From the makers of Ookla’s speedtest and like one other thing, comes a nice little tool called Orb. Not gonna sell it very hard, but it’s slick, with an Orb app and Orb sensors. They support a whole bunch of architectures for the sensors already. Between the app and the sensor, you get a nice look into your internet quality (speed, reliability, latency) with your own sensor data, as you deploy sensors on your network to just about anything.
Since they offer a docker container, and Scale Apps are pretty much that, anyone wanna take a swing at baking Orb into an App? It just launched today so their devs are happy to help out.
Short update. They supply a yaml file that includes watchtower to keep the docker orb sensor instance up to date. Within TrueNas apps, you can get to the fully custom app screen that allows you to paste a yaml file.
All you need to do to deploy the sensor is just paste their yaml in and save. It’ll do the rest, and runs nicely with all the defaults. It’s slow to start and make sure you already have the full blown frontend on your phone or whatever so you can add the sensor to your account when you’re done.
It’s got something to do with network, the documentation is adamant that it wants HOST mode which gives this error, have tried BRIDGE and specifying the IP and port (it needs UDP 5353) to no avail. If anyone else has this issue (and a solution) chime in please, it’s a good app!
Hey! Thanks for the information, I am suprised at how long it took me to find what you meant by installing a custom app via the yaml so I have included screenshots for any future viewers to follow to make it easier.
THIS IS TO INSTALL A HEADLESS ORB SENSOR ON TRUENAS SCALE
As always before we start, update & backup your system if you care about whats on it.
First, click on Apps>Discover Apps>THREE VERT DOTS>Install via YAML
Then name the container orb, then paste the exact Docker YAML as described in the Orb docs
Then hit save and watch it take its sweet time to come online
Remember to add the orb sensor via the interface on the Orb app
Thanks again to OP for the starter info!
*Stupid trueass doesn’t let you add pictures or links to posts so sorry no images peeps
This is true for ALL apps. You don’t need TrueNAS’s “community apps” at all. The best way to manage these is to install Dockge or Portainer (in the community apps), and then inside those you can install and manage all your other apps by just editing docker-compose yaml files.
Yeah, it’d be nicer to manage everything within TN’s GUI, but this method frees you from being dependent on the community apps and their maintainers, and lets you go directly to the source and use any app that can be installed with docker-compose.
Looks like I got an issue somewhat similar to @Neonkore’s (“address already in use”):
2025/05/25 22:11:08 INFO Generating new private key
2025/05/25 22:11:08 INFO Getting new Orb certificate
2025/05/25 22:11:08 failed to sufficiently increase receive buffer size (was: 208 kiB, wanted: 7168 kiB, got: 416 kiB). See https://github.com/quic-go/quic-go/wiki/UDP-Buffer-Sizes for details.
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Orb ID orbID=me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Creating MQTT client orbID=me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Cert expires on: date="2025-06-01 22:11:09 +0000 UTC"
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Orb ID orbID=me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Connecting to MQTT broker Attempt=0 URL=tls://v1.mqtt.orb.net:1883
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Disconnected from MQTT broker
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Creating MQTT client orbID=me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO Connecting to MQTT broker Attempt=0 URL=tls://v1.mqtt.orb.net:1883
2025/05/25 22:11:09 WARN data model deprecated existing="" current=v0.1.0
2025/05/25 22:11:09 WARN dropping existing tables and views
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO started cloud summary
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO started cloud saver
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO power state not implemented on this platform
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO MQTT status=""
2025/05/25 22:11:09 INFO OrbCloud status=""
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.469Z level=INFO msg="zeroconf: ipv6 not available, using ipv4 only"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.472Z level=INFO msg="zeroconf started" publish=true browse=false err="listen udp4 224.0.0.251:5353: bind: address already in use" name="nas1 me7yx" hostname=nas1-me7yx.local
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.472Z level=ERROR msg="error applying requested service discovery config" error="listen udp4 224.0.0.251:5353: bind: address already in use"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.500Z level=INFO msg="MQTT Connected to MQTT broker"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.501Z level=ERROR msg="Error subscribing to topic" Topic=me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79/commands Error="not Connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.821Z level=INFO msg="got orb info" info="{OrbID:me7yxbr978jyfj7fn469krqgtv79 Name:nas1 Owner: OwnerID:}"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.822Z level=INFO msg="MQTT Connected to MQTT broker"
time=2025-05-25T22:11:09.822Z level=INFO msg="orbcloud status changed" status=online
time=2025-05-25T22:11:39.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:12:09.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:12:39.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:13:09.468Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:13:39.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:14:09.468Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:14:39.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:15:09.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:15:39.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
time=2025-05-25T22:16:09.467Z level=INFO msg="skipping summary - network interface is not connected"
That makes sense. Since 53 is dns, 5353 is magic dns blocking up the port. Samba setting almost nobody needs unless you have apple devices I think. On by default?
I was able to turn mDNS back on later, without it affecting orb, but I had also created multiple IP addresses for the NIC by then, so that might have made a difference.
Ok so now the challenge, who has the most Orbs, local and/or remote? I can use this to monitor connection quality for my friends and family since I host some stuff, I’ll know where to start looking when they text to complain. I’ve got about 5 so far. Phone, router, a couple of Truenas instances and a remote install.
