Put near-realtime picture of Earth as your desktop background

himawaripy is a Python 3 script that fetches near-realtime (10 minutes delayed) picture of Earth as its taken by Himawari 8 (ひまわり8号) and sets it as your desktop background.

Set a cronjob that runs in every 10 minutes to automatically get the near-realtime picture of Earth.

• Unity 7
• Mate 1.8.1
• Pantheon
• LXDE
• OS X
• GNOME 3
• Cinnamon 2.8.8
• KDE

• any other desktop environments that are not mentioned above.

You can configure the level of detail, by modifying the script. You can set the global variable level to 4, 8, 16, or 20 to increase the quality (and thus the file size as well). Please keep in mind that it will also take more time to download the tiles.

You can also change the path of the latest picture, which is by default ~/.himawari/himawari-latest.png, by changing the output_file variable.

On xfce4, you can set which displays you want to change the background of using the xfce_displays variable. If you get an error and you're not sure which display to use, you can find your display in the output of

xfconf-query --channel xfce4-desktop --list | grep last-image

If you use nitrogen for setting your wallpaper, you have to enter this in your ~/.config/nitrogen/bg-saved.cfg.

[:0.0]
file=/home/USERNAME/.himawari/himawari-latest.png
mode=4
bgcolor=#000000

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/boramalper/himawaripy.git

# configure
cd ~/himawaripy/
vi himawaripy/config.py

# install
sudo python3 setup.py install

# test whether it's working
himawaripy

# Get the installation path of himawaripy by running the command
which -- himawaripy

# Set himawaripy to be called periodically

    ## Either set up a cronjob
        crontab -e

        ### Add the line:
        */10 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH>

    ## OR, alternatively use the provided systemd timer

        ### Configure
        vi systemd/himawaripy.service
        # Replace "<INSTALLATION_PATH>" with the output of the aforementioned command.

        ### Copy systemd configuration
        cp systemd/himawaripy.{service,timer} $HOME/.config/systemd/user/

        ### Enable and start the timer
        systemctl --user enable --now himawaripy.timer

To change the wallpaper in KDE 5.7+, desktop widgets must be unlocked. If you dom't want to leave them unlocked, the pre-KDE 5.7 method can still be used.

To unlock desktop widgets (from the KDE userbase):

Open the Desktop Toolbox or the Panel Toolbox or right click on the Desktop - if you see an item labeled Unlock Widgets then select that, and then proceed to add widgets to your Desktop or your Panel.

So the issue here is that KDE does not support changing the desktop wallpaper from the commandline, but it does support polling a directory for file changes through the "Slideshow" desktop background option, whereby you can point KDE to a folder and have it load a new picture at a certain interval.

The idea here is to:

• Set the cron for some interval (say 9 minutes)
• Open Desktop Settings -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Type -> Slideshow
• Add the ~/.himawari dir to the slideshow list
• Set the interval check to 10 minutes (one minute after the cron, also depending on your download speed)

Many thanks to xenithorb for the solution!

OSX has deprecated crontab, and replaced it with launchd. To set up a launch agent, copy the provided sample plist file in osx/com.user.himawaripy.plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents, and edit the following entries if required

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
cp osx/com.user.himawaripy.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

• ProgrammingArguments needs to be the /path/to/himawaripy/installation. This should be /usr/local/bin/himawaripy by default, but himawaripy may be installed elsewhere.

• StartInterval controls the interval between successive runs, set to 10 minutes (600 seconds) by default, edit as desired.

Finally, to launch it, enter this into the console:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.himawaripy.plist

# Remove the cronjob
crontab -e
# Remove the line
*/10 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH>

# OR if you used the systemd timer
systemctl --user disable --now himawaripy.timer
rm $HOME/.config/systemd/user/himawaripy.{timer,service}

# Remove the data directory
# By default, `~/.himawari`. Check `output_file` variable in config.py
# in case you've changed it.
rm -rf ~/.himawari

# Uninstall the package
sudo pip3 uninstall himawaripy

If you would like to share why, you can contact me on github or send an e-mail.

Thanks to MichaelPote for the initial implementation using Powershell Script.

Thanks to Charlie Loyd for image processing logic (hi8-fetch.py).

Obviously, thanks to the Japan Meteorological Agency for opening these pictures to public.