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Appliance Installation

Using the Firefly Logger Appliance is the recommended installation type for Firefly Logger.

You do not need to follow these directions and "Software Installation"

Appliance Full Installation Guide

  1. If you do not already have it installed, install the Raspberry Pi Imager.

  2. Download the latest image from the Firefly FDL GitHub Release Page and save it to the Downloads directory.

  3. Launch Raspberry Pi Imager from the start menu.

    Step 3

  4. Click on CHOOSE DEVICE and choose the type of Pi hardware on which Firefly Logger is being installed.

    Step 4

  5. Click on CHOOSE OS. Scroll to the bottom of the list that appears and select Use custom.

    Step 5

  6. A Select image dialog box will appear. Navigate to the Downloads folder and select the image downloaded in step 2. It will be named something like firefly-logger-5.1-aarch64.img.xz. Then click Open.

    Step 6

  7. Connect the SD card or the SD card in a USB adapter to the computer. Then click on CHOOSE STORAGE. An option will be presented named something such as "Mass Storage Device USB Device - 16.0 GB". Click on that entry.

    Step 7

  8. Click NEXT

  9. A box labelled "Use OS customisation?" will appear. Click on EDIT SETTINGS

    Step 9

  10. Customize the settings for the image to match the needs of the operation.

    Step 10

    Check the box and set the hostname of the device. It is recommended to use the name firefly which will set the hostname on the network to firefly.local.

    Create the user for the device. Check the box and set a username and password. This can be anything, but it is recommended to be set to the operation callsign and a memorable password. In this example, the username was "n8ei" and the password "fieldday".

    Check the box next to Configure wireless LAN and then enter the name of the wireless network in SSID and the password for that network in Password. Change the "Wireless LAN country" to US or other country as appropriate. This is not necessary if the Pi will use a network cable rather than wireless.

    (Optional) Check the box next to Set locale settings and change the "Time zone" to the desired region. This is optional and will not affect Firefly Logger using UTC times throughout.

  11. Click on the Services tab and click Enable SSH and Use password authentication

    Step 11

  12. Click SAVE in "OS Customsation".

  13. Click YES for "Use OS customiation?"

  14. Click YES to continue to write the image to the SD card.

    Step 14

  15. Depending on the speed of the computer and the type of SD card one will have time for a beverage of their choice. When the write is complete, remove the card from computer and insert it into the Pi. If using a USB adapter for the SD card, remove the SD card from the adapter and insert the card into the Pi. The Pi will not use the SD card in the USB adapter.

  16. Power on the Pi. Wait approximately 2 minutes for the Pi to boot and perform the various firstboot tasks.

  17. (Optional) Network connectivity may be tested using the command ping -4 firefly.local from a command prompt or PowerShell window.

    Step 17

  18. Open your browser. Enter http://firefly.local into the browser bar and hit Enter. One may receive a "host not found" error the first time depending on a variety of factors regarding browsers and networks that is unimportant here. If that happens, re-enter http://firefly.local and hit Enter a second time.

    Step 18

  19. This should then display a warning about an invalid security certificate or some other form of security error. In Chrome and Edge it will look like:

    Step 19

  20. Cilck on Advanced and then Continue to firefly.local (unsafe). Firefox, Safari, etc. have similar screens with a similar warning and workflow. Each client to Firefly Logger will have to accept and/or continue past the security warning on the first connections. See Security for more information on why this is not a security risk for this application.

    Step 20

  21. Firefly Logger should now be displayed.

    Step 21

  22. Enter and then delete a test QSO to confirm installation.

That's it! Visit the User Guide for getting started!

Updates & Software Installation

The appliance is fully updateable with upstream Debian and the Firefly Logger software from the PacketWarriors software repository.

The appliance is also capable of running other software as desired to be configured by the experienced sysadmin. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to use the Firefly Logger base image as a starting OS for running other items of interest at Field Day as well such as a time server, file server, etc. Just keep in mind that the main webserver configuration is expected to be managed exclusively by Firefly Logger.