STEMWeather date / time issue

Almost already done...


I created sunrise.py on my system - as I am at a remote site with limited bandwidth - So I decided I did not want to send pictures during the night...


I started researching and found Astral as a fantastic library that does all sorts of calculations...  Its library of locations are a bit limited - but you can supply long / latt and altitude and it does all the calculations for you - and takes care of timezones...

I thought of sunset / sunrise values - and then thought an hour before after - but the calculations for dawn and dusk seem to work well for this purpose... You could always just add a further offset to dawn and dusk if you wanted...

So my hack at present is to check current time is inbetween dawn and dusk to send the picture otherwise the picture is not sent (it still takes it and stores it locally - just not sent).

Sample program here - I import config only to get the altitude from BMP280 so I don't need to use a new value...



#
#
# sunrise.py - to calculate local sunrise and sunset so we dont waste time taking pics in the dark
#

# based on what I found here: https://astral.readthedocs.io/en/latest/


import datetime
import astral    # Need to install this via sudo pip install astral

# Check for user imports
try:
           import conflocal as config
except ImportError:
           import config


# Construct our location and calculate sunrise and sunset.  

sun_altos = astral.Location(info=("Melbourne", "AUS", -37.180594, 144.324194, "Australia/Victoria", config.BMP280_Altitude_Meters/3.2808399))
sun_altos.solar_depression = "civil"

result = sun_altos.sun(date=datetime.date.today())

print "Current Time: ", datetime.datetime.now().time()
print "Dawn: ", result['dawn'].time()
print "Sunrise: ", result['sunrise'].time()
print "Sunset: ", result['sunset'].time()
print "Dusk: ", result['dusk'].time()

if datetime.datetime.now().time() > result['dawn'].time() and datetime.datetime.now().time() < result['dusk'].time():
print "Its daylight, so upload a picture"
else:
print "its too late to send a pic"



So that solves my issue of not sending black pictures... However it will not help in the slicing of start of day and end of day that Stem decides upon - as they are hard coded to be UTC / American midnight - so here in +10 UTC I will still get afternoon of wed, morning of Thu as being labelled as a Wed file.

If we can do something that starts an hour before sunrise, or civil sunrise and similarly stop after sunset, that would be awesome.

Currently trialing similar, locally, which plan on exporting to external FTP automatically and then deleting local file.

It looks like us Aussies (what is it 3 of us) all think alike... and expectations too...

There are plenty of web services around to host your data - but they all lack something... Weather Underground used to be good, but when things break like ftp'ing images, they don't care to fix it...

Even our lovely BOM is getting in to the act - www.bom.gov.au/wow-support/ but they just took the WOW service from the UK and not fully implemented it well from my simple play around with it...

But if its just timelapse your interested in - things like webcam.io/ but I don't want to spend $5/mth

So until we band together and build the ultimate repository - interested to learn each others journeys!!!

I am using WeeWx on a NAS server, connected to a SDR sniffing 433Mhz to host my weather website. Very stable and only reboot about once every 2 or 3 months.

If I can get my SDL system working right (battery issues) then I plan on running WeeWx from the box. Not ideal, but with an hourly upload of data, and maybe 5 minutes to WU.. could work.

I want the timelapse though. I have been playing around with scripts on another Rpi ZW to see what uses next to no resources and is stable. Still need that FTP option and deleting of unwanted images.. again.. zero cost.. I dont want to pay someone to host the videos.

I remember, previously, there was a comment that to run the SkyWeather script, it must have cam plugged in and activated in the config. I like the cam. West is best for me, but I dont want my neighbours back yard in it.. Either south or east avoids this, but west in AU is where the weather mostly comes from. Here anyway.

The European privacy laws. Constraints regarding to (security) cameras: when and where you are allowed to install them. How you can use them. How you can use the footage.

Say I'm able to find a way to install it such a way I only capture our private property and according to any other constraints, then the mail man comes to deliver a package and gets in the frame (or any other visitor, friend or professional). Can not just upload that to the cloud or have weatherSTEM process the material...

Got to admit, I choose the easy way out

Or actually I want to be able to place the weather station where I want, not have to care about where the camera is pointing. Where we plan to put the station it would perfectly capture the neighbors balcony...