Tommi Honkala's Upgraded Raspberry Pi Weather Clock Offers a Multi-Function Touch Display
The second generation of the project, this multi-functional smart clock uses an ultra-wide touchscreen display and Chromium in kiosk mode.
Maker Tommi Honkala has turned a Raspberry Pi single-board computer into a multi-functional ultra-wide weather station, capable of bringing in the latest weather data alongside household energy usage — and even a live webcam view of his local roads.
"A year ago I replaced my boring clock + thermometer with a Raspberry Pi weather station. Now I'm back with upgrades & replacements," Honkala writes of the project. "[I] replaced the buggy non-touchscreen with a higher quality IPS touchscreen, replaced the Raspberry Pi with an identical one to fix random Wi-Fi crashes, [and] developed my DIY weather clock server further."
The "server" side of the project is key: The user interface and server portions of the project are split, with the display serving to show a Chromium kiosk-mode window connected to the server side's live-updating website.
"Scripts basically get data from OpenWeatherMap, Finnish DigiTraffic API, my electricity provider reporting service, Ruuvi Bluetooth sensors and some others, then stores it all into my SQL Server," Honkala explains. "The clock is a web browser kiosk, which plays a web service running on Python/Flask."
At the moment, Honkala has implemented three key "pages": A weather clock with interior and exterior temperatures, sunrise, and sunset times, plus a weather map; a graph showing the last 24 hours of energy consumption in the home; and a live connection to a local traffic camera. The maker is also working on additional functionality, including stock and cryptocurrency market tracking.
More information is available in Honkala's Reddit thread, though the source code has not yet been published; Honkala has, however, published the source code for the original weather clock build on GitLab under an unspecified open source license.