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Infrastructure

Overview

The automation software runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 inside a lightweight Kubernetes cluster (k3s). This keeps services containerised, restartable, and easy to update.

Hardware

  • Controller: Raspberry Pi 4 (4 GB RAM recommended)
  • Storage: TBD (external SSD preferred over SD card for reliability)
  • Power: TBD (UPS or battery backup to protect against outages)
  • Networking: Ethernet (preferred) or WiFi

k3s Cluster

k3s is a single-node Kubernetes distribution suited to the Raspberry Pi's ARM architecture.

  • Container runtime: containerd
  • Workloads: Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, custom sensor/actor services (TBD)
  • Persistent storage: local-path provisioner (TBD — evaluate for time-series data)

Deployed Services

Service Purpose Status
Prometheus Metrics collection and alerting rules TBD
Grafana Dashboard and visualisation TBD
Alertmanager Alert routing and notification TBD
Sensor exporter Custom service reading GPIO / I²C TBD
Actor controller Custom service driving relays TBD

Networking

  • Local access via static IP or mDNS (hydro.local)
  • Remote access: TBD (VPN / reverse proxy / dynamic DNS)
  • All inter-service communication stays on the cluster network

Operating System

  • Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit, headless)
  • SSH enabled; Wi-Fi credentials configured pre-boot if needed

Sources