Arduino Weather to Light output

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,

Im new to arduino. I run a small industrial design studio and many of my projects that i design around work with arduinos. They seem like a lot of fun and I wanted to try my hand at it. I wanted to start with a project and could use some guidance. I want to build an alarm clock that emits light to wake me, but also shows me the weather outside in the form of Light. Im thinking of using an arduino with some wifi shield and RGB strips. Rainy days will be shown as blue light, white light for cloudy and orange/yellow for sunny day.

So need to figure out data points for the 3 weather scenarios and how to make it an alarm clock. I'm pretty new at this but seems like a fun little project. Any thoughts or comments are welcome

thanks!

2

Do some reading of the material available under the Learning tab.

You will need a RTC for time keeping.

You will need to know how to drive the outputs, IE, via transistors etc, not direct from outputs.

Do you have any sensors in mind?

Weedpharma

3

Thanks so much, will begin reading through those. Im hoping to use data from a weather source online. Somehow taking daily forecast and translating those data points to light output

4

An API such as: openwathermap API

You can send the request to the API via your internet connection and it will return the data.
The service by these lot says "up to 60 requests a minute" for free...which seems like more than what you need already. Also on the free version, you get 3/5 day forecast as well if you ever feel like adding that in as some kinda other function.

5

Oh, Yahoo! seem to provide a free API as well...have a look at both?

https://developer.yahoo.com/weather/

Change the last part in green yo where you want. Like mine for Leeds in the UK was:

select * from weather.forecast where woeid in (select woeid from geo.places(1) where text="leeds, UK")

Then at the bottom, it generates a link that will return the data (The Endpoint):
https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20weather.forecast%20where%20woeid%20in%20(select%20woeid%20from%20geo.places(1)%20where%20text%3D"leeds%2C%20UK")&format=json&env=store%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltableswithkeys

And I get this as the output in my browser...which you could quite easily sift through in arduino I guess...

 {"query":{"count":1,"created":"2015-11-04T18:02:42Z","lang":"en","results":{"channel":{"title":"Yahoo! Weather - Leeds, GB","link":"http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/Leeds__GB/*http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UKXX0078_f.html","description":"Yahoo! Weather for Leeds, GB","language":"en-us","lastBuildDate":"Wed, 04 Nov 2015 5:19 pm GMT","ttl":"60","location":{"city":"Leeds","country":"United Kingdom","region":""},"units":{"distance":"mi","pressure":"in","speed":"mph","temperature":"F"},"wind":{"chill":"50","direction":"0","speed":"0"},"atmosphere":{"humidity":"100","pressure":"29.85","rising":"0","visibility":"0.87"},"astronomy":{"sunrise":"7:11 am","sunset":"4:26 pm"},"image":{"title":"Yahoo! Weather","width":"142","height":"18","link":"http://weather.yahoo.com","url":"http://l.yimg.com/a/i/brand/purplelogo//uh/us/news-wea.gif"},"item":{"title":"Conditions for Leeds, GB at 5:19 pm GMT","lat":"53.81","long":"-1.56","link":"http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/Leeds__GB/*http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UKXX0078_f.html","pubDate":"Wed, 04 Nov 2015 5:19 pm GMT","condition":{"code":"27","date":"Wed, 04 Nov 2015 5:19 pm GMT","temp":"50","text":"Mostly Cloudy"},"description":"\n<img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/we/52/27.gif\"/>
\n<b>Current Conditions:</b>
\nMostly Cloudy, 50 F
\n
<b>Forecast:</b>
\nWed - Cloudy. High: 51 Low: 45
\nThu - PM Rain. High: 55 Low: 49
\nFri - Rain. High: 60 Low: 49
\nSat - AM Rain. High: 55 Low: 44
\nSun - PM Light Rain. High: 56 Low: 46
\n
\n<a href=\"http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/Leeds__GB/*http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UKXX0078_f.html\">Full Forecast at Yahoo! Weather</a>

\n(provided by <a href=\"http://www.weather.com\" >The Weather Channel</a>)
\n","forecast":[{"code":"26","date":"4 Nov 2015","day":"Wed","high":"51","low":"45","text":"Cloudy"},{"code":"12","date":"5 Nov 2015","day":"Thu","high":"55","low":"49","text":"PM Rain"},{"code":"12","date":"6 Nov 2015","day":"Fri","high":"60","low":"49","text":"Rain"},{"code":"12","date":"7 Nov 2015","day":"Sat","high":"55","low":"44","text":"AM Rain"},{"code":"11","date":"8 Nov 2015","day":"Sun","high":"56","low":"46","text":"PM Light Rain"}],"guid":{"isPermaLink":"false","content":"UKXX0078_2015_11_08_7_00_GMT"}}}}}}
6

Awesome thank you so much!