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Setting up remote access to the web interface

If you would like to expose the Pioreactor UI to view remotely, you can use a service like Ngrok to do so.

caution

This exposes your Pioreactor UI and therefore your Raspberry Pi over the internet. You should have a strong password on your Raspberry Pi leader, and use a strong password for basic-auth (below). We make our best security effort in our products, however we are not responsible for any damages as a result of exposing your Raspberry Pi online.

The following are the steps to take:

  1. Sign up for Ngrok - the free plan is all we need. Make sure to confirm your account through your email.
  2. Download the app onto the Raspberry Pi: wget -O ngrok.tgz https://bin.equinox.io/c/bNyj1mQVY4c/ngrok-v3-stable-linux-arm.tgz
  3. Unzip: tar zxvf ngrok.tgz
  4. Make a new folder for the program: sudo mkdir /opt/ngrok
  5. Move ngrok file there: sudo mv ngrok /opt/ngrok
  6. Make a config folder: mkdir ~/.ngrok
  7. Fill in the following: nano ~/.ngrok/ngrok.yml. We advise changing the basic auth credentials below to something more secure
authtoken: <add your ngrok auth token here, find in nrgok dashboard>
tunnels:
    ui:
        proto: http
        addr: 80
        inspect: false
        basic_auth: ["pioreactor:vogue-awesome-brag"]
        schemes:
            - http
    ws:
        proto: http
        addr: 9001
        inspect: false
        schemes:
            - http
version: "2"
region: us
  1. Run in background:
nohup /opt/ngrok/ngrok start ui ws --config ~/.ngrok/ngrok.yml &

Alternatively, if you wish to set this up as a service that will launch on start up, the following sudo systemctl enable ngrok

  1. At dashboard.ngrok.com, you'll see two urls. One of the unique urls should link to your Pioreactor dashboard (when asked for a name and password, use "pioreactor" and "raspberry" respectively).
  2. The other url is added to your config.ini (under Configuration in the Pioreactor UI), without the http:// infront. For example:

  1. Save the configuration by clicking [Save].
  2. You're all done! You can now access the Pioreactor UI anywhere at http://some_address.ngrok.io. The username and password are the same you added to your yaml file above.

Custom domain (if using Pro plan)​

Set up a domain in the ngrok UI, and follow the steps to add it to you your domain provider. Then in your ngrok.yml, add hostname fields, example:

authtoken: ...
tunnels:
  ui:
    proto: http
    addr: 80
    inspect: false
    basic_auth: ["pioreactor:vogue-awesome-brag"]
    hostname: dev.pioreactor.com
    bind_tls: false
    schemes:
        - http
  ws:
    proto: http
    addr: 9001
    hostname: dev.ws.pioreactor.com
    inspect: false
    bind_tls: false
    schemes:
        - http
version: "2"
region: us