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 "hexagon" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2025 

Mar 2025

How to write a crossnumber

Jan 2025

Christmas (2024) is over
Friendly squares
 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

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

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2025