help with dashboard

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Rcayot
 
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help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

Thanks in advance for any help at all!

So, I have a nice Adafruit basic IO account and have developed a weather station dashboard(s), and the line plots and gauges work well.

Now I am trying to add my lightning detector output. I have created the lightning feed, and have added icon, and stream blocks.

The problem is that the icon block only displays when a 'static' icon is chosen.
I would really like to be able to have a green or blank icon, and then when the lightning feed is updated, have the color change to red, or have the lightning icon appear when there is new data. I especially would like to be able to change the color only if the lightning 'type' is a lightning strike.

The icon block instructions say to 'send' the selected icon to the block, how the heck do I do that?

Roger

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Hexen_Wulf
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Hexen_Wulf »

Hi, I'm not an expert, but I've got a little experience. What method are you using to update your feeds? (Python, Circuit Python, Arduino, Wippersnapper, etc.)

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Rcayot
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

thanks for the interest. I am using circuitpython on an RPi-4B. The feeds update on the 'feed' screen just fine. I just do not seem to be able to get what I want, or suppose should be possible to work.
this is confusing (text from the icon set up screen):

Code: Select all

Send the icon name to the selected feed to display the named icon inside the block or select the Static Icon option and select from the list of icons.
What does it mean 'send the icon name to the selected feed'?

I am pretty unrelenting on these problems til I have them sorted out.

Roger

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Hexen_Wulf
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Hexen_Wulf »

Okay, so, I think I see where the confusion is. Go to your dashboard and create an Icon block. On the left hand side are the different configurables, one of them is an icon selector. Each icon has a unique name, so if you point that block to a feed and then send that feed icon names, it'll change the icon. Or at least... that's what I think. I haven't actually tried it myself.

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brubell
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by brubell »

For your purposes, do not use the static icon block option.

Instead, write an icon value string ( full listing here - https://io.adafruit.com/icons-faq) to the feed connected to the Icon Block.

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Rcayot
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

Thanks for the replies.

I guess the answer is that I will need to send two feeds, one for the icon, the other for the text. I would like to send several items but do not want to eat up all my free feeds!

Is there any way to send a long string that could then be parsed by AIO?

Roger

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Rcayot
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

OK.

I have the sense I needed now. Of course I can send whatever string to AIO feed, I just have to decide in the sending program to sort out what to send.

So I have my icon box up and running. Whenever I send w:lightning to my lightning feed, the icon shows up in the icon box. I now need to sort out how to distinguish between, false lightning strikes etc, and reflect that in the dashboard.

Roger

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Hexen_Wulf
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Hexen_Wulf »

What are you using to detect lightning strikes, exactly? Your project sounds really interesting!

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Rcayot
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

I am using a breakout of the Franklin AS3935 lightning detector board from Sparkfun. Other vendors also carry an AS3935 board.

The boardcontains an antenna tuned to 500kHz which is the main frequency component of the EM sprectrum for a lightning strike. The AS3935 chip has onboard firmware that analkyes the signal and rejects certain events as noise or 'disturber' by evaluating the shape of the radio wave spike.

It is now part of my weather station which contains temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and now lightning. The station is run by an RPi-PICO and transmits the data from my garden to my office via packet radio, also a breakout from Adafruit RFM9x. The data is received by an RPi-4 in my office and sent on to the Adafruit IO.

It has been a real learning experience! This last part required write a 'class' object to allow communication between parts of the program. Simple example, but really new to me.

The data collection, especially the wind data was a challenge. I reached out to a university profff and he forwarded me some literature examples of wind data collection, and I eventually found the USWS standards for collecting weather data etc.

In the future, I will add wind direction, and a rain gauge.

I encourage anyone interested in real world useful projects to consider something like this. I am also considering a river water temperature and level remote project as I live on a beautiful classic New England trout river the Battenkill.

Also, since I also love birding, I am looking forward to a 'bird cam' type of project that will require wifi to handle the image bandwidth.

Good luck on your projects!

Roger

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brubell
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by brubell »

Really interesting project, didn't know about this sensor! When you've got it in a state where you can take pictures of it - please do and post up here! I'll post it to the Adafruit Blog.

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Rcayot
 
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Re: help with dashboard

Post by Rcayot »

Will do

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