PiWeatherRock started out as a way to know if I needed to grab an umbrella when getting ready to take our dogs for a walk. You see, we were living in Portland, Oregon where it rains A LOT and it wasn’t easy to tell whethor or not it was raining by looking out the windows of our apartment due to the freqent fog or simply being dark. One day my wife made a comment about wishing we had a weather rock near our door to the hallway and… well… this project was born. It’s evolved quite a bit since then and has turned into something way more useful and informative than I initially imagined it would but I still think of it as simply a digital weather rock.
I still use PiWeatherRock every single day even though we no longer live in Portland. The primary way I use it is via a Raspberry Pi Zero W hooked to the TV in my living room. Every morning when I come down stairs I tell my Amazon Alexa “good morning” and starts a routine that turns on the lights, then turns on the TV, and finally changes the input so that I can see the day’s forecast.
Beyond the Zero hooked to the TV, I also recently built a Raspberry Pi 4 and put it in a case that includes a built-in 4-inch display so that I can have a much more compact weather rock for upstairs (I think this one is going to end up on the wall next to our bathroom sinks).
I mention all this as a way to let you know that I have a vested interest in keeping this project in good working order. That said, this is just a hobby for me so other things in life may well take precedent to working on it at times.
— Gene