I started this topic on April 10th and I just noticed that I have received 636 links on the my 486 posts.
I have seen a few comments from members that feel setting up a Raspberry Pi is beyond their capability so I had an idea. If the total likes on my posts reach 1000 by April 10th, I will send one of those members a fully configured 128GB SC Card that will run ArchiveSW on boot-up. If the total reaches 1500 I will send out two cards. All the member has to do is supply their own RPi 3B+ and power supply and plug the RPi into an Ethernet port on their router.
What do you all think? Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
I think it is generous of you
(For me WFArchive/ArchiveSW serves a very useful purposes. There might be some other method but I have not learned about any other application that will easily store my weather data into an SQL database even when I loose electricity to my house. And I dont like how my old detailed data is lost from view in the weatherflow graph display)
But for the person who:
Then once they have it running, displaying and storing in their database they will still have challenges they might not wish to face.
When you look at the extra things that they have requested they would have difficulty using the database to generate their specialised outputs and they most likely would not be able to generate any graphs.
I feel the best help for them is to have easy instructions to see how easy it is for them to learn if they wish to.
Either written with images and/or youtube videos actually demonstrating how to do everything.
And then there will be an update that changes something and they will have to figure out what went wrong. It happens to me sometimes and I am using it all as a learning process and it is challenging and exercising my brain.
I accept those who say:
It was beyond my capability but with your encouragement and assistance I was able to get it running. And I will help others if I can:
Everyone likes graphs. I, I, I just donât know what to do about graphs on the RPi. I think you guys wonât be real happy till I just do it.
I know I need to build an application to query the stored data and I have been playing with ideas on how that will work. There is a lot still to do and my goal to make this so super easy that even @eric can do it in his sleep.
So hang in there and we will figure this out together. Iâm still working on basic applications that will keep this thing running.
Hi @GaryFunk, Iâm getting the flashing red date but donât see any updates available. I did update yesterday evening and this morning I see the flashing red date. I saw this line come through on the Server tab: {"To":"Panel","Msg:"{"type":"file_updates","value":true,"version":"1.7.15.059"}}
I ran UpdateFiles and AlterTables but nothing changed.
BTW, I tapped the flashing date and it shut off, as expected. But just a few minutes later it came back on again.
Iâm putting this here so others can have access to this information. Adjusting the brightness is so super simple. I need to add a photo diode to measure the brightness and write a value to the file. One can also use push button switches attached to GPIO pins to increase and decrease brightness.
I opened an ssh terminal on my desktop and would execute " echo 50 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/brightness" with different values and watch the display change brightness. I added BRIGHTNESS_DEFAULT 60 to the C code and updated the relevant if-then-else section so I can now just execute rpi-backlight default to get back to my personal default value. I also determined that a minimum of 10 was the dimmest value and after 180, to me, there wasnât a visible change. I also changed the step size to 2 which is close to a 1% change since I like finer grained changes.
I would love to have a push buttons switches to change brightness along with a photodiode. The pushbuttons would then adjust the relative brightness for a given photodiode input.
Speaking of displays, I have been wondering what it would take to use https://www.waveshare.com/6inch-e-paper-hat.htm as a display. No touch support but it would make for a low power setup.
E ink has it weirdness, as it is not an âactiveâ screen it needs to refresh pretty often to eliminate reminiscence. Ebook readers refresh the complete screen every x pages/time (like a flickr visually, goes complete black -> complete clean and then shows next page. This is what happens on my pocketbook)
If you want to use this kind of screens you need to include this action or you end with e very gibberish screen in no time.
So using it with ArchiveSW or a similar console might work ok but would have to incorporate a screen refresh cycle every so often, depending on how âblurryâ one can stand the wind speed and direction to be. I was looking at that screen because it has a <1s refresh time which wouldnât be too bad for a weather display and would be extremely low power.
Are you saying it automatically does a screen clear to remove ghosting or are you talking about the ordinary refresh?
Both of mine run for 24-36 hours, then stop taking in power from the wall and run on battery until the battery is depleted and shut off. This is while powering the RPi, 7" display and hub. It took several emails with the vendor for them to understand what was going on. Here is one of the pictures I sent them.
The battery monitoring is obviously not working, after the battery dies and powering off and on again, the unit still doesnât take in any energy. Pressing the status button does the same thing. The only way to get it to start working again is to unplug it from the wall. The company refunded my money on them, so I canât fault them for that.
I thought about getting a lamp timer with as short of an on time as I can find and just have it power cycle the UPS once/day to make sure it stayed working.
I ended up ordering a PiJuice HAT to try. It is a bit more expensive but hopefully it will work as a true UPS without the issues this one has.
Here is another one which looks like it has some good features, too. I appears that it can properly use LiFePO4 cells which typically have a much longer cycle life than Li-poly.
Iâve used three different power supplies, including the official Raspberry one that came with a used Meteobridge Pro.
Hi Energy watchers,
I used to run a desktop PC for my old weather station which was very noticeable in my energy use and power bill. I am now using the raspberry Pi and did these calculations from my readings: My WF Hub is using 0.12Watts. My raspberry Pi with a cooling fan (Excluding monitor which is usually off) is using 2.9Watts. x24hrs=0.072kWh/day which at my price for electricity is 1.8c/day and due to my solar panels negating it during daylight only half that is purchased. So this system is storing my data for less than 1c/day!!! Unbelievable, perhaps I should recheck my figures
cheers Ian
I have used it as an interval timer on my Texas Electronics 6" heated tipping bucket rain gauge to minimize the evaporative loss from the heater, but it should work just fine in your application.
