updated, rebooted and … it’s running
did a full upgrade and let your script update the pi as proposed, all seems perfect to me for now. Let’s see in a few days 
Thanks peter
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This looks like a lot of fun and very useful. I don’t have any experience with RPi and such but I’ve started ordering parts and will give it a go. I hope I’m not too much of a noob pest here when I get started.
First question:
On the display there’s a spot for indoor temp. Is the source for that info from an RPi Sense HAT or is it unused at this time waiting on a new product from WF?
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Updated with no problems.
Is there a way to select panels for those of us with no touch?
Not complaining, just respectfully asking.
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Not yet - but there will be! The system I’m developing will allow you to change the panels by editing the .ini file directly, with no need to rely on touch input. Of course for those with a touch screen, they’ll be able to change the panel layout from within the console itself.
I’m making good progress with the development, but don’t have an ETA yet.
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Thanks for checking out the PiConsole. Feel free to ask as many questions as you need. I’m happy to help as much as I can.
In response to your first question, the space is reserved for the as yet unreleased Breathe module that the WeatherFlow team are hopefully developing. There is no ETA on when they are going to release it though, so in the meantime that indoor temperature will just remain as a “placeholder”.
I updated to v2.8 the other day and all went well except I still had the flickering Wind Speed display problem.
However I have just had to do a new clean install on another SD card using v2.8 and have had none of the earlier install problems. The bonus with the new install is no flickering display, so I guess you have you have solved the earlier install bugs, and the Air worked without having any Lightning Strikes recorded.
Thanks again for your work and can’t wait for future improvements.
David.
Great to hear you have managed to get everything up and running problem free.
This flickering display problem randomly crops up every now and again, and is really annoying. It is actually nothing to do with the console itself, but is due to the fact that the Pi shares its RAM between both the CPU and the graphics processing. The default setup allocates lots of RAM to the CPU, and less to the graphics. This can cause the flickering issue if the graphics try to use more RAM than is available. Fortunately, it is very easy to increase the amount of memory given to the graphics.
Open a terminal window and type raspi-config. Then go to Advanced → Memory split and increase the number here to 128. You might need to reboot, but that should hopefully solve the problem for ever!
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Awesome work Peter! Thank you very much for this excellent tool!
With no experience with Raspberry Pi, I went from a pile of new parts to a beautiful, fully operational WeatherFlow PiConsole in just a couple of hours this afternoon. I’m very happy with the process and the product.
(and now, a few more noob questions…)
Is the “Current Forecast” panel just using Dark Sky data, or is it a mix of Dark Sky forecast and metar data from my local airport? If all Dark Sky, where is the airport metar from the CheckWX api used?
Is there a way to change the screen timeout? I looked thru the RPi preferences panel and didn’t see anything there and an earlier discussion in this thread didn’t clear it up for me. I would like to have it stay up an hour or hours after a touch, or maybe even stay on full time if that won’t kill the screen.
Is there a way to jump back and forth from the console to the RPi desktop using just the touchscreen?
Thanks for any help on these questions, and again - THANK YOU for such a nice tool.
Thanks for checking out the PiConsole, and I’m very glad to hear you managed to get up and running so easily.
The current forecast panel is just Dark Sky data. The METAR information is used to generate the Sager Forecast, which can be accessed by pressing on the Forecast button in the bottom left of the screen. The Sager Forecast gives a more localized forecast based on the exact conditions observed by your weather station and the local METAR information.
The screen timeout is a bit annoying on the Pi. The best way I have got it to work is using something called DPMS. I don’t think it would be good for the screen for it to remain on continuously, but to have it stay up for an hour first open a terminal and type xset -display :0 +dpms to turn DPMS on. To check it is turned on then type xset -display :0 q into the terminal and look for something like this at the bottom:
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standby: 300 Suspend: 300 Off: 300
DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is On
Finally, to set the screen timeout for an hour type this command into the terminal xset -display :0 dpms 3600 3600 3600 (3600 seconds in an hour). If you want it to remain on for longer, just make the number larger - 7200 for two hours or 10800 for three hours etc. Hopefully this will give you the behavior you want.
Not that I know of I’m afraid. Might be worth Googling to see if you can find anything.
I think I must have something related to the Sager forecast set up wrong. For the three days that I’ve had the PiConsole running the Sager forecast page has been providing forecasts that are not close to correct - the most glaring example is that it’s been forecasting gale force winds all three days when they’ve actually been fairly mild and all other forecasts I look at show them at less than 7-8 mph. Any thoughts on where to look for incorrect setup info that might be causing this? Is CheckWX using the “home airport” associated with my account there or the actual lat/long from my WF station (which appears to be correct based on where the WF map shows me located)?
Can you let me know your station number and I’ll have a look into what is going on?
It should be noted that the Sager Forecast is derived directly from the data recorded by your WF station:
- change in wind direction over the last 6 hours
- change in wind speed over the last 6 hours
- change in pressure over the last 6 hours
- current temperature
- time since last rainfall
as well as the current weather conditions at the closest METAR location (primarily current cloud cover). It isn’t always going to be as accurate as a professional forecast, but something definitely seems off with the prediction of gale force winds (unless the wind speeds at your station are particularly high!).
Thanks Peter. Station #7198
This morning’s forecast (6:00am): Showers and cooler; Wind strong to near gale (25-38 mph). Shifting (or variable).
As of now, avg wind speed here today 0.6 with a max gust of 6.5mph.
Further info on the forecast issue:
Current Sager from 18:00 today:
“Rain and turning cooler then improvement likely in 24 hours; Wind storm to violent storm (55-73 mph). North or northeast, becoming northwest or north later.”
Actual avg. wind speed today has been 1.5 with a max gust of 11-mph. Windy.com forecast peak avg. for the next 24-hrs is 8-mph with a peak gust of 15-mph.
Thanks for the reports - definitely helped track down the problem. Turns out I was feeding the forecast with the station pressure rather than sea level pressure. Hence it always forecasting storm-like conditions.
I am away from home at the moment, but will try and get an update pushed later today. If this doesn’t work though, I will have to wait until early next week. Sorry!
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Thank you Peter! The Sager forecast looks quite reasonable now.
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ran full update, reboot and … all seems ok.
thanks Peter
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I’ve been getting a Missing Metar Information. It’s been going on for awhile but have never looked into the issue. Is there a way to find out what’s going on?
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Weird! I’m unlikely to get a chance to dig into this in the next few days, but will have a look next week.
In the meantime though, at a guess I’d imagine that when you first created the .ini file it was unable to find the Metar information becuase by coincidence the API was down. You could try moving the existing config file into another directory and then run the console. It will guide you through creating a new config file, and this may fix the problem. Let me know if you give this a try!
Yes, that fixed the problem. Thanks!
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