Yeah, I fired up an old tablet, & yes, I can display a ‘repeat’ of the data as see in another’s picture above. I guess my chief issue with this is it’s ‘simple’ format. I’d make much better use of (ie. Actually Use…) of a ‘conventional’ weather display allowing displaying a compass rose with arrows for wind (with a ‘resettable’ arc for max’s), a circle or arc for pressure, ‘thermometer bars’ for… temperature, precipitation, etc. I desire an interactive GRAPHICAL display with user setable features on a fixed, dedicated dusplay… the Pi display referenced in the ‘shameless plug’ above (should be shameless, very nice layout result) comes much closer to ideal, in my view. I’d (gulp…) be willing to pay a small subscription fee to have a ‘site page’ as described as opposed to the ‘spartan grid’ provided gratis… then I’d be happy with my old tablet on a dedicated station web page…
What’s reasonable ?
Peter’s wfpiconsole is still the prettiest display solution I’ve seen, but it is pretty painful to build the software side. You need to have a CheckWXAPI account and set up an API key there. You also need to specify your station(s) and sensor(s) individual IDs to the installation script. The installer also checks that the data is valid before proceeding, so you can’t even fake it with “TBD” as your answers.
So unless you asked for somebody to do all the dirty work and have ‘your’ private API key (bad idea) and the account credentials to set it up (worse idea), then I dunno how much you could outsource this one at this time.
Perhaps it could be faked if you would be willing to edit the underlying text file. Maybe we could cook up some quick way to help you do that. Should be easily doable.
@peter - I’m thinking along the lines of a “wfpiconsole-reconfigure” script like your installer, with just the answer the questions part in it. If we had that kind of utility, then I’m thinking that even cooking up a dpkg of an installed-yet-unconfigured wfpiconsole is doable. Install it once. Anonymize the credentials in it to ‘TBD’, package it up. No more waiting for the zillion packages to install. Just install one dpkg and go. Run one command to install that. Run one command to reconfigure it. Boom.
Tablets are just too cheap to be able to make a specific stand alone display.
I am using an older iPad, but it is a waste of a perfectly good iPad to dedicate it to this, and besides, it really isn’t perfectly stable. I find I have to exit and restart the app at least once a day because information (everything below the UV index) goes missing or it freezes. I want a dedicated, nice looking display!
What I would love is if the tablet app offered either a few cosmetic screen choices or a few cosmetic customization choices. I would love a more colorful, higher-contrast display that showed the current temperature in a bigger font so it was easy to read across the room. Failing that, it would be really cool it the key parameters could be made available via URL so that anyone could put together a customized windows widget for Rainmeter. Then we could display something more like the AcuRite, Sainlogic, or La Crosse displays. For me, the sensing hardware is terrific. The bland display is the only weak point. And that’s easily fixed with a bit of HTML.
You’ve always been able to do this.
Query the API for your station and parse the data then display it any way you desire with any tool you desire. Most people tend to use Home Assistant or Node-Red for this kind of stuff.
Thank you so much! I will start on my learning curve as soon as I have some spare time. I appreciate you pointing me in the right direction. Thanks!
I bought a $35 Amazon Fire Tablet (brand new) and attached it to a frame ($6 - Target). You have to install the Google Play Store, and download an app that prevents the display from sleeping (both are easy to do, just google for directions). Would I rather have a true Tempest display? YES! But I also don’t want to pay $100 for it, so this is a good compromise.
These posts always drive me crazy.
It would be ‘very’ helpful if you would take an extra 60 seconds and itemize exactly ‘which’ app you installed and ‘which’ instructions you followed to get to success.
That way you’ll save a lot of future folks a lot of blood pressure battling things you’ve already solved.
The reason I (and most people, I assume) don’t generate a detailed list of directions for things like this is primarily because the steps required to make this work change pretty regularly. I have no desire to come back here every three months and update the steps, and people get just as frustrated when the directions don’t work because they’re outdated. The other reason I didn’t list directions is because it was literally the first hit on a google search when I looked for “add google play store to amazon fire tablet.” If that’s too high a barrier for someone looking to do what I did, then it’s probably too complex a process to undertake, regardless of the directions provided here or elsewhere.
…and vary between models, generations, etc…
Disagree. All I’m asking for is minimal information because this one comes up so often.
- which precise model kindle did you buy
- which app did you install to keep the display on
That’s not a lot to ask for.
Taking 20 seconds to update what the current solution looks like is all I’m asking, because this question keeps coming up.
(fine - forget it - I’ll note your username and tell you ‘just google it’ for anything you ask)
ok - that’s a bit harsh, but that’s where things would go if everybody just said ‘google it’
Tablet ($50 now, is regularly $35 if you’re not in a hurry): Amazon.com: Fire 7 tablet, 7" display, 16 GB, latest model (2019 release), Black : Electronics
Google Play: The ultimate guide for installing the Google Play Store on Amazon Fire tablets
Screen always on: (see above in the thread, apparently you don’t need an app)
That’s all I was asking for. Now the next person can just jump to the last known-good answer.
FWIW - I would use one of our unused kindles for displaying my Home Assistant dashboard rather than a WF screen, so I was looking for how to do this generically for whatever URL that I wanted to display - looks like it is possible to keep the display on via the kindle os itself if you enable developer mode according to this link (untested).
Time to drag the old kindles out I guess…
Fully Kiosk Browser. Fire-specific package download link on their web site, with no Google Play Store kludge needed. Even the free version keeps the display on 24/7, has been tested 24/7 for 2+ years with Belchertown WeeWX skin, and is supported with both free features and paid bells and whistles by Home Assistant and Hubitat as a wall-hanging control panel. Hubitat also can use the paid version as a text-to-speech announcement speaker…
This looks cool, I will give it a try. I’m not particularly fond of the Tempest UI. It feels cluttered and not particularly informative at the same time. thanks!
FWIW, if you have a pi and display, you can get the same kind of thing pretty quickly.
If you have the full desktop version of the Raspi OS (aka Raspbian) installed:
- use sudo to edit /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart and add a line ala:
# you might try --kiosk and see if # you like that better than fullscreen /usr/bin/chromium-browser --start-fullscreen http://some.host.here/some.url.here - turn screen blanking off
sudo raspi-config and set blanking off under the Advanced options pick. - reboot the pi - it should autostart Chromium to the URL you specified above
That easy.
(I run my Home Assistant dashboard to a 10" HDMI screen and use an original pi zero with a wifi dongle to get it onto the network. Nowadays you’d just use a pi zeroW which has wifi built in.)
I took the advice of others and bought a Amazon fire 7. Followed the steps for installing the google play store and this is what it looks like for me.
did you use 90 usb plug?