garrettheath4 / rpi-weather-ink

Weather forecast e-ink display that shows information like the UV index of the day

Raspberry Pi Weather E-Ink Display

The purpose of this project is to have a digital display to always show an up-to-date weather forecast including the UV index of the day.

Installation

1. Install Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi Zero WH (or similar Raspberry Pi model)

2. Connect the Pimoroni Inky pHAT to the headers on the Raspbery Pi

3. Update the software and install Git and a few required system libraries:

    sudp apt update && sudo apt upgrade
    sudo apt install git python-pil python-rpi.gpio python-numpy python-lxml
   

4. Clone this repository and install the required Python libraries:

    git clone https://github.com/garrettheath4/rpi-weather-ink.git
    cd rpi-weather-ink/
    pipenv install --system
   

Dark Sky API Key

If you want to use the Dark Sky API to fetch more accurate forecast data, you'll need to put the Dark Sky API key in a secrets.ini file in the resources/ folder of this project (the rpi-weather-ink/ directory). If you do not provide an API key, only partial forecast data can be fetched by scraping the Dark Sky forecast web page. The secrets file should be formatted like this:

[DarkSky]
api-key = 1234567890abcdef0123456789ABCDEF

Running

Run Once

Just run the weatherink module to refresh the e-ink display.

cd rpi-weather-ink/
python -m weatherink

Run Automatically

Run crontab -e and insert the following line into your crontab file to refresh the screen every 5 minutes.

*/5 * * * * cd $HOME/rpi-weather-ink/ && ( git pull -q ; python -m weatherink )

Features

• Fetches weather forecast data from Dark Sky API
• Displays weather data on e-ink display
  • UV index
  • Sky forecast icon (e.g. sunny or cloudy)
  • High and low temperatures for the day
• Uses Font Awesome 5 Free for icons
• Uses Ubuntu open-source font for text
• Displays warning icon if daily UV index is high (6 or higher by default)
• Refreshes weather data every 5 minutes
• Only re-render e-ink screen if data has changed since previous render

Future Work

• Add code to center an icon at a specific X,Y coordinate on the screen
• Show sunglasses icon if it's sunny right now (current UV index is high instead of daily UV index)
• Show "unplugged" icon if it's offline or unable to reach Dark Sky
• Show chance of precipitation next to the sky icon
• Improve graphic design on screen
• Show graph of forecasted rainfall in the next few minutes and hours

Development

Workflow

sudo pip install pipenv
pipenv install <python-package>
pipenv run python -m weatherink
pipenv lock -r > requirements.txt
sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

Linking System Packages

Some libraries are not available to be installed with the typical pip install <package> command and have to be installed with the system's package manager (i.e. sudo apt install <package>). In order to use those system libraries in a virtualenv environment (like pipenv does), you need to install them with apt and then link them into this project's virtualenv directory.

sudo apt install python-pil
mkdir ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/rpi-weather-ink-T1XSpv21/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
ln -s /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/rpi-weather-ink-T1XSpv21/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL

When adding new dependencies to this project, try to add them using first successful method listed below, in order:

1. pipenv install <package>
2. sudo pip install <package>
3. sudo apt install <package>

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi Zero WH (Zero W with Headers)
• Pimoroni Inky pHAT - 3 Color eInk Display (Yellow/Black/White)
• Adafruit Raspberry Pi Zero Case
• USB On-the-Go Cable (Micro-USB male to USB A female)
• Mini HDMI to HDMI Cable