Frogweather - a Frog-Themed Weather Station

Screenshots

What is frogweather?

Frogweather is a weather app and library written in Python. It generates images that show both the current time and weather information, specifically the temperature and precipitation probability within the next three hours. The background image shows a frog-themed visualization of the current weather.

Since this app is meant to provide weather station images that are displayed on a 64x128 LED matrix, the images are of size 64x128. If you need other sizes, you can resize the images or replace the background images by your own images. The background images are located in the images folder.

How to use frogweather?

First, run the example script:

1. Install the dependencies via pip:

   pip install pygame PyYAML requests

2. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/acschaefer/frogweather

3. Request an API key from Weather API. The key comes for free and allows you to access the Weather API weather service 1M times per month free of charge. Frogweather is designed not to exceed this limit.

4. Paste your key into the file apikey.yaml.

5. Find out the geographical coordinates of your location, for example via the GPS Coordinates website.

6. Paste your coordinates into the file location.yaml.

7. Run the example program:

   python frogweather/frogweather.py

   This command will open a window that displays the weather station image. It will also continuously update the image.

Now you can use the frogweather package in your own Python module. The following Python code snippet shows how to do it:

# Import the module.
import frogweather

# Read the configuration files.
frogweather.init()

# Continuously check for new weather station images.
while True:
    # Check if a new weather station image is available.
    if frogweather.update():
        # Access the updated image.
        image = frogweather.get_image()

How does frogweather work?

In order to generate an image, the frogweather module executes the following steps:

1. It retrieves the current time from the operating system.
2. It downloads the current local weather information, i.e. temperature and precipitation probability, from Weather API.
3. It renders the weather station image.

How to set up a weather station on a Raspberry Pi?

In order to set up a frogweather-powered weather station consisting of a Raspberry Pi and two 64x64 LED matrices, you first need to set up the hardware. For detailed instructions on setting up the matrices, see the Raspberry Pi LED matrix driver repository. If you have access to a 3D printer, you might find my 3D model of a frame for two LED matrices helpful. Then, perform the above steps to download and run the example script frogweather.py. Once everything works, perform the following software engineering:

1. Install Raspbian Lite on the Raspberry Pi.

2. Switch off on-board sound: Change the corresponding line in the Raspbian system file /boot/config.txt to

   dtparam=audio=off
   

3. Disable unnecessary services:

   sudo apt-get remove bluez bluez-firmware pi-bluetooth triggerhappy pigpio

4. To isolate the fourth CPU from tasks scheduled by the operating system, append the following to the Raspbian system file /boot/cmdline.txt:

   isolcpus=3
   

   Make sure the command above is separated by a space from the preceding commands; do not insert a line break.

5. Download the excellent Raspberry Pi LED matrix driver repository:

   git clone https://github.com/hzeller/rpi-rgb-led-matrix

6. Build the Python bindings of the LED matrix driver: Navigate to your clone of the rpi-rgb-led-matrix repository and in the folder rpi-rgb-led-matrix/bindings/python/, run the following commands:

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev python-pillow -y
   make build-python
   sudo make install-python

7. Navigate to the folder frogweather/frogweather and launch the weather station:

   sudo ./showfrog

   The sudo command is required by the LED matrix driver.

8. In order to launch the weather station automatically after boot, append the following command to the Raspbian system file /etc/rc.local:

   sudo python /path/to/frogweather/frogweather/showfrog &

The result looks like this:

Frogweather weather station

Credits

The background images used in this project are modifications of the background images shown in Google's weather app.