comes to life as a virtual machine on your server.

In terms of functionality Meteobridge VM is comparable to Meteobridge on RPI, but with more processing power, no SD card hallse and no network configuration issues as network connectivity is provided by the virtualization environment. And the best thing is, there are no additional HW costs (like processing board, case, power supply, storage media, etc) in case you already have VMs running on your server.

Limitations

Meteobridge VM is provided for x86_64 only (no ARM, no Apple silicon, no RPI) as we see this platform as the dominant virtualization environment and cannot afford to fork into various niche platforms. The Meteobridge VM disk image provides 16GB of storage for data. This is fairly enough for many years of data. Disk partitions can be expanded later on, but it is a rather complicated process. Therefore, it is recommended that you stick with the 16GB for now and postpone the disk enlargement challenge until Meteobridge has begun crawling towards the 16GB limit.

Meteobridge VM needs a paid one-time license (after 14 days of free trial period). A Meteobridge license used within a Meteobridge VM is not interchangeable with Meteobridge licenses for other HW platforms (TP-Link, RPI, etc). Licenses can be migrated between Meteobridge VMs but not with other Meteobridge platforms. Licenses used with Meteobridge VM apply to the same rules as licenses used on other platforms. They are perpetual and provide 2 years of free updates. After 2 years it needs an update licenses to get access to newer versions of Meteobridge VM; this is optional, not mandatory. You can find more details on Meteobridge licensing here.

Meteobridge Licenses (for VM or physical platforms) can be purchased here.

How to Install

First you have to setup your virtualization environment of choice. Please consult the documentation of your virtualization solution for this first step. As Meteobridge VM should be visible within your LAN and needs to reach out to the Internet it is important that the virtualization environment does not isolate the Meteobridge VM by firewall rules. When you encounter network problems with your Meteobridge VM, please check firewall related data blocking first. We had initial problems to get it working on a Windows environment because of Windows firewall rules enabled by default. These problems are not specific to Meteobridge VM, they are related to setting up a virtualization environment properly.

The next chapters show installation examples for the most popular virtualization environments that are intended to show how to get a Meteobridge VM installation right. It just covers the Meteobridge specific steps and is intended for users that already have some experience in setting up virtual machines.

Generic Meteobridge VM Install

When you are familiar with your VM environment you might not need the step by step descriptions below. Important things to know are:

• Meteobridge VM disk image is provided as QEMU/KVM gzipped raw file (link), VMware vmdk file (link) and VirtualBox vdi file (link).
• Disk size is 16GB.
• RAM size of 256 MB is sufficient, Meteobridge will not benefit from more.
• network mode needs to be "Bridge".
• Make sure the firewall of the host system is not blocking the VM.
• Weather stations connected via USB need to be channeled through to the Meteobridge VM.

Meteobridge VM Installs on Dedicated Platforms

When you are looking for step-by-step install instructions of Meteobridge VM on a specif virtualization platform, just klick on the logo of your platform of choice below

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1. Meteobridge VM on

First step is that you download the KVM/QEMU compatible disk image here. File is in "gzip" format and needs to be decompressed first. Result is a rawdisk image file of about 16GB in size named "meteobridge-mbx86-v1.0-16G.img". Next steps are related to build the Meteobridge VM within KVM based on the downloaded disk image.

• Access the KVM Virtual Machine Manager and define a new VM.
• Select mode "Import existing disk image".
    
• To provide an existing storage path, press the "Browse..." button.
• Select a storage pool from the left. "default" might be a good choice unless you have not defined a specific one for your VMs. Having selected the VM pool your will see a list of already defined VMs. You also see the physical location of the VM pool. Here it is "/var/lib/libvirt/images".
    
• No go to your command shell and generate a new folder for Meteobridge in your VM pool. On linux doing so looks like this (you may need to be root to do so, therefore the preceding "sudo"):

  sudo mkdir /var/lib/libvirt/images/Meteobridge

• Next the downloaded and decompressed Meteobridge disk image file needs to be copied into this folder.

  sudo cp /path-to-where-you-downloaded-the-file/meteobridge-mbx86-v1.0.img /var/lib/libvirt/images/Meteobridge/

• To make the newly created directory available press the reload circles besides the "Volumes" label. In the example "Meteobridge" now appears as a new volume.
• Press "Browse Local" button and navigate with help of the "Filesystem" entry down to the Meteobridge VM image file. For orientation you see the stepping down into folders on the top line. When you finally reach the image file, select it and press "Open".
    
• Being back to the calling menu, please insert "other" into the search bar. A dialog presenting item "Generic default (generic)" will pop up. Double click the entry.
• Now you are back to the calling menu with the information filled in as in the example below. Press "Forward".
    
• KVM now needs some additional information for setting up the VM. Select 256 MB for RAM and 1 processor (this will be perfectly fine for Meteobridge). Then press "Forward".
• Last step is to give the new VM a name, please check that "Bridge" is selected as network option (should be default) and "Customize configuration before install" to do some additionel settings later on. Then press "Finish".
    
• It will only take a few seconds to build and start the VM. You will see the VM starting into the GRUB boot loader and then booting automatically. The booting is done when Meteobridge VM does tell you the IP where to reach the Meteobridge GUI in your LAN.
    
• When you have a weather station connected via USB then you need to tell the host that this USB connection should be handed over to the Meteobridge VM. THis is done via the "Virtual Machine - Redirect USB device" option in the menu. In the example a Meteostick which makes use of a FTDI converter is used. Therefore, the FTDI entry is selected.
    

2. Meteobridge VM on

First step is to download the free of charge (for non-business use) VMware Workstation Player from here. After installation of VMware package you can start to setup a Meteobridge VM. You find the Meteobridge VM disk image for VMware in "vmdk" format here.

Steps to install the Meteobridge VM in a VMware environment are explained below in terms of an example workflow.

• When you start VMware Workstation Player you are offered to "Create a New Virtual Machine", select this option.
• When asked where to install from select "I will install the operating system later" option and press "Next".
    
• Next, VMware asks which type of guest OS you plan to install. Select "Other" and choose "Other 64-bit" from the sub menu, press "Next".
• Give the Meteobridge VM a telling name and select the folder, where VMware stores the VMs on you system. Folder is usually named "Virtual Machines" somewhere down on your System Disk. Press "Browse..." to go to this folder.
    
• Press "Make New Folder" to generate a folder for the Meteobridge VM within the "Virtual Machines" folder of VMware. Name this new folder "Meteobridge" and press "OK".
    
• Now the Meteobridge Folder is established and it is time to setup the Meteobridge VM within this folder by pressing "Next".
• Specify maximum disk size as 16GB and tell that a single file should be used for storage. Press "Next".
• WVMware does a standard configuration of the VM which you can alter now. Press "Customize Hardware..." button to do so.
       
• Set memory to 256 MB, which is sufficient for Meteobridge.
• Select "Network Adapter" to "Connect at power on" and into "Bridged" mode.
    
• Ususally a USB controller is not part of the default setup. Therefore, press the "Add..." button and select the USB controller and press "Finish". Make sure the added USB controller can handle USB 1.1.
• Next, press "Close" to start building of the Meteobridge VM.
    
• Now we have an Meteobridge VM, but it is not operational as the initially downloaded Meteobridge vmdk image still needs to be connected with the just defined VM.
• In the Meteobridge VM folder you will find a lot of files. One is named "Meteobridge.vmdk". This one needs to replaced by the downloaded Meteobridge disk image. Rename the downloaded disk image "Meteobridge.vmdk" and replace the vmdk file in the Meteobridge folder by it.
• Now it is time to start the Meteobridge VM by pressing "Play virtual machine".
    
• VMware detects that something with the disk has changed. Press "Yes" and Meteobridge VM will start.
    
• Last thing to do is to tell VMware that the attached USB device (here a Meteostick) should be connected with the Meteobridge VM.