BYU Covid Bot

A twitter python bot which uses beautifulsoup to scrape BYU's daily COVID-19 numbers and tweet them. The twitter account is @BotByu

Implementation

This is built on a raspberry pi running in the corner of my bedroom.

Steps Involved

• Learn how to install python3 modules using pip.
• Use requests to download the html for the BYU Covid Updates page.
• Read beautifulsoup tutorials/documentation to figure out how to grab the correct element on the BYU page.
• Get a developer account for Twitter.
• Use tweepy to make authorized requests to post COVID-19 updates.
• Learn to use ssh to transfer my python script to my raspberry pi and install the necessary python3 modules.
• Use crontab to schedule the running of my python3 script every two hours on the hour.

Future Steps

• Add automated graphs showing changes over time.
• Add web scraping of COVID-19 statistics for Utah County and other local universities.