Time to get your hands dirty. The installation may be slightly more technical than what you are used to, but by following along, you should have BB up and running in no time.

Install Node.js

Open a terminal to get access to your Raspberry Pi, and then execute the following commands one-by-one:

  • sudo su
  • curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash -
  • apt install -y nodejs

Once done, verify that the installation has been successful by using the following commands:

  • node --version
  • npm --version

In both cases, you should see a version number printed to the terminal.

Install Balance Bot

The next step is to get BB installed on your server.

  • Do so by copying the following command to your clipboard:

wget -P /tmp -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hodlerhacks/balance-bot-ubuntu-script/master/bb_install.sh;bash /tmp/bb_install.sh

  • Then paste it in your terminal and hit [enter]
  • Wait until the installation process completes, this may take a minute or two
  • You should now see a menu appear on the screen
  • Choose option 1 to install BB
  • If you get a purple screen with the question ‘Which services should be restarted’, just hit enter

Enable IP whitelisting

IMPORTANT: if your Raspberry Pi can be accessed from outside your home network, to avoid that anyone can access your bot(s), it is strongly advised to enable so-called IP whitelisting. With IP whitelisting enabled, BB can only be accessed from the configured IP address. This can be done from the Bot Manager’s settings.

An easy way to get your IP address is by going here: https://www.whatsmyip.org/. Repeat the process to add multiple IP addresses to the whitelist.

Accessing Balance Bot

BB is now running on your server and can be accessed on:

http://[ip address]:3000

Reinstalling the BB Installer

If you ever need to reinstall the BB Installer, it is advised to first remove the existing installation. Do so by copying the following to the console:

rm -r /tmp/bb_install.sh; rm -r /var/opt/balance-bot-ubuntu-script

Additional options

  • You can update BB from the menu, using option 2
  • You can do a clean re-install, use option 3. This will keep all configuration data, logs, etc. so no data will be lost
  • To use the command prompt, exit the menu with option 0
  • At the prompt type: pm2 log to see the output / error messages from the Balance-Bot server
  • At the prompt type: pm2 monit to see the output / error messages from the Balance-Bot server
  • At the prompt type: pm2 list to see the status of the Balance-Bot server
  • And some script options available directly from the prompt:
    • bbmenu
    • bbupdate
    • bbstart
    • bbrestart
    • bbstop
    • scriptupdate