Welcome to the Weather Machine, by Ed T. Toton III.
Contact info:
necrobones@necronbones.com
bones@necrobones.com
http://www.necrobones.com/
http://www.necrobones.net/
As of this release, my weather station can be viewed at:
http://banshee.necrobones.net/weather.shtml
This set of programs is being distributed for free. Do what you
want with it. Please show credit where credit is due.
INTRODUCTION
The Weather Machine is a perl script that is designed to read and
log weather data via a serial port from a WMR-968 Oregon Scientific
weather station. These can be purchased from a variety of locations
on the net, including eBay.
Log data is stored in flat files, and a one-line status file is
written to every minute as well for current "real time" information.
Two additional scripts are also included for accessing this data.
The first is weatheroutput.pl, which takes command-line arguments
to choose which numbers to display. This is particularly useful for
use with MRTG, as that is what it was designed for (example MRTG
configs are given below. For those who don't know, MRTG is a really
nice free graphing package). The other script, weathertable.pl,
generates an HTML table that can be used as a server-side include.
Future versions may include CGI scripts to display historical data
from the logs, but for now the logs are merely stored with no
retrieval method included.
Yes, not all of the design here is terribly robust or pretty, but
it works, and that was the only design goal. :) Feel free to modify
it for your particular needs.
REQUIREMENTS
A PC running linux, with perl 5, and the following perl modules:
Device::SerialPort
LWP::UserAgent
HTTP::Request
If you don't have them, you can always use cpan to obtain them,
such as like this (executed as root):
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Device::SerialPort
install LWP::UserAgent
install HTTP::Request
INSTALLATION
1. Pick a directory, and put these files there. I use /www/weather,
where /www is a symlink to my htdocs directory. It doesn't matter
what you choose, as long as you edit the paths assigned at the top
of all of the scripts accordingly.
2. Open up each *.pl script and edit the paths accordingly. :) While
you're in there, make sure weathermachine.pl has the correct
serial device for your weather station. If you want it to send
updates to The Weather Underground for you in real time, first set
up an account at www.wunderground.com, and edit the username and
password in the script accordingly. Also make sure the log path
puts the logs where you want them, and that the other scripts are
adjusted to the same location, if you choose to use them.
3. Put a line in your rc.local or other startup script to make sure
it starts up at boot, and give it a manual run to make sure it's
all working. Here's the invocation I use in rc.local:
/www/weather/weathermachine.pl
You'll notice there are no arguments. All configuration is done
at the top of the script itself.
4. You may wish to add a cron-task to ensure it keeps running, just
in case it terminates or gets killed for some reason. Here's what
I use, along with a line to tar up backups of the data:
# Check to make sure weathermachine keeps running
*/10 * * * * cd /www/weather ; ./weathermachine.pl > /dev/null &
15 1 * * * cd /www/weather ; sleep 30 ; tar cvfz weather-backup.tar.gz * > /dev/null
The weathermachine will not run twice, assuming it's program-name
variable is set correctly. :)
5. If you wish to use weathertable.pl, put it (or symlink it)
somewhere where it can be executed by apache as a server-side
include, like this:
6. Enjoy!
MRTG GRAPHS
MRTG (or "Multi Router Traffic Grapher") is a nice graphing engine
that can be used for a variety of purposes. For information on how
to obtain/install it, please visit it's official site:
http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/
While primarily intended to graph SNMP data, it can also be used
to graph locally available real-time data. This is where the
script called weatheroutput.pl comes in. In the weathermachine
log directory you set up, there will be a status file called
'weathermachine.status' which is overwritten once per minute by
the weathermachine.pl daemon. Thus, polling this file could be
treated as real-time weather information, accurate to within a
minute.
Below are the /etc/mrtg.cfg configs that I use. Obviously you
will need to edit them to suit your purposes.
weatheroutput.pl is a script that outputs numbers that are drawn
from the realtime status created by weathermachine.pl. The command
line arguments tell it what to output, and it understands some
extremely rudimentary math on the command-line.
Here are the configs:
Target[outdoortemp]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl otf odf`
Options[outdoortemp]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[outdoortemp]: Outdoor Temperature and Dew Point
PageTop[outdoortemp]: Outdoor Temperature and Dew Point
MaxBytes[outdoortemp]: 1000000
YLegend[outdoortemp]: Outdoor Temp/DewPt (F)
ShortLegend[outdoortemp]: F
LegendI[outdoortemp]: Temperature:
LegendO[outdoortemp]: Dew Point:
Legend1[outdoortemp]: Outdoor Temperature
Legend2[outdoortemp]: Outdoor Dew Point
Legend3[outdoortemp]: Peak Outdoor Temperature
Legend4[outdoortemp]: Peak Outdoor Dew Point
YSize[outdoortemp]: 150
XSize[outdoortemp]: 600
WithPeak[outdoortemp]: ymw
Target[indoortemp]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl itf idf`
Options[indoortemp]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[indoortemp]: Indoor Temperature and Dew Point
PageTop[indoortemp]: Indoor Temperature and Dew Point
MaxBytes[indoortemp]: 1000000
YLegend[indoortemp]: Indoor Temp/DewPt (F)
ShortLegend[indoortemp]: F
LegendI[indoortemp]: Temperature:
LegendO[indoortemp]: Dew Point:
Legend1[indoortemp]: Indoor Temperature
Legend2[indoortemp]: Indoor Dew Point
Legend3[indoortemp]: Peak Indoor Temperature
Legend4[indoortemp]: Peak Indoor Dew Point
YSize[indoortemp]: 150
XSize[indoortemp]: 600
WithPeak[indoortemp]: ymw
Target[humidity]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl irh orh`
Options[humidity]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[humidity]: Indoor and Outdoor Relative Humidity
PageTop[humidity]: Indoor and Outdoor Relative Humidity
MaxBytes[humidity]: 1000000
YLegend[humidity]: Rel. Humidity (%)
ShortLegend[humidity]: %
LegendI[humidity]: Indoor Humidity:
LegendO[humidity]: Outdoor Humidity:
Legend1[humidity]: Indoor Relative Humidity
Legend2[humidity]: Outdoor Relative Humidity
Legend3[humidity]: Peak Indoor Relative Humidity
Legend4[humidity]: Peak Outdoor Relative Humidity
YSize[humidity]: 150
XSize[humidity]: 600
WithPeak[humidity]: ymw
Target[pressure]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl bmb-950 smb-950`
Options[pressure]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[pressure]: Barometric Pressure (mb - 950)
PageTop[pressure]: Barometric Pressure (mb - 950)
MaxBytes[pressure]: 1000000
YLegend[pressure]: Baro Pressure (mb-950)
ShortLegend[pressure]: mb-950
LegendI[pressure]: Barometric Pressure:
LegendO[pressure]: Sealevel Pressure:
Legend1[pressure]: Actual Barometric Pressure
Legend2[pressure]: Sealevel Barometric Pressure
Legend3[pressure]: Peak Actual Barometric Pressure
Legend4[pressure]: Peak Sealevel Barometric Pressure
YSize[pressure]: 150
XSize[pressure]: 600
WithPeak[pressure]: ymw
Target[windspeed]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl wam wgm`
Options[windspeed]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[windspeed]: Wind Speed
PageTop[windspeed]: Wind Speed
MaxBytes[windspeed]: 1000000
YLegend[windspeed]: Wind Speed (mph)
ShortLegend[windspeed]: mph
LegendI[windspeed]: Wind Average Speed:
LegendO[windspeed]: Wind Gust Speed:
Legend1[windspeed]: Average Wind Avg Speed
Legend2[windspeed]: Average Wind Gust Speed
Legend3[windspeed]: Peak Wind Avg Speed
Legend4[windspeed]: Peak Wind Gust Speed
YSize[windspeed]: 150
XSize[windspeed]: 600
WithPeak[windspeed]: ymw
Target[winddir]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl wgd wgd`
Options[winddir]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[winddir]: Wind Direction
PageTop[winddir]: Wind Direction
MaxBytes[winddir]: 1000000
YLegend[winddir]: Wind Heading (Deg)
ShortLegend[winddir]: Deg
LegendI[winddir]: Wind Direction:
LegendO[winddir]: Wind Direction:
Legend1[winddir]: Wind Direction
Legend2[winddir]: Wind Direction
YSize[winddir]: 150
XSize[winddir]: 600
Target[rainrate]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl rrm rrm`
Options[rainrate]: nopercent,growright,gauge,noinfo,withzeroes
Title[rainrate]: Rain Rate (mm/hr)
PageTop[rainrate]: Rain Rate (mm/hr)
MaxBytes[rainrate]: 1000000
YLegend[rainrate]: Rain Rate (mm/hr)
ShortLegend[rainrate]: mm
LegendI[rainrate]: Rain Rate:
LegendO[rainrate]: Rain Rate:
Legend1[rainrate]: Average Rain Rate (mm/hr)
Legend2[rainrate]: Average Rain Rate (mm/hr)
Legend3[rainrate]: Peak Rain Rate (mm/hr)
Legend4[rainrate]: Peak Rain Rate (mm/hr)
YSize[rainrate]: 150
XSize[rainrate]: 600
WithPeak[rainrate]: ymw
Target[raintotal]: `/www/weather/weatheroutput.pl rtm rtm`
Options[raintotal]: nopercent,growright,noinfo,gauge,withzeroes
Title[raintotal]: Rain Total mm
PageTop[raintotal]: Rain Total mm
MaxBytes[raintotal]: 1000000
YLegend[raintotal]: Rain Total (mm)
ShortLegend[raintotal]: mm
LegendI[raintotal]: Rain Total:
LegendO[raintotal]: Rain Total:
Legend1[raintotal]: Rain Average Total mm
Legend2[raintotal]: Rain Average Total mm
Legend3[raintotal]: Rain Peak Total mm
Legend4[raintotal]: Rain Peak Total mm
YSize[raintotal]: 150
XSize[raintotal]: 600
WithPeak[raintotal]: ymw