Using a Raspberry Pi to Broadcast a Retro Weather Channel

The Weather Channel (or The Weather Network for Canadians) is one of those channels that we millennials tend to forget about, especially since few of us even bother to pay for cable these days. So, when we do think about watching the weather on TV, we picture the vintage graphics that were playing at our grandparents’ house when we visited — not the modern Weather Channel with all of their fancy, dramatic graphics. Even so, it actually is pretty convenient to be able to pull the current weather information up on your TV. That’s why YouTuber Probnot’s Tech used a Raspberry Pi to broadcast a retro weather channel.

The graphics for this homebrew weather channel are very basic, which is perfect for replicating that vintage feeling that feeds our nostalgia. Specifically, it’s meant to look like the Winnipeg weather channel from the ‘90s. A green bar at the top of the screen shows the current time alongside “Environment Canada.” The majority of the screen is taken up by a red box in the center that gives a brief summary of the day’s expected weather conditions. Finally, another green bar at the bottom of the screen displays a ticker with the City of Winnipeg’s news RSS feed — presumably because that’s where the creator lives.

That’s all handled by a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that’s connected to the TV. A script written in Python 3 pulls the relevant data, and uses it to generate the information and graphics seen on screen. The current weather is pulled from Environment Canada, and the RSS feed comes from the City of Winnipeg itself. While this should work on just about any Raspberry Pi model, you will need the “full” version of Raspbian with the desktop. That’s because Tkinter is used to generate the graphics from within Python, and that requires the GUI. Probnot’s Tech has uploaded their code to GitHub, and it should be pretty easy for you to tailor to fit your own location — though you may need to tweak the color scheme if you’re not a Winnipegger.