app

#growlab app for Raspberry Pi

Record a timelapse and live preview image with sensor data from a Bosch BME280 or BMP280 sensor

• The BME280 costs slightly more and measures: temperature, humidity and air pressure.
• The BMP can only measure temperature and air pressure.

Example HTML output which can be synced to GitHub Pages, an S3 bucket, or served directly from the RPi using inlets

See also: app roadmap

Assembling the build

• You'll need a Raspberry Pi Zero W or any other Raspberry Pi.
• An RPi camera connected - any version
• A Bosch BME280 or BMP280 sensor connected to GND, VCC SDL and SCL.

How to connect the sensor over i2c

Configuring the RPi

Using raspi-config

• Set your hostname such as growpi
• Enable i2c under interfacing options
• Change the password for the pi user

Getting started with the software

Install git, tmux, Python and font pages

sudo apt update -qy && \
  sudo apt install -qy python3 \
  i2c-tools \
  python3-pip \
  git \
  tmux \
  libopenjp2-7 \
  libopenjp2-7-dev \
  libopenjp2-tools

The libopenjp2 package is for overlaying text on top of the images.

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/alexellis/growlab
cd growlab/app

Get the free Roboto font from Google's download page:

curl -sSL https://github.com/googlefonts/roboto/releases/download/v2.138/roboto-unhinted.zip -o roboto.zip \
  && unzip roboto.zip -d roboto \
  && rm roboto.zip

Install Python modules with pip3:

sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Capture a test image to determine if you need a horizontal or vertical flip or not:

# On the RPi
raspistill -o growlab.jpg

# From your PC:
scp pi@growlab.local:~/growlab.jpg Desktop/

# On a Mac:
open Desktop/growlab.jpg

# On a Linux desktop:
xdg-open Desktop/growlab.jpg

If needed, test again with -vf or -hf to flip the image.

Edit the config.json file if needed and update the flip settings, and width and height to match the file that you got from your test growlab.jpg image.

{
    "images": {
        "output_dir": "./images/",
        "encoding": "jpeg",
        "width": 2592,
        "height": 1944,
        "image_quality": 70,
        "preview_seconds": 1,
        "vertical_flip": false,
        "horizontal_flip": false,
        "interval_seconds": 600
    },
    "text": {
        "colour": {
            "red": 255,
            "green": 255,
            "blue": 255
        },
        "size": 48
    }
}

Capture a test photo and HTML page. You'll see the files generated in the html folder as image.jpg and index.html.

python3 app.py

If you have no sensors, then run:

export SENSOR_TYPE=none
python3 app.py

If you have the BMP280, then run this instead:

export SENSOR_TYPE=bmp280
python3 app.py

Serve a preview with GitHub pages

Configure GitHub pages and / or a custom domain using the CNAME approach

Set the folder for serving content to "docs"

Generate an SSH key:

cd growlab/app
mkdir -p .ssh

ssh-keygen -f `pwd`/.ssh/id_rsa

Remove the HTTPS git remote and add a SSH one, changing "alexellis" to your own name.

git remote rm origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:alexellis/growlab.git

Configure your git user/email:

git config --global user.name 'YOUR_USERNAME'
git config --global user.email 'YOUR_EMAIL'

Go to the repo settings and add the deploy key and check Allow write access

Now run the sample.sh bash script. Feel free to view its contents to see how it works

mkdir -p docs
cd growlab/app

./sample.sh

You can also put this into a loop to run every 10 minutes:

while [ true ] ; do ./sample.sh && echo "waiting 10 minutes" && sleep 600 ; done

Install growlab as a service

In the growlab.service file change the line where says Environment="SENSOR_TYPE=none" if you are using a sensor then change for the sensor you have, ie. if you have BMP280 change for Environment="SENSOR_TYPE=bmp280"

Install the systemd service:

chmod +x app.py
sudo cp growlab.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl enable growlab
sudo systemctl start growlab