pi-telemetry

This script and service collects system telemetry for a Raspberry Pi.

It auto-detects relevant temperatures, fans, network interfaces, disks, and known services. Fields are omitted when they are not relevant to the machine.

Requirements

• Python 3.11 or newer with venv

sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3-venv

Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye ships Python 3.9 by default, which is too old for this service. The install target checks the interpreter version and aborts before installing when PYTHON does not meet the minimum.

Install

• Clone this repository somewhere convenient.

• Copy pi-telemetry.env.example to pi-telemetry.env and change the variables as appropriate. NOTE: systemd does not do variable substitution in this file!

• Edit variable PREFIX in Makefile if desired.

• sudo make

The install target creates a production virtualenv at /opt/pi-telemetry/venv and installs Python package requirements there.

Configuration

The env file should usually only need MQTT connection settings. Discovery is automatic by default.

Optional settings:

• PI_TELEMETRY_ID: telemetry id, default is hostname.
• PI_TELEMETRY_SLEEP_TIME: seconds between publishes, default is 30.
• PI_TELEMETRY_SERVICES: comma-separated confirmed systemd service names to include in addition to built-in purpose services.
• PI_TELEMETRY_DOCKER_CONTAINERS: comma-separated confirmed Docker container names to include in service telemetry.

Service telemetry is grouped by manager:

{
  "services": {
    "systemd": {
      "tailscaled": "active"
    },
    "docker": {
      "radiosonde_auto_rx": "active"
    }
  }
}

Use ./pi_telemetry.py --discover-services --pretty on a reachable Pi to print candidate systemd services and Docker containers. Confirm that the names are part of that machine's purpose before adding them to PI_TELEMETRY_SERVICES or PI_TELEMETRY_DOCKER_CONTAINERS; generic OS services such as SSH, cron, and dbus should not be added just because they are running.

Status topics

Telemetry is published to ${MQTT_TOPIC_PREFIX}/${PI_TELEMETRY_ID}/telemetry.

Service status is published retained to ${MQTT_TOPIC_PREFIX}/${PI_TELEMETRY_ID}/status.

The service publishes {"state":"connected"} after MQTT connect and registers a retained last-will message of {"state":"lost-connection"}.

Uninstall

This will stop and disable the systemd service and remove the installed files (including the customized configuration file).

• sudo make uninstall