WeatherFlow PiConsole - Archive

[rynwohld]

Hello, thanks for the awesome app! I have two questions. First is, I cannot figure out what to put in for the CheckWX API key? So my nearest airport that has METARs is KSET, do I just put in KSET?

Next question is I want to mail my current setup to my dad, how do I repeat the initial setup? Can I delete the config somehow and it will let me redo the setup? Thanks!

[eric]

Hello rynwohld

Regarding CheckWX , you have to make yourself an account on their website, put nearest airport in your profile and then you see a long api key you have to copy over in the setup. (Later maybe set nearest airport near your dad)

Regarding sending it over to your dad, no need for a full re install. In the wfpiconsole.ini file you can always manually change details like gps coordinates etc.
just don’t forget to reboot wfpiconsole so it is taken into account during startup

Hope this short answer will help you going.

[rynwohld]

Got it, thanks! I couldn’t find what you were talking about so I did the Request API key form and then my API key showed up in my profile. I will find the .ini and edit it! Thanks!

[rynwohld]

Well, I found the spot to put the API, but the forecast isn’t showing up at all. Any hints for getting it to work? I have triple checked to make sure its right. I was rifling through the 1000 comments and maybe saw something about forecasts not working recently, but don’t know if that’s true or not.

[eric]

Forecast is based on DarkSky. If you have an API key from the period before it was bought by Apple it will work for now. New accounts won’t work anymore. Peter is working on a replacement but that is in development for now. He’ll tell once it is ready I guess.

Darksky & Apple

the emphasis across social media seems the pointing of the finger at apple should be more appropriate to pointing the finger at darksky at the end of the day they sold out . my guess most small companies would cherish the thought of a buy out from a large company …money talks and very few businesses would not be swayed especially in these turbulent times … i wonder what wf would think if apple came along and said your product suits our homekit approach … whilst it would be easy to say no we woul…

[marcow46]

I updated the code a little bit to use the WeatherFlow forecast API. So that’s definitely possible. I sent Peter some PMs, so he can look at my changes and comment before I run off into a bad direction.

[peter]

@stevecody - nice work getting your pool temperature to show on the console!

Thanks for the suggestion re. a high visibility layout. I’ll definitely admit that in its current format the console is designed for “detail” rather than “visibility”. Unfortunately you are right that creating a high visibility version would required a major re-write of the layout code. I won’t say this will never happen (as I do like the idea), but I’m afraid it is not high up the list at the moment.

[stevecody]

I had actually just backed up all of my modifications and reverted to your original code. I have been having a freezing issue where the display hangs until it’s restarted. It’s been happening multiple times per day. It was happening with your code too so I was just getting ready to send a message about it.

[eric]

updated and running as expected for now

[peter]

This freezing issue came up a while back, but I thought I had fixed it. When it freezes does the clock also stop? Is anything shown on the terminal? Do you have anything else running on the same Pi?

[stevecody]

When it freezes, the clock stops and the weather panels are no longer updating. There is nothing else running on this pi. It’s a new install of Raspbian running on a Pi 3.

[peter]

And you don’t see any errors printed to the terminal?

[stevecody]

No errors that I can see. Would there be any in a log? The kivy log doesn’t have any errors in it.

[peter]

No, all errors should be printed to the terminal. This is a bit of a puzzler. The freezing issue I fixed before did not involve the clock stopping, and was caused by the Websocket not reconnecting after a dropout. For the clock to stop either the code has to have got caught in some infinite loop (which is possible although I have never seen it), or your Raspberry Pi has run out of memory or its CPU is struggling.

Is there anything you can do to recreate the freezing? Can you try and increase the shared graphics memory using the raspi-config tool

@WeatherFlow PiConsole Third-Party Integrations

Yea I’ve seen this problem once or twice as well. I think it is due to a shortage of graphics memory. One thing to try would be to completely power down to the Pi (including unplugging) to fully flush the RAM. The other option is to increase the amount of memory available to the graphics card in raspi-config under Advanced → Memory split (Raspberry Pi Documentation - Configuration).

EDIT: also, I see in the screenshot you shared above that there is a little lightning bolt icon in the top right. This shows when your power supply is not providing enough power to your Rasberry Pi. If that is showing all the time, or even intermittently, it might be a reason why you are seeing it freeze

[stevecody]

Thanks for the information about the lightning bolt. That came up after I switched power supplies while troubleshooting the freezing issue. I switched it back to my main powersupply and it’s looking fine. I had already increased the video memory to 128. I just changed it to 256mb just now. I power cycled it as well to ensure all video memory is flushed.

Also, I’m not able to repro the issue at will. Basically I just have to leave it running and within a couple of hours it will be hung. I’ll let you know how it goes now.

Thanks.

[marcow46]

Updated & merged & backed the running wfpiconsole directory by my git repository;-) Now pulls & merges should be easy to do;-)

[chuckmc]

Hey Peter,I don’t know if you are still looking for an indoor temp, humidy, air quality sensor but I’ve used these in other projects and they seem to work well. Have a look:

uThing::VOC

Whatever you choose I’ll buy one the get the indoor temp on the screen.
Thanks

[marcow46]

I have currently one of Enviro for Raspberry Pi - Enviro on order [from Digikey in the US]. I like the idea, that it plugs into the back [of the screen] I don’t need the little display here but I hope, I can use the light sensor to turn of the RPi screen when it’s dark.
Little IIC based BME280 boards are plentiful, they would all connect more or less easily to the RPi GPIO connector.

[stevecody]

Here is a little more on the freezing issue. I moved the power for the screen to a separate USB power source. The lightning bolt is gone.
The screen froze last night at 11:59:00 according to the clock on the display. I left it over night and this morning, the clock now says 4:12:37am. The pi has been up for 10 hours, so it looks like it came back on its own, but froze again. I’m going to leave it and see if it updates the time and weather again.

[peter]

Thanks for the info. It’ll be interesting to see if it comes back. I have been running your station on my Pi4 since yesterday afternoon and have not seen the same freezing.

Do you mind helping with a little troubleshooting? I think the best place to start is to strip the console right back to basics and see what happens. With that in mind can you open main.py and comment out:

line 243: astro.SunriseSunset(self.Astro,self.config)
line 244: astro.MoonriseMoonset(self.Astro,self.config)
line 245: forecast.Download(self.MetData,self.config)
line 248: Thread(target=sagerForecast.Generate, args=(self.Sager,self.config), name="Sager").start()
line 251: self.WebsocketConnect()
line 254: Clock.schedule_once(partial(system.checkVersion,self.Version,self.config,updateNotif))
line 257: Clock.schedule_interval(self.UpdateMethods,1.0)
line 258: Clock.schedule_interval(partial(astro.sunTransit,self.Astro,self.config),1.0)
line 259: Clock.schedule_interval(partial(astro.sunTransit,self.Astro,self.config),1.0)

All you should see is a completely blank console with just the clock ticking over on the rainfall panel. can you leave it running like this (don’t press any buttons etc.) and let me know if it still freezes after a few hours?