i3weather-dwd

i3status plugin for displaying weather information from the German Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst).

The DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) publishes most of its data on its open data platform.

In fact i3weather-dwd isn't a plugin, but it uses the read_file module from i3status. i3weather-dwd creates and updates the file /tmp/i3weather-dwd regularly and the read_file module will read the file on change.

i3weather-dwd could run as a daemon or may be invoked by cron.

The Information is displayed in the following manner:

10:00 (UTC) T: 6,5 °C  H: 78 %  W: 28 km/h (bedeckt)

or in english:

10:00 (UTC) T: 6,5 °C  H: 78 %  W: 28 km/h (overcast)

T: temperature in degree celsius (2 meter above surface).

H: relative air humidity.

W: average wind speed last hour.

(meterological description)

installation

Clone the repository an make sure you have python3 >= 3.5 and i3status >= 2.13 installed.

i3status -v
i3status 2.13 © 2008 Michael Stapelberg and contributors

python3 --version
Python 3.8.2

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/meetunix/i3weather-dwd.git

Copy the executable (python script) to a location of your choice.

cp i3weather-dwd/i3weather-dwd.py /usr/local/bin/

configuration

weather station lookup

Every weather station has a unique id. You need to find out this number to use i3weather-dwd. A weather station located in germany is updated hourly. You will find the same information on their website.

You have the choice beetween a live lookup using the station-lookup.py script, or searching a generated snapshot of the weather stations in stations.md.

Using the live lookup is very easy. If there is no station in your town, maybe there is one in the neighbouring town.

i3weather-dwd/stationLookup.py rostock
no station found

i3weather-dwd/stationLookup.py warnemünde
10170 <--> warnemuende

The station id for the weather station located in Warnemünde is 10170.

running i3weather-dwd once or with cron

If you want to start the i3weather-dwd a single time, just run it.

/usr/local/bin/i3weather-dwd.py -s STATION-ID

Maybe you want to use cron for regulary updates

*/20 * * * *    /usr/local/bin/i3weather-dwd.py -s STATION-ID

That means: every 20 minutes an update is performed.

updating your i3status.conf

Simply add the following lines to your config (mostly ~/.i3status.conf) and reload i3.

order += "read_file weather"

...


read_file weather {
    format = %content
    path = "/tmp/i3weather-dwd"
}

command line options

# mandatory

-s --station    STRING      Station-ID

# optional

-d --daemon     FLAG        run as daemon (experimental)
-p --pid        STRING      alternate path to the pid

-g --german     FLAG        meterological description is displayed in german

running as a daemon (experimental)

You are able to run i3weather-dwd as a daemon. The prefered way is the use of systemd. But you can also start it like this:

/usr/local/bin/i3weather-dwd.py -s STATION-ID -d

using systemd

Copy the following file to /etc/systemd/system/i3weather-dwd.service and change the user and group names under which the service has to be started.

[Unit]
Description=i3weather-dwd

[Service]
User=USERNAME
Group=GROUPNAME
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/i3weather-dwd.py -s 10170 -d
PIDFile=/tmp/i3weather-dwd.pid
TimeoutStartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then start and enable the service.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl start i3weather-dwd.service

sudo systemctl enable i3weather-dwd.service

Have fun!