Running for the first time

Now that you have some configuration, it’s time to run it. The above configuration should have had you either create a directory or use a particular directory for configuration. Let’s change our directory to that now if you aren’t already there.

cd <THE DIRECTORY YOU USED IN PREVIOUS STEPS>

Docker InstallNative Install

Your working directory should contain docker-compose.yml.

Here is an example of what the file structure might look like at this point in the configuration process:

~/Documents/containers/solarthing/
├── main/
│   └── config/
│       └── base.json
└── docker-compose.yml

In this example, the working directory should be ~/Documents/containers/solarthing.

Assuming you have just configured a program to monitor a serial port, you will need to add a few lines to your docker-compose.yml. Make sure you add the cap_add and devices sections so it looks like the highlighted lines below.

Please change /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 to reflect the path to the serial port if it is different. For instance, if your serial port is /dev/ttyUSB1, you should instead use /dev/ttyUSB1:/dev/ttyUSB1

services:
  main:
    image: 'ghcr.io/wildmountainfarms/solarthing:latest'
    container_name: solarthing-main
    restart: 'unless-stopped'
    command: run --base config/base.json
    group_add: # this is only necessary if you are using a user other than root
      - dialout
    cap_add:
      - SYS_RAWIO
    devices:
      - '/dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0'
    volumes:
      - './main/config:/app/config:ro'
      - './main/logs:/app/logs'

Now run:

sudo docker compose up

The program should start up and it will start outputting lots of messages to your screen. If you configured it correctly, after a second you will see data from your device in a JSON format. Press CTRL+C to stop the program.