Weather Report 🌡️🌤️

Weather display project, featuring a Inky wHAT e-ink display and a Raspberry Pi.

• The Weather Report is meant to display the weather in a more visually pleasing layout, which will combine assets such as hourly readings, date and time, and whatever comes along.

Features

Current weather information

• Temperature
• Highs and Lows
• Weather conditions (rainy, sunny, etc.)
• Humidity
• Wind
• Icon depicting weather conditions

Hourly Weather Forecast (Every two hours, total of eight hours ahead)

• Temperature
• Future time of forecast
• One word weather conditions

Hardware / Software Used

• Raspberry Pi Zero W (Headers)
• Inky
  • wHAT Display (Pimoroni Link)
  • Impression 7-Color (for impression-main.py) (Pimoroni Link)
• Micro SD Card (min. 8GB)
• OpenWeatherMaps API
  • One can get free API licenses by going to this link

Installation

1. Enable I2C and SPI under raspi-config

   sudo raspi-config

2. Get and install git

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install git

3. Install libraries for Inky wHAT/Impression displays:

   curl https://get.pimoroni.com/inky | bash

4. Install pyOWM. pyOWM is a python library that utilizes the OpenWeatherMaps APIs.

   pip install pyowm

5. Copy the git repo for this project

   git clone https://github.com/Hothomir/weather-report.git

6. Go to the weather-report directory

   cd weather-report

7. Access configfile.ini using nano

   nano configfile.ini

8. Change the values to what is preferred. Example for Philadelphia, PA:

   
   [OWM_API]
   api = 123456789abcdefg

[Location] latitude = 39.952583 longitude = -75.165222 city = Philadelphia country = US

9. Run the program while in the weather-report directory

Inky wHAT: python main.py Inky Impression: python impression-main.py

# Recurring Display Refreshes
To get new weather information in timed intervals, I've used crontab. Crontab schedules when to run the main.py file and is flexible with how often it should be run.

I've set up the crontab job to run every 30 minutes, so the display will refresh every 30 minutes. Example:
1. Open crontab in terminal

crontab -e

2. At the bottom of the crontab file, provide the following line:

/30 * python /home/pi/weather-report/main.py

3. To refresh the display every 60 mins (every hour):

/60 * python /home/pi/weather-report/main.py

# To-Do
- Where the weather condition prints "Clear" in the image, it would be better to print the detailed condition for the current weather. However, need to see how to wrap text, as the detailed conditions print as one line and get cut off by the edge of the display.

# Resources
pyOWM
https://pyowm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#

Pimoroni Inky
https://github.com/pimoroni/inky