Kobo Wifi Weather Forecast

[weese]

Originally Posted by pcapelo

Hi gang,

I had mine working for so long that when it stopped working i had no ideia what was going on.

what exactly changed, where can I get the new script and how can I install??

thanks in advance

PC

I just adapted the new weather app to some API changes at worldweatheronline. Just update or clone the app from:
http://bitbucket.org/david_weese/kobo-weather-app

Cheers,
David

[laidig]

Just a note for anyone trying this out from here on. It appears that the API from worldweatheronline has changed slightly:
1. The key embedded in the app has ceased to work
2. If you request a new key, you will receive a new URL.

To solve this, go to worldweatheronline.com, sign up for an account and request a new 'free' api key. Once you have it, go to
http://developer.worldweatheronline.com/io-docs to see how it works.

You can then drop your new URL into the same python script, searching for "weather_link="

http://api.worldweatheronline.com/free/v1/weather.ashx?q={0},{1}&format=xml&num_of_days=5&ke y=[YOUR KEY HERE]

[exachillus]

Hi

Does this work with Kobo Glo?

[Tandy]

Hello all,

A newbie here who very much wants to get a Kobo for this specific purpose. I'm planning on scouring ebay for one. Are there any concerns (aside from condition) regarding particular models/versions that would prevent rooting and this from working?

Thanks for all the work you've done!

[KevinShort]

Originally Posted by Tandy

Hello all,

A newbie here who very much wants to get a Kobo for this specific purpose. I'm planning on scouring ebay for one. Are there any concerns (aside from condition) regarding particular models/versions that would prevent rooting and this from working?

Thanks for all the work you've done!

There are two models of the Kobo Wifi, and this hack works on both of them. You will have to make the change outlined in this post since World Weather Online changed their API.

[rantoie]

Does this work for the Aura (HD)? The latest firmware is 3.1.1 and it looks like this doesn't work with anything newer than 2.5.2...

[KevinShort]

Originally Posted by rantoie

Does this work for the Aura (HD)? The latest firmware is 3.1.1 and it looks like this doesn't work with anything newer than 2.5.2...

No, I haven't updated the app to run on anything besides the Wifi, Touch, and Mini.

[Tandy]

Got my Kobo in today, and all is working! The device did do a firmware update when I connected it to the network. And later I noticed that the autoupdate would not work, it looks like this busybox doesn't have crond.

Can that be installed on its own?

I did a temporary workaround with "watch" :
watch -n 300 /mnt/onboard/.python/weather.sh > /dev/null &

However I haven't read up on the power requirements of this device. Eventually I plan on building a little docking station so it can stay plugged in. Thanks for your work, Kevin!

[Tandy]

My Kobo Wifi has an 8-bit display, as indicated by fbset. Is there any way to refresh the display without it filling the screen with black, and then back to white?

[KevinShort]

Originally Posted by Tandy

My Kobo Wifi has an 8-bit display, as indicated by fbset. Is there any way to refresh the display without it filling the screen with black, and then back to white?

I don't have an 8-bit Kobo myself, so I don't know if there's another way. The only way I've found to refresh the screen on the Wifi is by using Pickel.

[Tandy]

Originally Posted by KevinShort

I don't have an 8-bit Kobo myself, so I don't know if there's another way. The only way I've found to refresh the screen on the Wifi is by using Pickel.

Thanks Kevin. So in your Tetris example, you're using the Touch - I'm guessing that means it has additional capabilities for drawing or screen refresh?

Basically I'm looking at rendering data from my own home weather station. At first I figured the easiest way would be for my Linux box of doing the heavy lifting of processing the data and creating the raw image for the Kobo to consume. I figured I'd FTP a new image to the Kobo every time the data is updated.

That was until I realized refreshing the screen every 30 seconds or so would be unpleasant if it has to do a full redraw, so I'm wondering what my other options are.

[KevinShort]

Yeah, on the newer Kobos such as the Touch I found the native IOCTL calls to refresh the screen, so you can then choose what kind of refresh to do. But I haven't been able to find anything like that for the Wifi, although the Kobo software does do partial refreshes somehow.

[andyh2000]

Latest in the line of "what can I do with my Kobo?" - pushing position updates to it over the mqtt protocol and showing an openstreetmap map using osmviz. Python code on the Kobo is based on stuff in this thread. You could use this for showing realtime weather info from sensors as well - anything where you want to push data to the Kobo rather than have it polling.

import urllib2
import pygame, os
import platform
import time
import mosquitto

from osmviz.manager import PygameImageManager, OSMManager
from pygame.locals import *
from datetime import date, datetime, timedelta
from subprocess import call


def on_connect(mosq, obj, rc):
    mosq.subscribe("hello/#", 0)
    print("rc: "+str(rc))

def on_message(mosq, obj, msg):
    print(msg.topic+" "+str(msg.qos)+" "+str(msg.payload))
    if (platform.system() == 'Windows'):
        update_time = "Last updated at " + datetime.now().strftime("%H:%M:%S %Y-%m-%d")
    else:
        update_time = "Last updated at " + datetime.now().strftime("%l:%M%P")

    last_update = tiny_font.render(update_time, True, gray, white)

    me = tiny_font.render("o", True, black, white)

    #Clear screen
    screen.fill(white)

    # Map image
    latlng = msg.payload.split(',')
    lat = float(latlng[0])
    lng = float(latlng[1])
    minlat = lat - 0.01
    maxlat = lat + 0.01
    minlng = lng - 0.01
    image,bnds = osm.createOSMImage( (minlat, maxlat, minlng, maxlng), 16)
    screen.blit(image, (0, 0))
    imgr.destroy_image()

    #Me marker
    screen.blit(me, (299, 399))

    #Update date/time
    screen.blit(last_update, (185, 770))

    if (platform.system() == 'Windows'):
        graphic = pygame.transform.rotate(screen, 0)
    else:
        graphic = pygame.transform.rotate(screen, 90)

    display.blit(graphic, (0, 0))
    pygame.display.update()

    call(["./full_update"])

def on_publish(mosq, obj, mid):
    print("mid: "+str(mid))

def on_subscribe(mosq, obj, mid, granted_qos):
    print("Subscribed: "+str(mid)+" "+str(granted_qos))

def on_log(mosq, obj, level, string):
    print(string)

os.environ['SDL_NOMOUSE'] = '1'

if (platform.system() == 'Windows'):
    pygame.init()
else:
    pygame.display.init()

pygame.font.init()
pygame.mouse.set_visible(False)

white = (255, 255, 255)
black = (0, 0, 0)
gray = (125, 125, 125)

if (platform.system() == 'Windows'):
    display = pygame.display.set_mode((600, 800))
else:
    display = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), pygame.FULLSCREEN)

screen = pygame.Surface((600, 800))

tiny_font = pygame.font.Font("Cabin-Regular.otf", 18)
##small_font = pygame.font.Font("Fabrica.otf", 22)
#font = pygame.font.Font("Forum-Regular.otf", 40)
#bigfont = pygame.font.Font("Forum-Regular.otf", 120)
#comfortaa = pygame.font.Font("Comfortaa-Regular.otf", 80)
#comfortaa_small = pygame.font.Font("Comfortaa-Regular.otf", 35)

imgr = PygameImageManager()
osm = OSMManager(image_manager=imgr)

# Rotate the display to portrait view.

if (platform.system() == 'Windows'):
    graphic = pygame.transform.rotate(screen, 0)
else:
    graphic = pygame.transform.rotate(screen, 90)

display.blit(graphic, (0, 0))
pygame.display.update()

mqttc = mosquitto.Mosquitto()
mqttc.on_message = on_message
mqttc.on_connect = on_connect
mqttc.on_publish = on_publish
mqttc.on_subscribe = on_subscribe
# Uncomment to enable debug messages
#mqttc.on_log = on_log
mqttc.connect("mqttbroker.local", 1883, 60)

if (platform.system() != 'Windows'):
    running = True
    while running:
        mqttc.loop(timeout=0)
        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type == QUIT:
                running = False
            elif event.type == KEYDOWN and event.key == K_ESCAPE:
                pygame.event.post(pygame.event.Event(QUIT))

    mqttc.disconnect()
    pygame.quit()

Andrew

[KevinShort]

That's awesome, Andrew!

[lohtse]

any chance someone could create and easy all in one installation using update file ??