himawaripy
Put near-realtime picture of Earth as your desktop background
himawaripy is a Python 3 script that fetches near-realtime (10 minutes delayed) picture of Earth as its taken by Himawari 8 (ひまわり8号) and sets it as your desktop background.
Set a cronjob that runs in every 10 minutes to automatically get the near-realtime picture of Earth.
Supported Desktop Environments
Tested
- Unity 7
- Mate 1.8.1
- Pantheon
- LXDE
- OS X
- GNOME 3
Not Tested
- KDE
Not Supported
- any other desktop environments that are not mentioned above.
Configuration
You can configure the level of detail, by modifying the script. You can set the
global variable level
to 4
, 8
, 16
, or 20
to increase the quality (and
thus the file size as well). Please keep in mind that it will also take more
time to download the tiles.
You can also change the path of the latest picture, which is by default
~/.himawari/himawari-latest.png
, by changing the output_file
variable.
xfce4
On xfce4, you can set which displays you want to change the background of using the xfce_displays variable. If you get an error and you're not sure which display to use, you can find your display in the output of
xfconf-query --channel xfce4-desktop --list | grep last-image
Nitrogen
If you use nitrogen for setting your wallpaper, you have to enter this in your
~/.config/nitrogen/bg-saved.cfg
.
[:0.0]
file=/home/USERNAME/.himawari/himawari-latest.png
mode=4
bgcolor=#000000
Installation
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/boramalper/himawaripy.git
# configure
cd ~/himawaripy/
vi himawaripy/config.py
# install
sudo python3 setup.py install
# test whether it's working
himawaripy
# Get the installation path of himawaripy by running the command
which -- himawaripy
# Set himawaripy to be called periodically
## Either set up a cronjob
crontab -e
### Add the line:
*/10 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH>
## OR, alternatively use the provided systemd timer
### Configure
vi systemd/himawaripy.service
# Replace "<INSTALLATION_PATH>" with the output of the aforementioned command.
### Copy systemd configuration
cp systemd/himawaripy.{service,timer} $HOME/.config/systemd/user/
### Enable and start the timer
systemctl --user enable --now himawaripy.timer
For KDE Users
So the issue here is that KDE does not support changing the desktop wallpaper from the commandline, but it does support polling a directory for file changes through the "Slideshow" desktop background option, whereby you can point KDE to a folder and have it load a new picture at a certain interval.
The idea here is to:
- Set the cron for some interval (say 9 minutes)
- Open Desktop Settings -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Type -> Slideshow
- Add the
~/.himawari
dir to the slideshow list- Set the interval check to 10 minutes (one minute after the cron, also depending on your download speed)
Many thanks to xenithorb for the solution!
For Mac OSX Users
OSX has deprecated crontab, and replaced it with launchd
. To set up a launch agent, copy the provied sample plist
file in osx/com.user.himawaripy.plist
to ~/Library/LaunchAgents
, and edit the following entries if required
mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
cp osx/com.user.himawaripy.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
-
ProgrammingArguments
needs to be the/path/to/himawaripy/installation
. This should be/usr/local/bin/himawaripy
by default, but himawaripy may be installed elsewhere. -
StartInterval
controls the interval between successive runs, set to 10 minutes (600 seconds) by default, edit as desired.
Finally, to launch it, enter this into the console:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.himawaripy.plist
Uninstallation
# Remove the cronjob
crontab -e
# Remove the line
*/10 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH>
# OR if you used the systemd timer
systemctl --user disable --now himawaripy.timer
rm $HOME/.config/systemd/user/himawaripy.{timer,service}
# Remove the data directory
# By default, `~/.himawari`. Check `output_file` variable in config.py
# in case you've changed it.
rm -rf ~/.himawari
# Uninstall the package
sudo pip3 uninstall himawaripy
If you would like to share why, you can contact me on github or send an e-mail.
Example
Attributions
Thanks to MichaelPote for the initial implementation using Powershell Script.
Thanks to Charlie Loyd for image processing logic (hi8-fetch.py).
Obviously, thanks to the Japan Meteorological Agency for opening these pictures to public.