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Setting up remote access to the web interface

If you would like to expose the web interface to view over the internet (no authentication is provided however), you can use a service like Ngrok to do so.

caution

This exposes your web interface and Raspberry Pi over the internet. You should at the very least have a strong password on your Raspberry Pi, and also install a software like fail2ban to restrict malicious SSH attempts.

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.
  2. Download the app onto the Raspberry Pi: wget -o ngrok.zip https://bin.equinox.io/c/4VmDzA7iaHb/ngrok-stable-linux-arm.zip
  3. Unzip: unzip ngrok-stable-linux-arm.zip
  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 ~/.ngrok2
  7. Fill in the following: nano ~/.ngrok2/ngrok.yml
authtoken: <add your ngrok auth token here, find in nrgok dashboard>
tunnels:
  ui:
    proto: http
    addr: 9000
    inspect: false
    bind_tls: false
  ws:
    proto: http
    addr: 9001
    inspect: false
    bind_tls: false
  1. Run in background:
nohup /opt/ngrok/ngrok start ui ws --config ~/.ngrok2/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. On your ngrok dashboard, under Endpoints -> Status, you'll see two urls. One of the unique urls should link to your Pioreactor dashboard.
  2. The other url is added to your config.ini (under Configuration in the Pioreactor UI):
[remote]
ws_url=<some address>.ngrok.io
  1. Hit [Save].
  2. You're all done! You can now access the Pioreactor UI anywhere at http://some_address.ngrok.io

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: 9000
    inspect: false
    hostname: dev.pioreactor.com
    bind_tls: false
  ws:
    proto: http
    addr: 9001
    hostname: dev.ws.pioreactor.com
    inspect: false
    bind_tls: false