mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

Raspberry Pi weather station

 2013-07-11 
On 19 June, the USB temperature sensor I ordered from Amazon arrived. This sensor is now hooked up to my Raspberry Pi, which is taking the temperature every 10 minutes, drawing graphs, then uploading them here. Here is a brief outline of how I set this up:

Reading the temperature

I found this code and adapted it to write the date, time and temperature to a text file. I then set cron to run this every 10 minutes. It writes the data to a text file (/var/www/temperature2) in this format:
2013 06 20 03 50,16.445019
2013 06 20 04 00,16.187843
2013 06 20 04 10,16.187843
2013 06 20 04 20,16.187843

Plotting the graphs

I found a guide somewhere on the internet about how to draw graphs with Python using Pylab/Matplotlib. If you have any idea where this could be, comment below and I'll put a link here.
In the end my code looked like this:
 python 
import time
import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pylab as plt
import matplotlib.dates as mdates

ts = time.time()
import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts)
st = mdates.date2num(datetime.datetime(int(float(now.strftime("%Y"))),
                                       int(float(now.strftime("%m"))),
                                       int(float(now.strftime("%d"))),
                                       0, 0, 0))
weekst = st - int(float(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts).strftime("%w")))
= file("/var/www/temperature2","r")
= []
= []
tt = []
ss = []
= []
= []
= []
= []
= []
weekt = []
weektt = []
weeks = []
weekss = []
mini = 1000
maxi = 0
cur = -1
datC = 0

for line in f:
    fL = line.split(",")
    fL[0] = fL[0].split(" ")
    if cur == -1:
        cur = mdates.date2num(datetime.datetime(int(float(fL[0][0])),
                                                int(float(fL[0][1])),
                                                int(float(fL[0][2])),
                                                0,0,0))
        datC = mdates.date2num(datetime.datetime(int(float(fL[0][0])),
                                                 int(float(fL[0][1])),
                                                 int(float(fL[0][2])),
                                                 int(float(fL[0][3])),
                                                 int(float(fL[0][4])),
                                                 0))
    u.append(datC)
    v.append(fL[1])
    if datC >= st and datC <= st + 1:
        t.append(datC)
        s.append(fL[1])
    if datC >= st - 1 and datC <= st:
        tt.append(datC + 1)
        ss.append(fL[1])
    if datC >= weekst and datC <= weekst + 7:
        weekt.append(datC)
        weeks.append(fL[1])
    if datC >= weekst - 7 and datC <= weekst:
        weektt.append(datC + 7)
        weekss.append(fL[1])
    if datC > cur + 1:
        g.append(cur)
        h.append(mini)
        i.append(maxi)
        mini = 1000
        maxi = 0
        cur = mdates.date2num(datetime.datetime(int(float(fL[0][0])),
                                                int(float(fL[0][1])),
                                                int(float(fL[0][2])),
                                                0,0,0))
    mini = min(float(fL[1]),mini)
    maxi = max(float(fL[1]),maxi)
g.append(cur)
h.append(mini)
i.append(maxi)

plt.plot_date(x=t,y=s,fmt="r-")
plt.plot_date(x=tt,y=ss,fmt="g-")
plt.xlabel("Time")
plt.ylabel("Temperature (#^\circ#C)")
plt.title("Daily")
plt.legend(["today","yesterday"], loc="upper left",prop={"size":8})
plt.grid(True)
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter("%H:%M"))
plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(bottom=0.15,right=0.99)
labels = plt.gca().get_xticklabels()
plt.setp(labels,rotation=90,fontsize=10)
plt.xlim(st,st + 1)
plt.savefig("/var/www/tempr/tg1p.png")

plt.clf()

plt.plot_date(x=weekt,y=weeks,fmt="r-")
plt.plot_date(x=weektt,y=weekss,fmt="g-")
plt.xlabel("Day")
plt.ylabel("Temperature (#^\circ#C)")
plt.title("Weekly")
plt.legend(["this week","last week"], loc="upper left",prop={"size":8})
plt.grid(True)
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter("                     %A"))
plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(bottom=0.15,right=0.99)
labels = plt.gca().get_xticklabels()
plt.setp(labels,rotation=0,fontsize=10)
plt.xlim(weekst,weekst + 7)
plt.savefig("/var/www/tempr/tg2p.png")

plt.clf()

plt.plot_date(x=u,y=v,fmt="r-")
plt.xlabel("Date & Time")
plt.ylabel("Temperature (#^\circ#C)")
plt.title("Forever")
plt.grid(True)
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter("%d/%m/%y %H:%M"))
plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(bottom=0.25,right=0.99)
labels = plt.gca().get_xticklabels()
plt.setp(labels,rotation=90,fontsize=8)
plt.savefig("/var/www/tempr/tg4p.png")


plt.clf()

plt.plot_date(x=g,y=h,fmt="b-")
plt.plot_date(x=g,y=i,fmt="r-")
plt.xlabel("Date")
plt.ylabel("Temperature (#^\circ#C)")
plt.title("Forever")
plt.legend(["minimum","maximum"], loc="upper left",prop={"size":8})
plt.grid(True)
plt.gca().xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter("%d %b"))
plt.gcf().subplots_adjust(bottom=0.15,right=0.99)
labels = plt.gca().get_xticklabels()
plt.setp(labels,rotation=90,fontsize=8)
plt.savefig("/var/www/tempr/tg3p.png")
If there's anything in there you don't understand, comment below and I'll try to fill in the gaps.

Uploading the graphs

Finally, I upload the graphs to mscroggs.co.uk/weather. To do this, I set up pre-shared keys on the Raspberry Pi and this server and added the following as a cron job:
 bash 
0 * * * * scp /var/www/tempr/tg*p.png username@mscroggs.co.uk:/path/to/folder
I hope this was vaguely interesting/useful. I'll try to add more details and updates over time. If you are building something similar, please let me know in the comments; I'd love to see what everyone else is up to.
Edit: Updated to reflect graphs now appearing on mscroggs.co.uk not catsindrag.co.uk.
×2      ×2      ×2      ×2      ×2
(Click on one of these icons to react to this blog post)

You might also enjoy...

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
 Add a Comment 


I will only use your email address to reply to your comment (if a reply is needed).

Allowed HTML tags: <br> <a> <small> <b> <i> <s> <sup> <sub> <u> <spoiler> <ul> <ol> <li> <logo>
To prove you are not a spam bot, please type "median" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2026 

May 2026

World Cup stickers 2026

Apr 2026

A new puzzle every day
Mixing Wordle with other games

Feb 2026

Christmas (2025) is over
 2025 

Dec 2025

Christmas card 2025

Nov 2025

Christmas (2025) is coming!

Sep 2025

The partridge puzzle

Aug 2025

TMiP 2025 puzzle hunt

Jun 2025

A nonogram alphabet

Mar 2025

How to write a crossnumber

Jan 2025

Christmas (2024) is over
Friendly squares
 2024 

Dec 2024

A regular expression Christmas puzzle
Christmas card 2024

Nov 2024

Christmas (2024) is coming!

Feb 2024

Zines, pt. 2

Jan 2024

Christmas (2023) is over
 2023 
▼ show ▼
 2022 
▼ show ▼
 2021 
▼ show ▼
 2020 
▼ show ▼
 2019 
▼ show ▼
 2018 
▼ show ▼
 2017 
▼ show ▼
 2016 
▼ show ▼
 2015 
▼ show ▼
 2014 
▼ show ▼
 2013 
▼ show ▼
 2012 
▼ show ▼

Tags

determinants runge's phenomenon mean matrix of minors captain scarlet matrix multiplication squares london preconditioning talking maths in public partridge puzzle pi manchester triangles wool pokémon wordle chebyshev matt parker realhats hexapawn manchester science festival raspberry pi menace video games thirteen asteroids game of life chalkdust magazine speed warwick arithmetic map projections dragon curves numerical analysis craft wordle european cup fractals regular expressions nine men's morris curvature youtube nonograms mathsjam misleading statistics bots boundary element methods programming advent calendar a gamut of games simultaneous equations dinosaurs geogebra geometry tennis final fantasy countdown pascal's triangle flexagons dates golden spiral harriss spiral people maths wave scattering pokémon latex reuleaux polygons machine learning estimation python finite group draughts edinburgh data visualisation databet javascript sport radio 4 football binary hyperbolic surfaces inline code quadrilaterals braiding rhombicuboctahedron newcastle pizza cutting pi approximation day graphs interpolation light folding tube maps the aperiodical reddit weak imposition stickers php pythagoras matrices crochet numbers zines rust royal baby fence posts sound exponential growth frobel folding paper error bars weather station gather town coventry dataset sorting hats chess recursion bluesky statistics mathslogicbot logs platonic solids hannah fry crossnumber probability oeis trigonometry graph theory london underground palindromes data guest posts coins christmas card go logic tmip rugby propositional calculus news anscombe's quartet books royal institution computational complexity logo bempp noughts and crosses stirling numbers kings datasaurus dozen correlation electromagnetic field friendly squares ucl christmas game show probability national lottery gaussian elimination arrangement puzzles crossnumbers cross stitch accuracy tetris big internet math-off bubble bobble inverse matrices turtles alphabets ternary sobolev spaces kenilworth errors mathsteroids golden ratio signorini conditions gerry anderson puzzles games cambridge pac-man crosswords approximation 24 hour maths world cup polynomials plastic ratio phd fonts finite element method standard deviation martin gardner bodmas convergence live stream matrix of cofactors

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2026