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Quickstart

This page assumes you have gotten the Docker image for Synse Server.

It will go over:

• Starting Synse Server
• Using an Emulator Backend
• A Simple Emulator Deployment

Starting Synse Server

Synse Server can be run "out of the box" with no additional configuration necessary:

docker run --name synse-server -p 5000:5000 -d vaporio/synse-server

This will run a new Synse Server container, exposed on port 5000. You can hit API Endpoints to see what Synse Server exposes, but there will be minimal data available. Synse gets all device data from plugins; with no plugins registered, there will be no device data.

You can also verify it started up correctly by inspecting the container logs:

docker logs synse-server

Or hitting the status or version endpoints:

$ curl localhost:5000/test
{
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2019-05-16T18:07:05Z"
}

$ curl localhost:5000/version
{
  "version": "3.0.0",
  "api_version": "v3"
}

Using an Emulator Backend

To get device data, the emulator plugin can be registered with Synse Server. If you are already running a server instance (e.g. from the previous section), you will need to terminate it.

docker rm -f synse-server

Now, you can start a new instance of Synse Server, this time configuring it to register the emulator plugin at emulator:5001.

docker run --name synse-server -p 5000:5000 -d \
    -e SYNSE_PLUGIN_TCP="emulator:5001" \
    vaporio/synse-server

At this point, you could check the logs and see errors because there is no emulator:5001 yet so it can not register it as a plugin.

To register an emulator plugin instance to the running server instance, you will need to create a new docker network and connect it to the synse server instance

docker network create synse-net
docker network connect synse-net synse-server

You can then run the emulator plugin, exposing port 5001 and giving it the emulator alias on the network so the server can find it at emulator:5001.

docker run -d --expose 5001 \
    --network synse-net \
    --network-alias emulator \
    vaporio/emulator-plugin

You can follow the server logs and see that it will eventually rebuild the cache and find the plugin. You can also force a cache rebuild immediately by hitting the /scan endpoint with the query parameter ?force=true.

...
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:31.877338Z' level='debug' event='refreshing plugin manager'
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:31.877482Z' level='info' event='loading plugins from configuration'
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:31.877691Z' level='debug' event='plugin from config' mode='tcp' address='emulator:5001'
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:32.942294Z' level='debug' event='registered plugin' id='4032ffbe-80db-5aa5-b794-f35c88dff85c' tag='vaporio/emulator-plugin'
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:32.942498Z' level='info' event='marking plugin as active' id='4032ffbe-80db-5aa5-b794-f35c88dff85c' tag='vaporio/emulator-plugin'
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:32.942679Z' level='debug' event='plugin manager refresh complete' plugin_count=1
timestamp='2019-05-16T18:00:32.943049Z' level='debug' event='getting devices from plugin' plugin='vaporio/emulator-plugin' plugin_id='4032ffbe-80db-5aa5-b794-f35c88dff85c'
...

A Simple Emulator Deployment

Running Synse Server with an emulator backend is even simpler when done with a compose file.

# 
# compose.yml
#
# A simple deployment to run Synse Server with the emulator
# plugin, both in debug mode.
#

version: '3'
services:
  synse-server:
    image: vaporio/synse-server
    ports:
    - '5000:5000'
    links:
    - emulator
    environment:
      SYNSE_LOGGING: debug
      SYNSE_PLUGIN_TCP: 'emulator:5001'

  emulator:
    image: vaporio/emulator-plugin
    command: ['--debug']
    expose:
    - 5001

Which can be run with:

docker-compose -f compose.yml up -d