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Jim Sifferle edited this page Mar 26, 2015 · 11 revisions

Setting up the Share to Nightscout bridge on Azure is very easy assuming you already have a Nightscout website hosted on Azure. If you do not have a Nightscout website, it may be easier to Deploy to Heroku. Or, visit the Nightscout Setup Guide to setup a new Nightscout website on Azure.

If you plan to use the bridge on Azure, you are advised to obtain an Azure Pass from the Nightscout Foundation. The Pass will eliminate the cost associated with the recommended "Basic" hosting plan for several months.

Deployment Overview

You will perform the following steps to deploy the Share to Nightscout bridge.

  • Download the latest bridge sidecar
  • Change the Nightscout website configuration
  • Deploy the bridge sidecar as a webjob
  • Verify operation

Download the bridge sidecar

  1. Visit the share2nightscout-bridge releases page.

  2. Download the nightscout-sidecar.zip file from the latest release to your computer.

Add Nightscout website variables

  1. Login to the Azure Management Portal.

  2. Click on your website name, then click on the Configure tab. Configure tab

  3. Scroll down to option for "ALWAYS ON". Change the setting from off to on. If it is greyed out, you must first change your website hosting plan to "Basic" on the Scale tab for your website. Without the Always On option, your bridge will not operate continuously, and your Nightscout website will not update reliably. If you do not have an active Azure Pass obtained from the Nightscout Foundation, Basic web hosting services will cost about $50 per month.

  4. Scroll down to the "connection strings" section and add the DEXCOM_ACCOUNT_NAME and DEXCOM_PASSWORD variables. Add the API_SECRET variable if it is not already present. API_SECRET must be at least 12 characters long. Press Save at the bottom of the page to save your changes. All variables must have their type set to Custom. The default is SQL Database, which will not work. Connection strings

Deploy the bridge sidecar

  1. Click on the Webjobs tab for your website Webjobs

  2. Click Add a job to create a new webjob. Add a job

  3. Enter a name such as share-ns-bridge in the Name field.

  4. Click Browse for file and choose the nightscout-sidecar.zip file you downloaded.

  5. Click the check mark in the bottom right to add the webjob. webjob config

  6. After adding the new webjob, your job will transition to the Running state after a few moments. Running job

Verify operation

Nightscout requires at least three value BG readings to display data. If you are deploying a brand new website with your bridge, expect to wait 15 minutes before you see data. If you're re-using an existing website that has recent BG data, you may only need to wait a few minutes. Once you verify that your website is showing current data, you are done.

More information

See the README for details about additional variables you can set to control how your bridge operates.