figured out the issue (the database charset), added documentation how…

… to set up DB from mysql CLI

docs/connect_mysql.md

@@ -20,4 +20,16 @@ the virtual environment.
 
 In the config file the connection needs to be set up using :
 
-    SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'mysql+pymysql://user:pass@ip_address/database'
+    SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'mysql+pymysql://user:pass@ip_address/database'
+
+
+## Setting up the database using the MySQL CLI
+
+First create a database. The character set and collate are important as sqlalchemy-migrate doesn't work with utf8mb4 (the
+default).
+
+    CREATE DATABASE planet_db_01 CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_general_ci;
+
+Give permissions to a user (planet_dev in this example) to access the database:
+
+    GRANT INDEX, CREATE, DROP, SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, ALTER, EXECUTE, INSERT on planet_db_01.* TO planet_dev@localhost;