Web based dashboard for the weather station FTA Nexus

Currently under development

rnexus is a small web based dashboard using Ruby's sinatra library as application middleware.

The application presents the data read from the FTA Nexus weather station. The tool used for accessing the data via the USB port is t923tool from Sven John ( http://te923.fukz.org/ ). Though this tool has some restrictions with the FTA Nexus (reads only max ~770 entries from memory and doesn't read the solar sensor), the tool is still usefull.

Download te923tool from its website and compile the source: (You should have the libusb-dev installed).

wget http://te923.fukz.org/downloads/te923tool-0.5.tgz
tar xfz  te923tool-0.5.tgz
cd te923tool-0.5
make
sudo cp te923con /usr/bin

###Libraries

Install the following libs beforehead (packet names for Fedora 18):

• postgresql-devel
• sqlite-devel
• readline-devel
• openssl-devel
• zlib-devel

###Install all the gems we need

The Ruby gems used are listed in the Gemfile. You can use the bundler gem to install them automaticly. If you have the bundler installed the next step after downloading the source is a call of bundle install in the source directory.

The gems the app needs depend on the application environment. During Development and testing the productiv gems aren't needed. So install only the development gems with bundle --without production. Thus, the app depends on sqlite3 and will use this local database file.

Let's Make a local copy of the source tree of the application with git:

git clone git://github.com/rheikvaneyck/rnexus.git

The application reads the data from a sqlite database in the db directory. So let's start with reading the stored weather data from the memory to have some data to play with. The next command assume that we are in the source directory.

###Download the data from the weather station

te923con -d > data/wetter.data

###Create a database config file

To use sqlite3 with ActiveRecord a database.yml file is needed in the config directory. Create one with the following content:

adapter: sqlite3
database: db/weather_db.sqlite
log_dir: log

###Create the database

Now we have to import the data in the database. But first we need one. You create that database and the necessary tables with ruby's rake tool:

rake db:migrate

All available rake tasks can be shown with the rake -T command.

###Import the data manually

Then you can import the data into the database with a rake task:

rake db:load_data

###Import the data periodicly

You could use a cron-job to import the data periodicly (e.g. once a hour). If you prefer so, create a file crontab_pi in the directory /etc/cron.hourly with the following content:

17 * * * * /var/local/load-weather-data > /dev/null 2>&1
30 * * * * /var/local/load-data > /dev/null 2>&1

Make this file executable with sudo chmod a+x /etc/crontab_pi and copy the scripts load-weather-data from the directory script/cron/cron.hourly/ and load-data from /script/cron/ to /var/local/ and make them executable, too.

This script writes the weather data to /var/log/weather.data.

The second script load-data copies that data file to the application directory data/ and loads that file into the database. To do that the application path (APPDIR=/home/pi/source/rnexus) in the script has to be edited.

###Run the application

The application can be started with rake web:run. The web application listens on http://localhost:4567/

(The GPL)

Copyright (c) 2013 Marcus Nasarek

rnexus is copyrighted free software by Marcus Nasarek. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the GPL (see COPYING.txt file).

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.