Kindle Weather Display pt4 Putting it all together

By this point, if you've followed the previous posts in this series, you should have a server that's downloading weather info from a weather service, and converting that into a Kindle friendly PNG image, and you should have a Kindle that's been jailbroken, has working USB Networking (and SSH access) and has the Kite application launcher installed on it. Congrats, now let's put it all together and finish this crazy thing off.

Setting up the Weather Display on the Kindle

Find the "kindle" folder in the master.zip file you downloaded previously, or get the files from the "kindle" folder on GitHub.

Copy the "init-weather.sh" file into the "kite" folder on the Kindle. Then create a new folder called "weather" and copy both "display-weather.sh" and "weather-image-error.png" into it.

Open up the "weather\display-weather.sh" in a text editor (the same one that understands Unix line endings from above) and change the line that contains "http://server/path/to/weather-script-output.png" to the web server and file location that you set your weather script up on. When you save the file, make sure that you select Unix style line endings (this will probably be an option on the Save As dialog). Safely Remove and unplug your Kindle.

Now you're ready to test everything, you should see a new "PDF book" on your Kindle's screen called "init-weather.sh" if you don't, then switch your Kindle off and back on again. Select that and your screen should flash a few times and then either show your current weather, or show a warning sign and "Weather Image Unavailable".

Either of those mean that everything's working on your Kindle and you've succesfully run a custom script on it, if you get the image unavailable message then check the web address you've put in for the picture is correct.

One other possibility here is that when you click the init-weather.sh your Kindle puts a loading circle in the top-left corner for a moment, and then flashes back to the Home screen, this probably means that either init-weather or display-weather have been saved with Windows line endings (some decompression/un-zipper apps "helpfully" translate the line-endings for you when you extract text files, yours may have done this) just open the files up in a text editor and make sure that they're saved with the Unix line endings option select and try again.

One thing you'll notice when you've successfully got the weather scipt running is that there's only one way to exit it, and that's to hold down the power button on your Kindle for 20 seconds or so and wait for it to reboot. While that's fine when everything's up and running it can get a bit annoying while you're just testing things (like getting connected to your web server, or playing around with the look of the weather page), one alternative is to drop a test-weather.sh file into the "kite" folder containing:

#!/bin/sh
/mnt/us/weather/display-weather.sh

This should show the weather display on the screen for a moment, and then dump you back to the Kindle's home screen.

Set up Cron On the Kindle

This is it, we're nearly there now, just need to set the Kindle up to regularly check back with the server for an updated weather picture. Cron is how we do that.

Firstly, if you've never used Cron before, read up on Cron at wikipedia and follow links to further info if needed. I can also recommend searching for something like "crontab calculator" or "crontab generator" and using one of those to help build up your cron line, or running a search for "cron" on SuperUser.com.

Now you need to SSH into the Kindle again, you know the drill by now, switch on USB networking on the Kindle, plug it in and reconnect to it with Putty.

Once you're SSH'd into your Kindle, mount the file system for editing:

mntroot rw

Edit the CRON file in vi (a command line, text mode, text editor) (unbelievably *nix people like this thing and even fight religious wars over how much better it is than other text mode editors, like it's still 1980)(Wikipedia - Vi).

vi /etc/crontab/root

A list of the jobs in the root cron file should appear:

*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/checkpmond
*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/tinyrot
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo tmpfs
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo localVars
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo memusedump
*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo powerdcheck

All we need to do now is add the display-weather.sh script onto the end, mine's set to run every 6 hours, starting at just after midnight.

Try 10 */6 * * * /mnt/us/weather/display-weather.sh

Move the cursor to the end of the final line (using the arrow keys), press "i" to switch into "insert" mode, press Enter for a new line, and then type in your cron line, (if you make a mistake, press Escape to exit editing mode, move the cursor over the text to delete using tyhe arrow keys, and then press "x") press Escape to leave Insert mode, and then press ":w" to save the file, and then ":q!" to exit vi. There, wasn't that straightforward and obvious! For more help with vi commands and a tutorial, consult your favourite search engine.

Your crontab file should now look something like:

*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/checkpmond
*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/tinyrot
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo tmpfs
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo localVars
*/60 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo memusedump
*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/loginfo powerdcheck
10 */6 * * * /mnt/us/weather/display-weather.sh

And then you restart Cron, to read the new job details, by entering:

/etc/init.d/cron restart

Which should give an output like:

[root@kindle root]# /etc/init.d/cron restart
system: I cron:def:stopping crond
system: I cron:def:starting crond
[root@kindle root]#

Note: while you can set the Cron repeat interval to very small amounts of time when testing, I really wouldn't advise setting it to repeat any more often than every 5 minutes, as to get in there and change Cron's settings you need to wait for the Kindle to come on, turn on debug mode, turn on USB networking mode, SSH in and adjust the timings, all before the weather job kicks in again. That's not a quick process, you'll want to give yourself a few minutes.

Unplug, switch USB Networking off again, run init-weather.sh and enjoy your weather display.

And we're there!


Some atypical English weather, showing on my Kindle.

Useful references and acknowledgements:

Thanks to Matthew Petroff for the inspiration and for putting in all the hard work to get all of the original scripts together and get this working on a Kindle in the first place.

• Matthew Petroff's original Kindle Weather Display blog post
  
  Be sure to read through the comments on there as well as the main article, contrary to usual expectations many of the comments are actually quite useful.
• Jennifer's 365 Project: 1347/365 - Kindle Weather Display (and the followup post 1356/365 - Days For All The Forecasts, also the post 1337/365 - SSH on the Kindle 4 (USBNetwork Hack) was handy)
  
  For filling in some of the blanks in Matthew's post, and giving some ideas for expanding on the idea and modifying it.
• The MobileRead forums
  
  Particularly the Kindle 4 wiki page, the Kindle 4 jailbreak instructions, the USB Networking hack and the Kite installation.

Todo

Thoughts for future changes to this:

• Wind - being a sailor, the wind conditions can be a useful thing to know, a couple of the weather feeds include this, either by default or as an option, so it should be possible to include it with some tweaks to the vbscripts, a tweak of the SVG template, and some new icons.
• New icons - while the icons included in Matthew Petroff's original collection are clean and clear, I'm quite fond of the old BBC weather icons - they're what I grew up with - a member of the design team for the BBC's new visual style has made a set of icons in the style of the old classics, available here, it shouldn't be much work to swap these in.
• Two other personal projects that I'm planning to do at some point are learn PowerShell and rebuild my 2003R2 based home server into Server 2012 whilst recreating most of WHS's functionality, as part of this I may rewrite the server-side VBscripts as PowerShell scripts.

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Update 07/2016: download links updated now that project files have been moved to GitHub

---

1. Introduction
2. Setting up the server
   
   • Weather Services
   • Getting the Image Tools
   • Scheduled Tasks
   • Download the Scripts
3. Setting up the Kindle
   
   • Jailbreak your Kindle
   • Setting up USB Networking (1)
   • Setting up USB Networking (2)
   • Installing Kite on the Kindle
4. Putting it all together
   
   • Setting up the Weather Display on the Kindle
   • Setting up Cron on the Kindle
   • Useful References and acknowledgments
   • Todo

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Kindle Weather pt2 Setting up the server

Back to the first post in this series

Setting up the server

Matthew Petroff's original scripts assume that you're using a Linux server, they're made up of a BASH shell script (that won't do anything on a Windows box) and a Python script (that needs an extra install of 3rd party software to get it working on Windows), as well as relying on a couple of small tools that either aren't available to us, or don't work as well on Windows.

So to get things compatible with pretty much any Windows box, I've rewritten the shell script as a batch file and the Python script as VBScript, both of those should just work on anything from Windows 2000 upwards, and I've found some replacements for the small tools.

What you'll need for this section:

• A Windows machine with a running web server on it (as mentioned on the intro page)
• A text editor (as mentioned on the intro page)
• Downloads of:
  • PNGCrush
  • InkScape SVG editor

Create a new folder somewhere on your server (preferably outside of your web server's root) and download and extract the zip file into it. This should give you three folders, one of which is called "Server-VBScript", and in there are three folders called "ServerNOAA", "ServerWU" and "ServerMet" inside each of these you'll find an SVG, CMD and a VBS file. Now you need to decide which weather service you'll be getting your forecasts from, they all make their data freely available for non-commercial usage but have different coverage, may differ slightly in their forecasts of different areas and provide slightly different info, whichever one you want copy that service's folder into the new folder on your server:

• NOAA - the US Government's NOAA's National Weather Service. The major downside (for me) is that they only provide forecasts for the USA.
• WU - Weather Underground, run from a US University, they provide worldwide coverage, and in multiple languages
• Met - Her Majesty's Government's Meteorological Office (The Met Office) forecasts. They only cover the UK (this is what I'm using on my Kindle)

Pick whichever weather service you want, and feel free to delete the other folders if you don't want them.

Weather Services

Depending which weather forecast service you pick, you'll need to find your location code, and possibly sign up for a (free) API key to use it, I'll go though these:

NOAA
All you need is to find the latitude and longitude of your location, and change these in the long URL inside the ServerNOAA\weather-script.vbs file using a text editor, also note that the final parameter in that URL "&Unit=e" sets it to the temperature in Fahrenheit, changing it to "&Unit=m" will output the temperatures in Centigrade.

WUnderground
You will need to sign up for a developer account at Weather Underground, and then you can create a (free for the usage level that we'll be putting it to) API key to access the weather reports. Once you have that you just need to work out your city's code, acceptable formats are:

CA/San_Francisco | US state/city
60290             | US zipcode
Australia/Sydney  | country/city
37.8,-122.4       | latitude,longitude

Then open up ServerWU\weather-script.vbs file using a text editor, find the line with the long URL in it and replace "APIKEY", "COUNTRY" and "CITY" with your API key and location.

Met Office
As with WUnderground, you'll need to sign up for a free API Key to use the Met Office's forecasts, once you have that you can visit the following URL to get a list of the location codes that you can use:
http://datapoint.metoffice.gov.uk/public/data/val/wxfcs/all/xml/sitelist?key=API_KEY
Take the 6-digit location code from there, and your API key, and plug them into the long URL in the ServerMet\weather-script.vbs file using a text editor.

If you've got everything set up right, then when you double-click the VBS file it should create an SVG file in the same folder, showing your graphical weather forecast. You can view this SVG file with most web browsers.

Getting the Image Tools

(Side-story, looking for a suitable replacement for the RSVGconvert *nix tool to do command-line SVG to PNG conversions I went straight to my old, faithful ImageMagick, but every version of that and every option I tried seemed to choke on the embedded icons, eventually I came across Inkscape and discovered it had a decent command line interface, so here we are)

Next download Inkscape SVG editor and extract it into an Inkscape folder in your server's weather folder.

Then download PNGCrush and save the file in your server's weather folder.

Your folder structure should now look a bit like this (the "public" folder won't have been created yet):


Then go into the folder for the weather provider you're using, open the CMD file and edit it to reflect the paths of all these tools, and change the references to the "public" folder to point to the location of the folder within your web server's root that will be serving up the PNG image.

Now try running the CMD file in your chosen folder by double-clicking it, and with luck after a few seconds your 'public' folder should now contain a PNG image that looks a bit like this:

Scheduled Tasks

Finally you'll need to decide how often you want your weather image to update and set up a Scheduled Task in Windows to run the relevant CMD file as often as you want it. Personally I'm going to have my Kindle updating its weather display 4 times a day, so I'm setting my scheduled task to run every 6 hours.

Download the Scripts

• GitHub project: all files for the project browsable online, and individually downloadable
• Entire project master.zip (72KB zip compressed file): if you don't know what a GitHub project is, use this link to download everything needed in one go.

---

Update 07/2016: files and download moved to GitHub, all previous updates merged in.

---

Next: Setting up the Kindle.

---

1. Introduction
2. Setting up the server
   
   • Weather Services
   • Getting the Image Tools
   • Scheduled Tasks
   • Download the Scripts
3. Setting up the Kindle
   
   • Jailbreak your Kindle
   • Setting up USB Networking (1)
   • Setting up USB Networking (2)
   • Installing Kite on the Kindle
4. Putting it all together
   
   • Setting up the Weather Display on the Kindle
   • Setting up Cron on the Kindle
   • Useful References and acknowledgments
   • Todo

---

Kindle Weather Display (from Windows)

I admit it, I'm interested in the weather. What can I say? I'm an Englishman and a sailor, I need something to talk about, and some way to know whether it's shorts weather, or if I need to take a brolly to work. Add in the fact that I love tinkering with gadgets, and have a mini server box sitting in the corner of my living room that spends large parts of the day doing very little, then I was very interested when I ran across Matthew Petroff's Kindle Weather Display blog post.


The only problem was that although he has all of the files available for download from that page, and a barebones hint on how to use them, it assumes a certain familiarity with Linux and its tools, and assumes that you're using a *nix server for the web server, and a *nix machine to do the install from, much of the Kindle hacking needed as a pre-req makes similar assumptions. I've barely touched Linux in the last 10 years (why deliberately make life hard for yourself when there's better choices out there?), was planning to set this up on my Windows Home Server box, and to do it all from my Win7 laptop. Clearly I was going to need to rewrite a few things, and work a few things out.

This is my tale of how that was done, so that you may read it, and do the same yourself.

To accomplish this you're going to need a few things that most people apparently don't have lying around their homes for some reason:

1. A Kindle to dedicate as the display - while you could use the same Kindle that you use to read in bed at night, or on the train in the morning, that really won't be very convenient. Beware also that we're going to be hacking the Kindle and doing some (potentially harmful to the Kindle) things that will not be covered under your warranty. That said, if you hunt around you can find Kindle 4's for a fraction of their retail price on eBay, the one I'm using is an ex-shop demo unit that I got for a hair under £20.
2. A Windows server (or at least a Windows box, doesn't necessarily have to be server hardware or a server OS sku) that will be switched on all the time, with an "always on" internet connection (the server itself doesn't need to be accessible from the internet). I have an old Tranquil PC SQA-5H that I use to run my home services, so that'll do me.
3. A web server installed and running on your Windows server - all we need is a way to serve static PNG images over HTTP, so you won't need anything fancy. Personally, I'm using a Windows Server SKU, so I'm using the built-in IIS web server but pretty much any web server will do, Apache is probably the next most common, and I've used that for projects in the past.
4. A basic plain text editor that understands the difference between Windows and Unix line endings.
   MS Word absolutely won't do, that's a Word processor not a text editor, Windows Notepad is no good either as it can't handle Unix style line endings. Something like Notepad++ or TextPad (which I'm using) would be perfect for this, many programmer's IDEs (such as Komodo, Eclipse or Visual Studio) also include this if you already have one installed, but don't go installing an IDE just for this as it really would be overkill.
5. A basic familiarity with Windows and basic, common Windows tools - I'm happy to walk you through the Unix/Linux tools and commands but I'll expect you to know what you're doing on the Windows side

Warning: this is going to be a long one, so I'm dividing it up into a few parts over a few days, click any of the links to skip to parts you're interested in, or read the whole series to do it all. You can do some of the following steps in different orders, but I found it easiest to start with setting up the server while I was still searching eBay for a cheap Kindle.

Next: Setting up the server.

---

1. Introduction
2. Setting up the server
   
   • Weather Services
   • Getting the Image Tools
   • Scheduled Tasks
   • Download the Scripts
3. Setting up the Kindle
   
   • Jailbreak your Kindle
   • Setting up USB Networking (1)
   • Setting up USB Networking (2)
   • Installing Kite on the Kindle
4. Putting it all together
   
   • Setting up the Weather Display on the Kindle
   • Setting up Cron on the Kindle
   • Useful References and acknowledgments
   • Todo

---

Mozilla Weave Minimal Server Setup on Windows

So I've been following Mozilla's Weave project for while, and kept meaning to have a play with it. It's one of their experimental labs projects which recently came out of beta with a 1.0 release. Essentially it's a Firefox add-in that syncs and backs up a whole load of your settings and data back to a central server, including your bookmarks (and I have a lot!), saved passwords, preferences, history and open tabs. If, like me, you use more than one PC in more than one location then it's great knowing that Firefox is always setup how you like it wherever you are.

There are two parts to Weave; the Weave Firefox add-on (Weave is also available as an add-on for Mozilla's Fennec mobile browser), and the Weave server.

Most people install the add-on and sync their data back to Mozilla's Weave server, there's nothing wrong with that, all of your data is encrypted on your PC before it's sent to Mozilla's web server, so it's all secure and they have no way to access your private information. However you can also download the code for the Weave server and set it up on your own machine. Now, being that I have my own Windows Home Server* that's on 24/7 and accessible both within my home network and across the world via the internet I didn't really see the point in using someone else's server!

So I looked into it, and there are two options for installing your own Weave server there's the full server, which is a complex install and has all sorts of components that are only needed if you're going to act as a Weave server for many thousands of clients, or there's the Minimal Weave server, which has an incredibly simple server install (provided your machine already has all of the pre-reqs) and yet still implements the full Weave 1.0 API. Linux PCs are very likely already going to have most of the pre-reqs already installed (Apache web server and PHP for the Minimal server), Windows machines very likely won't.

I decided that as my Weave server is only ever going to be used by me, and possibly a few family members in the future, the simple install option sounded best! Particularly after I'd looked into it, and seen just how much effort was needed to install a full Weave server on a WHS box!

(Instructions on how to install an older version of the full Weave server on WHS are available on WeGotServed's wiki. note that this is for an outdated Weave version and won't SSL encrypt your traffic)

* A great little Tranquil PC SQA-5H series 1 server running MS Windows Home Server.

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Stage 1: Setting up Weave Minimal server on Windows Vista

I don't like to mess up my server too much, it has a job to do, and does it well. I have a number of WHS add-ins installed, but have done the minimal amount of messing around on the server directly (and as a Microsoft certified server admin, this is against my nature ;). So to work it out, step one was to set Weave up on my Vista desktop, which luckily already happened to have a copy of Apache running, and I really don't care if this box gets messed up in the process!
Step by step instructions for how I did it are below.

Installing and configuring all required software for the Weave Minimal server:

1. Download and install the Apache 2.2 web server (I cheated here as I already had Apache set up and working on my PC, stage 2 coming in a few days will have more detail for this step). Apache download page.
2. Test Apache, point your web browser at http://localhost/ and make sure that you can see the Apache welcome page.
3. Stop the Apache server -
   
   • Either using the Stop item in your Start menu under Apache HTTP Server -> Control Apache Server
   • Or by double-clicking the Apache 'feather' icon in your Windows system tray and clicking the Stop button in the Apache Service Monitor window that appears.
4. Download and install PHP 5.2. Go to the PHP for Windows Download page scroll down to PHP 5.2 and click the Installer link under the VC6 x86 Thread Safe link. Run the installer, it will ask you the following questions after you Accept the licensing agreement:
   
   • Where to install PHP to, just accept the default that it offers you.
   • Select the web server you wish to setup: Select Apache 2.2.x Module.
   • Apache Configuration Directory, click Browse and go to C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\
   • Ensure that the following Extensions are selected:
     
     • Extensions -> Multi-Byte Strings
     • Extensions -> PDO -> SQLite
     • Extensions -> SQLite
5. Download the Weave Minimal server files from tobyelliott.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/weave-minimal-server/ unzip them using Winzip (or any other similar tool, Windows' built-in unzip tool can't unzip .tgz files) into a new folder called weave_minimal in the following folder: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs
6. Open Apache's configuration file via Start -> All Programs -> Apache HTTP Server... -> Configure Apache Server -> Edit the Apache httpd.conf... and add the following line to it at the bottom:
   Alias /weave "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\weave_minimal\index.php"
7. Start Apache
   
   • Either using the Start item in your Start menu under Apache HTTP Server -> Control Apache Server
   • Or by double-clicking the Apache 'feather' icon in your Windows system tray and clicking the Start button in the Apache Service Monitor window that appears.
8. In Firefox go to http://localhost/weave/1.0/blah/info/collection if everything has worked you should see an "Authentication Required" box pop up, enter "blah" for the username and type anything as the password. The box will pop up again, just click Cancel, don't worry about this. You'll see a "File not found" web page, don't worry this is normal. Now if you go to the weave_minimal folder that you created earlier you should see a new file called weave_db this means that you now have your very own, working Weave server - well done!
9. All that remains now is to create your user account(s) on the server and set up Firefox to talk to the server!

Setting up user accounts on the Weave server

Go to your weave_minimal folder that you created earlier in Windows Explorer, hold down the shift key and click the right-mouse button on a blank bit of the window, you should see a menu entry that says "Open Command Window Here" select that. Copy and paste the following line into the new window (Right-click -> Paste):

"C:\Program Files\PHP\php.exe" create_user

You can then press "c" to create your user and enter the desired username and password. Repeat for any further user accounts that you want to set up on your server.

Setting up Weave in Firefox to sync with your new server

1. Install the Weave Browser SyncFirefox add-on from the Firefox add-ons website.
2. Restart Firefox
3. When Firefox starts up again it should take you straight to the Weave settings screen in Firefox's Options. Select Use a custom server from the drop-down menu. Fill out the boxes as below:
   
   • Server URL: http://localhost/weave/
   • User Name: The username you created earlier
   • Password: The password you created earlier
   • Click Sign In
4. You'll be asked to type in a secret passphrase, you need to make a not of and remember this, it is a bit like a second password and is used to encrypt your data in Firefox before it is sent to the Weave server. You'll need to enter this and your user name and password when you set another copy of Firefox to sync with your Weave.
5. If everything went well you should get a successful login and the Weave status at the bottom of your Firefox windows should show that it is successfully syncing
6. Well done!

Next Steps

The server that we set up above is OK as a test server but is only accessible by Firefox on your one PC (or by other copies of Firefox on your home network if you enter the Server URL Weave's settings as your http://yourPCname/weave/ but it's not accessible over the internet at all. That's deliberate, the Minimal server doesn't encrypt your username and password as you login to Weave, these are sent over the network in clear text, not something you want to do over the internet.

Next time I'll be setting up Weave on my Windows Home Server box and taking advantage of the free dynamic domain name and free SSL encrypted connection that you get with WHS to allow me to connect to my Weave server over the internet using an SSL encrypted connection, so that my username and password are encrypted as they travel across the internet, and safe from anyone snooping.

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Music that got me through this: The Orb - "The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, deluxe edition" playing on my Logitech Squeezebox Boom, classic, calming ambient house - just what I need.

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Edited 16/5/2010 to correct the PHP version used.