Brewblox services

TIP

This page explains how and why the service configuration works.

If you prefer to get started immediately with setting up a second Spark, you can skip forward to the Brewblox Spark page.

Brewblox is designed to let you control multiple devices with a single application.

To make this both reliable and easy, devices are connected to a central hub (the server).

On the server, we need some software to talk to individual devices. To make it easy to add new devices, we split the software into services.

Some services are used for shared functionality: The history service collects data from device services, and stores it for later use in graphs. Others are used to control individual devices.

Service configuration

Services are configured using the docker-compose.yml file. YAML is a markup language that uses indentation to show nested values. You can follow this guide to install a graphical text editor for your configuration files.

A shortened configuration file:

version: '3.7'
services:
  history:
    image: ghcr.io/brewblox/brewblox-history:edge

  spark-one:
    image: ghcr.io/brewblox/brewblox-devcon-spark:edge

  spark-two:
    image: ghcr.io/brewblox/brewblox-devcon-spark:edge

There are three services here:

• history
• spark-one
• spark-two

All of them have a unique name, but spark-one and spark-two share the same type. That's ok: as long as the name is unique, services can have the same settings.

GOOD:

version: '3.7'
services:
  service-one:
    image: brewblox-image-one

  service-two:
    image: brewblox-image-one

BAD:

version: '3.7'
services:
  service-one:
    image: brewblox-image-one

  service-one:
    image: brewblox-image-two

Adding devices

If we want to add a new device, we need a new service to manage it. Once again: the name must be unique, but the type can be the same.

Instructions for some service types can be found here, or in the tutorials.