Devlog #3 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

The Badgeware Tufty is this cool conference badge from Pimoroni that is programmable with MicroPython. I’ve been making a Weather Station app for it, which can use a Pimoroni multisensor kit to show temperature, humidity and air pressure, but soon it will be able to fetch weather data around the world from the internet.

In the previous devlogs I added the multisensor screen. Now I’ve started working on the weather from the internet part. So far it gets coordinates from options.json, and can show the suburb/neighbourhood and the city from Openstreetmap Nominatim. You can also optionally set a nickname for a location.

Next up I’ll actually be putting the weather info in.
That’ll involve getting data from Openmeteo, drawing a bunch of pixel art icons for each (~80) weather codes and rendering out the data.

Added an option to use Fahrenheit or Kelvin instead of Celsius by editing options.json on the computer

I’m making a weather app for the Badgeware Tufty, a cool badge wearable that’s programmable with MicroPython!

First step that I’ve done for my app is coding a screen that shows the temperature, humidity and air pressure sensed from the multisensor strip that comes with the Badgeware Tufty STEM kit. I’ve made 30 pixel art icons so far that scale with the values.

Next up I’ll be adding the option to grab weather data from the internet using Openmeteo API for the weather data and Openstreetmap nominatim to get a place name. The locations would have to be configured through a JSON config file on the computer as the 5 buttons on the Tufty aren’t really enough for this kind of input. Maybe there could be some web UI to pick coordinates off a map and update the config file?

Added a custom range feature to my RNG WearOS app, so users can now pick a range between 1-100 for random numbers. The reason I didn’t make it fully custom, allowing any number is because support for custom input in WearOS is limited, so I settled for using 2 Pickers.

However, just while writing this devlog, I realised that if the first number was bigger than the second number, the app crashes! Fortunately I’ve realised this before shipping.

RNG for WearOS

I’ve started working on my first WearOS and my first Android app in general. It’s a pretty small utility app that lets users generate random numbers, by flipping a coin, rolling a die or using a custom range. It’s made in Android Studio using Jetpack Compose, so the UI looks native to WearOS.

So far I’ve made a coin flip and a dice roll, next up is a custom range mode, and possibly options to customise the die and coin icons.

Devlog 2 of Situationboard

Things I’ve worked on since the last devlog:

• A simple favicon - just “SB” in the Inter font that’s used across the site
• An Oil Price widget. It originally used data from oilpriceapi.com however I realised that they didn’t provide a permanent free tier, so I switched to the US government’s (of course) EIA (Energy Information Administration) which updates less frequently (half a week or so?).
• Loading animation for catpic widget from Wikimedia Commons

Next up I’ll probably work on a description button in the Add Widgets dialog as it already has a widgets.json entry, its just unused.

Devlog #1 of SituationBoard

After finishing the hackpad project, I was trying to find new project ideas to do, so I asked my dad for a QoL improvement that could be made. He mentioned wanting a “portal” to have loads of different information widgets on one screen, as for a lot of things you need to go across different websites. Coincidentally, the Frictionless mission was running, whose “mission” you could say was exactly that - to make something that improves quality of life.

The name “SituationBoard” is a play on those “monitor the situation” dashboards that government officials or OSINT people use. The data on here as you can probably see by the screenshot is probably not of as high importance [citation needed].

I decided to make this in express.js, and plain HTML to keep it minimal. The backend will handle most widgets that need APIs, as those wih API keys shouldn’t be sent on the frontend because the keys will be leaked.

The first widget added is a random cat picture from a service called Cat-as-a-Service (cataas.com). This didn’t require the backend as cataas doesnt take credentials so it was a good first widget.

Next up I’ll write more widgets like weather, prices of various commodities like oil and holiday calendars, and add more features, potentially styling the website up along the way.

I’ve been working on my hackpad project lately, and I’m finally finished with it now!

I’ve never made any PCB or 3D printed project before, so this is a massive leap for me when it comes to skill.

First step was designing in KiCad. I kept it simple by adding 7 switches, and an OLED display to show bongo cat.

Then made the PCB, which is a pretty fun part of the process, as its basically just wiring stuff together as it tells you to.

Third step was designing the case which was probably the hardest, getting everything aligned and all.

Fourth step was writing the firmware, this part was fairly easy, and I put some code into that which I found on github to add a bongo cat animation, that makes the cat use the bongo drums when pressing a key on it. The keys are set to F13-F19, keys that are unbound by default.