Hi all,
As a 'hobbyist', I'd been aware of OEM for a while before I signed up to the Kickstarter campaign. Prior to Kickstarter, even though I broadly understood what goes on under the hardware and software covers, I did not have the time or appetite to 'roll my own' hobby platform.
So when Kickstarter came along I thought: Great the OEM folk are building a *product* I can just plug in and it will 'Just Work'. (And so far so good.)
But I am surprised to find the Ready-to-Go system does not have any built in solution for backing up the data and configuration, and securing those backups somewhere safe (off-platform).
Yes I have found the page on the website that tell me how to do a mysql dump (been there, done that, etc) but I do not believe I as the customer should be expected to graft on a backup regime. Backup should be part of the admin suite of the emonPi, easily configurable through the web UI.
Of course I may have misunderstood what OEM intends with emonPi i.e product v hobbyist. If the latter, that's fine, but in my view it limits the appeal of emonPi to a wider audience. To me the emonPi is a (potentially) great vehicle to push the energy efficiency agenda to a public more and more aware of the energy debate. But you can not expect 'joe public' to craft their own backup regime. But you would expect them to be rather fed up if their data was lost due to e.g SD card corruption.
Adding a simple backup regime would not be hard and would be one of those non-functional requirements that add the overall quality, robustness and 'completeness' of emonPi.
Regards
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
Hello!
i Agree and think that the backup of data should be in the cloud.
dropbox is a free 2gb service that provides simple storage solution for all platforms.
All it needs is a simple script that runs every hour or so, and maybe makes .rar with today's date and automatically deletes the old backups when full.
there are some smart solutions and Dropbox has unofficial app for raspbian.
i am very much looking forward to a solid no fuss backup solution.
time machine for Mac OS X I simple, automatic and easy to use.
//J
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
I use Barracuda Copy, the free starter package has;
I'm not currently backing up mysql, but all the feed data is backed up daily.
Paul
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
Hello Paul!
Maybe you can develope further how this is done? Is there a way to automate this, like a script or application for the rest of us?
Maybe you can describe how you accomplished this?
Thanks!
//J
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
Trystan wrote a backup script, which is really easy to use.
In my case, I use node-red to call the script every night about 3am, which backs up the data folders to a 'backup folder' (also on the pi), but cron could equally be used.
'Barracuda copy' works by having a designated 'copy' folder in your pi, where everything placed in that folder (or symlinked to it) is automatically synced to the cloud. In my case, I have a symlink to the 'backup folder'.
Works for me.
Paul
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
Ok, maybe this will be included later on in he distributed install for the energy monitor?
It would be very nice if it came pre installed and setup in such a way that the user only has to fill in account information in the configuration of the emon pi.
I think logging to remote servers will be of interest to most users.
//J
Re: emonPi: why no built-in support for backups?
I've applied for an account to edit the wiki and, if approved, will add some suggestions on how a simple backup regime could be implemented.