WeatherServer

Full Stack Embedded 2016 features a cheap weather station. This Django app serves the observed weather data in human and machine readable formats.

Please refer to LICENSE if you want to copy or use this software.

Authors

The members of Full Stack Embedded 2016 are, in alphabetical order:

• Frederic Afadjigla
• Nico Caspari
• William Herndon
• Daniel Lee
• Ruediger Reiter
• Gregor Schnee

This component was authored mainly by Daniel Lee and Gregor Schnee.

Required/suggested packages apt-get packages

Use "sudo apt-get install [, ]"

Required:

• python3
• python3-pip (required for setup.py to run)

Suggested for development setup:

• apache2
• libapache2-mod-python
• mysql-server
• python3-pandas

Suggested packages pip packages

Use "sudo pip3 install [, ]":

• Django
• MySQL-python ?

Required setup

sudo python3 setup.py install

Using test data

Test data is currently a hack because currently no actual data can enter the database - the weather station hardware does not exist yet. This section will be removed in the future.

Creating and importing test data

Test data can be created by executing show_weather/utils/create_mock_dataseries.py. This creates a file, data_series.csv, in the current working directory:

me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server/show_weather/utils/> python3 create_mock_dataseries.py

This generates a randomized series of observations, stored as a CSV in weather_server/show_weather/utils. You can load this into the database using weather_server/show_weather/utils/import_generated_series.py. This is slightly complicated because it uses Django's ORM, so it has to either be started inside a Django shell, which takes care of all the bookkeeping legwork for you (establishing DB connection, etc.) or you have to do Django's administrative work for it. This example reduces the workload by using a Django shell, but it's a bit esoteric for the same reason - the Django shell is started, then the script is loaded as a string and executed inside that environment. Don't worry, I washed my hands after writing it and it will soon die.

weather_server/show_weather/utils/import_generated_series.py creates an observing station and saves all of the observations as belonging to that station. It also expects the sample data series to be stored inside the utils folder.

me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> python3 manage.py shell
Python 3.4.1 (default, May 23 2014, 17:48:28) [GCC] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
(InteractiveConsole)
>>> with open("show_weather/utils/import_generated_series.py") as script:
...     exec(script.read())

Lots of warnings follow because the datetime object used is timezone naive. Now your database is full of observations for my apartment, at the intersection of Constitution Hill, The Mall and Birdcage Walk.

Examining test data

If you haven't done so already, you'll need to set up your Django application. Set up the tables in your database and a super user so that you can use the admin page as follows:

me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> # Setup database
me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> python3 manage.py makemigrations
me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> python3 manage.py migrate
me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> # Setup super user - follow prompts
me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> python3 manage.py createsuperuser
me@host:~/WeatherServer/weather_server> python3 manage.py runserver

Now your development server is running. If you navigate to localhost:8000/admin/ you can login to the admin page and see the entries in your database.

API for viewing data

Currently, only CSVs are served as raw data. The following endpoints are supported:

• /data/csv/stations/ - return a CSV of known station metadata
• /data/csv/$station_id/$start_date - $end_date - return a CSV of observations made at the station with $station_id between the dates (inclusively) specified. Dates are to be formated as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.