mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

 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 "y-axis" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2026 

Feb 2026

Christmas (2025) is over
 2025 
▼ show ▼
 2024 
▼ show ▼
 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

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

Archive

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