unifi-monitoring

Tools to monitor Unifi Networks.

Featuring Unpoller, Grafana, and InfluxDB. Installed via Docker (Docker Compose). At the time of writing this, this was built on a macOS environment. YMMV if you decide to use install this on a Linux machine

Environment setup

Requirements:

• Docker (if Mac, Docker Desktop)
• docker compose
• git
• Github CLI tools

Host Directoriess

Here's a view of the file structure that I've decided to use:

(~/docker/)
/Users/$CURRENTUSER/docker
├── grafana
├── influxdb
└── unifi-monitoring
    ├── README.md
    └── unpoller
        ├── docker-compose-unpoller.yaml
        ├── example-unpoller.env
        └── unifi-poller.conf

Let's start by adding all the folders and files to use.

1. Create ~/docker/ folder to store all of our docker config files
2. Create the ~/docker/grafana/ folder
   • This will be used for the Grafana volume
3. Create the ~/docker/influxdb/ folder
   • This will be used for the InfluxDB volume
4. Switch to the ~/docker/ directory and add this repo

mkdir ~/docker
mkdir ~/docker/grafana
mkdir ~/docker/influxdb
cd ~/docker/
gh repo clone thereal-kcsantos/unifi-monitoring

Environment variables file

5. Create the .env file in the ~/Users/$CURRENTUSER/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/ directory, copied from the example-unpoller.env example file. the .env is the environment file for Docker Compose. At the time of writing this, defining the env_file via Docker Compose does not work (at least it didn't for me). To make it easier, we will use the default Environments file name, using .env

• The .env file needs to be in the same directory as the docker-compose.yaml file (docker-compose-unpoller.yaml

cp ~/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/example-unpoller.env ~/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/.env

6. Edit the .env file to fit your needs. The following variables need to be changed:

• UP_UNIFI_DEFAULT_USER
• UP_UNIFI_DEFAULT_PASS
• UP_UNIFI_DEFAULT_URL

Unifi Poller Configuration File

7. Create the unifi-poller.conf file in the ~/Users/$CURRENTUSER/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/ directory, copied from the example-unifi-poller.conf example file.

• Keep the unifi-poller.conf file in the same directory as the docker-compose.yaml file (docker-compose-unpoller.yaml)

cp ~/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/example-unifi-poller.conf ~/docker/unifi-monitoring/un
poller/unifi-poller.conf

8. Edit the unifi-poller.conf file variables:

• [unifi.defaults] > url enter the URL of your unifi controller. If this is a Unifi Dream Gateway (Unifi Dream Machine line, or any other unifi router with a built in controller) OR a Unifi Cloud Key, just the address is fine, i suggest removing the Port number.
  • IF this is a Self Hosted controller, you should add the port number at the end of the address.
  • Example:

    [unifi.defaults]
    url  = "https://192.168.1.10:8443"
    

• [unifi.defaults] > user enter the read-only username you created in your unifi controller
• [unifi.defaults] > password enter the password for the read-only user you created in your unifi controller
• [influxdb] > url enter the influxdb address with the 8086 port number.

  [influxdb]
  url  = "http://127.0.0.1:8086"
  

Start Docker Containers

9. Start the Docker containers in detached mode (-d)

docker compose -f ~/docker/unifi-monitoring/unpoller/docker-compose-unpoller.yaml up -d

Grafana Setup

10. Sign into the Grafana Console:

http://Address-of-Host:8086

The default username and password is admin/admin

11. Setup InfluxDB Data Source

Menu > Connections > Add new connection > search InfluxDB > Add new data source

• HTTP
  • URL: http://Address-of-Host:8086 (http://192.168.1.10:8086, http://address-of-host.local:8086, etc.)
  • Allowed cookies: server
• InfluxDB Details
  • Database: unifi (this should match your "INFLUXDB_DB" variable in your .env file)
  • User: unifi (this should match your "INFLUXDB_ADMIN_USER" variable in your .env file)
  • Password: unifi (this should match your "INFLUXDB_ADMIN_PASSWORD=unifi " variable in your .env file)
  • Everything else can be left at default/blank
• Click Save & test
  • If successful, you will get a message along the lines of "datasource is working. 12 measurements found"