Use a Kindle as a WeatherFlow display

Tempest Owners
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Interesting discovery about my ancient 5th gen 7" Fire tablet that has been running the WF Android app betas 24/7 since the early field test days. I assumed that Amazon’s software bloat over the years was making the WF app run increasingly slower as time passed. It was so bad last night that it could no longer switch between stations or even go back from viewing a graph.

I was poking around the Amazon OS settings app, and noticed that they included option buttons to wipe the cache and stored data of individual apps. Wiping the cache didn’t improve things, but erasing the saved data (over 200 megs of it) and logging back in to the WF app made the ancient 7" Fire run like new again!

Long story short, if you’re running the WF Android app 24/7 and start to notice it slowing down after a year or so, see if the OS settings app has an option to wipe saved data for a specific app and use it to clean things up. If it doesn’t have the option, perhaps deleting and re-installing the WF app will clear the old saved data up? Either way, make sure that you know your WF login name and password before you do this, since you will need to login to the app again after the saved data is erased…

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62

You can also go to the boot loader and wipe cache and data for the entire device.

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Gary. Where did you get this app? Would love to know how to build this out.

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He wrote it.

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I’ve posted this on Facebook. Figured I should post it here.

I’m running BtstWx app on a Fire HD8 (2020) as my dedicated display.

Parts list (all from Amazon):
Fire HD8 2020 ($55 Black Friday price)
MoKo Foldable Tablet Stand ($7)
UGREEN USB C Cable 90 Degree Right Angle, USB A to Type C ($10)

FireHDWFdisplay
FireHDWFdisplay2550×1906 895 KB

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66

Looks great. Have links for the bill of materials ?
What did you do to the kindle os to get the kiosk mode browser ?

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I’m not using a browser to display. I’m using the BtstWx android app (written by a member of the WF community). I followed instructions posted elsewhere in the WF forums on how to get the Google Play store installed. I’m using an app “Stay Alive!” to prevent the tablet from sleeping.

The stand I’m using:

The Kindle Fire HD8 (2020 version) includes a charging cable, however it sticks straight out of the side. I bought this cable, the is more low-profile with the 90 degree angle:

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Thanks for the info. I had not realized that was an Android app. Pretty cool.

I have a similar stand for 10 inch pi screen. Works great.

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I don’t really know how to post, so plz b patient. I have a fire HD and I ran the “hack” to add the google play store to it. I have the app on the fire hd, but when I go to the store to log into the play store, I get the message: An application requires an update for Google Play Services, requested by com.google.android.gme.com.app.gms. What do I need to do to access the store for the tempest app? I am frazzled! I think that I used the wrong version, I think version 5 instead of fire HD 10.

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Make sure that the files that you copied onto the Fire 10 are for the correct generation and model of Fire tablet. There are hundreds of web sites online hosting files/instructions for older models, and they are not compatible with newer units…

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Here is a link to Toolbox Updater that is a great utility to modify the Kindle without root or ROM flashing. I have used on on various generations of the Kindle Fire tables for home automation dashboards and it works great. I usually remove the Amazon apps, install the nova launcher, and google play.

[WINDOWS][TOOL]Fire Toolbox V11.0 | XDA Developers Forums (xda-developers.com)

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Thanks so much! I will try this and let u know.

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I must sincerely thank you! AFter about 15 minutes, I now have it set up to monitor my Tempest!!! AMAZING!!

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FYI, Amazon is having another huge sale on the Fire tablets. The 10" one is under $99…

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Thanks, enjoy your new display free of the shackles of Amazon.

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@beachbill How do you get the forecast to work? In BTSTWX Mine just shows a flag saying loading and never does anything else.

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I’ve never seen the WeatherFlow app show a loading flag, are you using btstWx perhaps?

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As the developer of BtstWx, please know that I am working on a fix for the loadig flag issue.
–Sam

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Thanks for the reply Sam!

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Update - just confirming that a kindle fire 7 is ‘easily’ good enough to make a really nice weather dashboard box. Took just a few minutes to set up. Really.

IMG_0679
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Setup was trivial:

  • get the fire7 on the network and let Amazon update it to current
  • installed FullyKiosk free and set it to the URL to display
  • set FK to not screen blank
  • released the victory beer

What’s coming from where:

  • Dashboard is Home Assistant using the TileBoard add-on
  • Temp/Hum/Rain are from a weewx Davis VP2 instance I have elsewhere on the LAN feeding a MQTT broker.
  • AQI is from HA querying the PurpleAir REST interface
  • Door/window sensors are Ecolink ZWave via the HA integration
  • Temps at the bottom are from a bunch of $12 Ecowitt T+H sensors and a $35 gw1000 gateway via another weewx instance also feeding MQTT.

Colors of sensors change to red when the door/window is open. Bar charts change color based on the values. I could also trigger sound if I wanted, but I didn’t enable that.

With one exception, everything is done in Docker on the same i3 NUC but I used to run everything on the same pi3 so compute isn’t an issue at all, it’s just that dockerizing made it simpler to set up and support.

Bottom line is that if you have ‘any’ dashboard that is web-based, you have a $49 US problem to get it to display.

(FWIW - I ‘love’ the weewx Belchertown skin and @vreihen’s driver for this if you just want a WF display. Super easy to install and basically zero support ever if you do it right.)

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