Trading on Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu 18.04

I wrote my own backtesting and live trading software called ArgonTrader in C# and use it to trade with Interactive Brokers. I run it on my Raspberry Pi 3 B. In this post I describe how to set things up using Ubuntu MATE 18.04.

Install Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi

I used the 32 bit Raspberry Pi 3 (Hard-Float) preinstalled server image from here. This image was the only one that allowed me to install raspi-config and also Oracle Java 8.

You can put the image on a SDHC card, connect keyboard, mouse and monitor to the Raspberry Pi and boot. You can then login with the username and password “ubuntu” and change the password afterwards.

To install the Ubuntu MATE desktop you can use the following commands.

sudo apt install tasksel
sudo apt update
sudo tasksel install ubuntu-mate-desktop

Raspi-Config

You will have to install raspi-config yourself as it is not included.

To install it use these commands:

sudo echo "deb http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/ jessie main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 7FA3303E
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install raspi-config

SSH

To enable SSH you can use raspi-config.

sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot     # Required when you have the Ubuntu server version
sudo raspi-config

Once you have started raspi-config you can go to Interface options and enable SSH.

VNC Server

For the VNC server i did not use raspi-config but installed the tightvncserver as described in this blog post.

The tightvncserver can be set up as a service that persists, so you can connect and disconnect from the server and the desktop session stays alive.

Timezone

For setting up the timezone you can also use raspi-config.

Wifi

If you want to use Wifi with your Raspberry Pi without having to login you probably have to set this up, when it does not work out of the box.

You have to create a netplan configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml

And put this content:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: networkd
  wifis:
    wlan0:
      dhcp4: yes
      access-points:
        "YOUR_ACCESS_POINT_NAME":
          password: "YOUR_PASSWORD"

You should check iwconfig to make sure wlan0 is your wifi device, otherwise you have to change this to the correct value in the config.

After saving the configuration file you should run the following commands:

sudo netplan generate
sudo netplan apply

Mono

My own trading software is written in C# and under Linux I need Mono to run it. I followed the instructions to install the most up to date Mono from their homepage:

sudo apt install gnupg ca-certificates
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb https://download.mono-project.com/repo/ubuntu stable-bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-official-stable.list
sudo apt update

sudo apt-get install mono-complete

Oracle Java

sudo apt install oracle-java8-jdk

You can then check the installed version with

java -version

IB Gateway

Installing the IB Gateway is a bit tricky. The default setup for linux includes its own JVM and does not support ARM. It cannot be installed on the Raspberry Pi without modification.

Download the IB Gateway software from Interactive brokers and open it in vim in binary mode:

vim -b ibgateway-stable-standalone-linux-x64.sh

At the beginning there is a line with INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE. I uncommented it and pointed it to the installed Java Virtual Machine.

INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk-8-oracle-arm32-vfp-hflt

A bit further down in the script there is a test_jvm() function which does a version check. Modifying the version numbers that are checked for, so that the installed jvm will be accepted, allows one to run the script.

More precisely there is the following code, that needs to be changed. Just set the version to the one you have.

136   if [ "$ver_major" = "" ]; then
137     return;
138   fi
139   if [ "$ver_major" -lt "1" ]; then
140     return;
141   elif [ "$ver_major" -eq "1" ]; then
142     if [ "$ver_minor" -lt "8" ]; then
143       return;
144     elif [ "$ver_minor" -eq "8" ]; then
145       if [ "$ver_micro" -lt "0" ]; then
146         return;
147       elif [ "$ver_micro" -eq "0" ]; then
148         if [ "$ver_patch" -lt "152" ]; then
149           return;
150         fi
151       fi
152     fi
153   fi
154 
155   if [ "$ver_major" = "" ]; then
156     return;
157   fi
158   if [ "$ver_major" -gt "1" ]; then
159     return;
160   elif [ "$ver_major" -eq "1" ]; then
161     if [ "$ver_minor" -gt "8" ]; then
162       return;
163     elif [ "$ver_minor" -eq "8" ]; then
164       if [ "$ver_micro" -gt "0" ]; then
165         return;
166       elif [ "$ver_micro" -eq "0" ]; then
167         if [ "$ver_patch" -gt "152" ]; then
168           return;
169         fi
170       fi
171     fi
172   fi

After successful installation the same modifications have to be done to the launcher script for IB Gateway.

Conclusion

After all these steps I am able to run my trading bot on the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is fast enough for my purposes, I trade only at the end of the day. Installing the IB Gateway is a bit tricky but doable.

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