README.md

WeatherBlink

A Python weather indicator for Blink1 indtened to be run on a Raspberry Pi

Install instructions

Install Raspbian

Download Raspbian here and install on a 4Gb SD card as per the instuctions.

Set static IP

Edit /etc/network/interfaces on the SD card. Something like this:

# The loopback interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
# your static IP
address 192.168.0.100
# your gateway IP
gateway 192.168.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
# your network address
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255

Boot up your Raspberry Pi with network and blink1 attached.

Access Pi and setup system

From terminal ssh into your Pi (password will be "raspberry")

$ ssh pi@192.168.0.100

Optionally run raspi-config to fill partitions, set timezones, change password etc.

$ sudo raspi-config

Create code directory

$ mkdir ~/code

Build blink1 command-line tool from source

$ sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev
$ cd ~/code
$ git clone git://github.com/todbot/blink1.git
$ cd blink1/commandline
$ make
$ sudo ./blink1-tool --on

More instructions

Install git

$ cd ~/code
$ git clone https://github.com/gregology/WeatherBlink.git

Create init.d job

$ sudo nano /etc/init.d/WeatherBlink

And add something like this

#! /bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/WeatherBlink

# The following part always gets executed.
echo "This part always gets executed"

# The following part carries out specific functions depending on arguments.
case "$1" in
  start)
    cd /home/pi/code/WeatherBlink/
    python BlinkWeather.py
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Nothing really happens here"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/foobar {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit 0

Then set permissions

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/WeatherBlink

Create cron job

$ crontab -e

Add this line

*/10 * * * * cd /home/pi/code/WeatherBlink; python FetchWeather.py

Fetch weather and reboot pi

$ cd ~/code/WeatherBlink; python FetchWeather.py
$ sudo reboot