Blynk – GroveWeatherPi New Software Version 3.10 Released

November 26, 2018 Blynk, Grove Sensors, GroveWeatherPi, Project Curacao, Python Raspberry Pi Software, Raspberry Pi, Sensors, SwitchDoc Products, Weather, Weather Board, WeatherPiArduino, WeatherRack, WXLink

Blynk – GroveWeatherPi New Software Version 3.10 Released

SwitchDoc Labs is pleased to release a new version (Version 3.10) supporting Blynk for the popular GroverWeatherPi Pure Python software for the GroveWeatherPi Raspberry Pi based Solar Powered Weather station kit.  You can find it on the SwitchDoc Labs GitHub repository.

Here are the screens for the Blynk App for SDL Weather and GroveWeatherPi.  These are described later in this post.

GroveWeatherPi

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is GroveWeatherPi?

GroveWeatherPi is a Solar Powered Raspberry Pi WiFi connected weather station designed for Makers by SwitchDoc Labs ( www.switchdoc.com). This is a great system to build and tinker with. All of it is modifiable and all source code is included.

Features of the Grove Weather PiGroveWeatherPi

The most important functions are:

  • – Detects Lightning!
  • – Senses 20 different environmental values
  • – Optionally Solar Powered
  • – Has a full database containing history of the environment (MySQL)
  • – Monitors and reports lots of data on the solar powered system – great for education!
  • – Self contained and monitored for brownouts and power issues
  • – Can be modified remotely
  • – Download your data to crunch it on your PC or Mac
  • – Can be modified to do CWOP, SMS (Text) messaging, Twitters, webpages and more
  • – Has an iPad Based Control Panel
  • – Easy to connect to Twitter, WeatherUnderground, etc

 What is in GroveWeatherPi?

As you can see from the above block diagram, GroveWeatherPi contains a bunch of different parts.   A discounted GroveWeatherPi bundle and the GroveWeatherPi Solar Add-on bundle are available on the SwitchDoc Labs store.

[callout size=”col-12″ title=”GroveWeatherPi Bundle” button_title=”Learn More” button_link=”https://store.switchdoc.com/groveweatherpi-product-bundle/”  button_size=”normal” button_rounded=”true” button_color=”red”]

[callout size=”col-12″ title=”GroveWeatherPi Solar Add-On Bundle” button_title=”Learn More” button_link=”https://store.switchdoc.com/groveweatherpi-solar-add-on-product-bundle/”  button_size=”normal” button_rounded=”true” button_color=”red”]

 

 

The Solar WXLink is a solar powered wireless serial link that can transmit up to 600 meters in free air.   IT is designed to connect up to any source of data from sensors connected to the Mini Pro LP Arduino compatible low power computer board.  It was specifically designed to connect a WeatherRack weather sensor array to a Weather Board based system connected to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi computer.   The receiver is read by the host computer through an I2C interface.   Much easier and more available than a serial interface.   And yes, it has Grove connectors throughout the system.   The WXLink comes preloaded with the software to support a WeatherRack and AM2315.   See below for the source code.  No soldering required.

 

GroveWeatherPi Software Improvements / Changes

The  new version (Version 3.10) of the popular GroverWeatherPi Pure Python software for the GroveWeatherPi Raspberry Pi based Solar Powered Weather station kit has been released.  You can find it on the SwitchDoc Labs GitHub repository.

 

Blynk App

You can download the full Blynk GroveWeatherPi installation manual from the product page here under downloads.

Main Screen

 

Chart – Displays Outside Temperature, Outside  Humidity, Wind Speed and Visible Sunlight.  As you get more data you will be able to see more and more data on the screen.  The button on the right bottom of the chart switches to landscape mode to see even more data.

If you don’t have the Sunlight Sensor, it will read zero.   If you don’t have the ThunderBoard Lightning Detector, the LGHTN LED will stay Green and you won’t see any events from the ThunderBoard.

Status Screen

This screen shows the various controls for the GroveWeatherPi system.  These are:

OLED – Turns the OLED display on and off.  Note:  It will take up to a minute before the OLED actually turns on or off.

FLASH STRIP – Not currently Implemented on GWP. It will flash an 8 Pixel RGBW Strip in the future

RAINBOW – Not currently Implemented on GWP.  It will turn the 8 Pixel RGBW Strip into a cycling rainbow display

UNITS – Changes from English to Metric units.  Takes up to a minute to take effect.   Note:  Your graph chart on the Overview page will have to be cleared (use the … at the bottom of the chart) to clear the chart for the new units.

LAST SAMPLE – Shows the time of the last weather data sample (in whatever timezone you have set your Raspberry Pi )

The terminal window at the bottom shows a running report of what the GWP system is currently up to.

Solar Screen

This screen shows you the current status of the optional solar power system connected to GroveWeatherPi.

Voltage displays are in Volts, while all the current screens are in milliamps (mA).

The Battery Gauge is an estimate of the total available charge (not the total charge of the LiPo battery), but the charge available to the GroveWeatherPi system.

 

Scheduler Modified – Main Loops Reconstructed

We restructured the way we were reading sensors and added a semaphore to make sure we weren’t trying to read the I2C bus from two different Jobs at the same time.

 

The Advanced Python Scheduler (APScheduler) is a light but powerful in-process task scheduler that lets you schedule functions (or any other python callables) to be executed at times of your choosing.

Below is a list of all the current jobs that are scheduled in a running GroveWeatherPi Raspberry Pi Weather Station.

-----------------
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Scheduled Jobs
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Jobstore default:
    patTheDog (trigger: interval[0:00:10], next run at: 2018-11-25 12:57:40 PST)
    sampleAndDisplay (trigger: interval[0:00:30], next run at: 2018-11-25 12:58:00 PST)
    tick (trigger: interval[0:01:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 12:58:30 PST)
    checkForButtons (trigger: interval[0:01:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 12:58:30 PST)
    writeWeatherRecord (trigger: interval[0:05:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:02:30 PST)
    writePowerRecord (trigger: interval[0:05:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:02:30 PST)
    updateRain (trigger: interval[0:05:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:02:30 PST)
    checkForShutdown (trigger: interval[0:05:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:02:30 PST)
    doAllGraphs (trigger: interval[0:15:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:12:30 PST)
    barometricTrend (trigger: interval[0:15:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:12:30 PST)
    WLAN_check (trigger: interval[0:30:00], next run at: 2018-11-25 13:27:30 PST)
    rebootPi (trigger: cron[day='2-30/2', hour='0', minute='4'], next run at: 2018-11-26 00:04:00 PST)
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Solar Version Bootup Email Message

When you are using a SunAirPlus solar power system with the GroveWeatherPi, on boot up the system now sends an email with the current state of the entire solar battery system.   We found ourselves looking for that information all the time on boot up during testing, so it is now included.

GroveWeatherPi Version 3.10 Startup 
BV=4.00V/BC=2.00mA/SV=1.87V/SC=-0.00mA

WeatherUnderGround Support

We recently (Version 3.10) released a version of the GroveWeatherPi software that allows you to connect up your GroveWeatherPi Raspberry Pi Weather Station to the WeatherUnderground.  This new version also calculates and reports dew point.