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 "i" then "n" then "t" then "e" then "g" then "e" then "r" in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2025 

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

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

Archive

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