Devlog 8 of Situationboard

In this devlog I put the website on my VPS at https://situationboard.nouxinf.net/ and wrote a README. The readme contains some info on the project, screenshots, and instructions on how to add a new widget to the site for contributors.

Devlog 7 of Situationboard

In this devlog I added a dark mode that saves your preferences but also loads them from your system settings. I made a bunch of CSS tweaks at the same time to make it look a bit nicer too.

Devlog 6 of Situationboard

In this devlog I added a MacOS style menu bar at the top for some buttons. The SB icon and the Situationboard spans just refresh the page, the attribution button opens a dialog with credits to open source libraries and images used (APIs are credited separately in the add widgets screen). The about screen also has info.

Next up is just dark mode, some docs + readme then I’m ready to ship

Devlog 5 of Situationboard

In this devlog I added an XKCD widget, which fetches the latest XKCD comic through a proxy on the backend, and you can navigate through comics with the previous, next, random and custom number buttons. You can also click on the image to zoom in on the comic and the caption.

What I’m adding next is dark mode and an attribution screen to give credit to all sources used.

Devlog 4 of Situationboard

In this devlog I finished the weather widget. I added icons that I reused from an earlier stardance project, weatherstation that map to WMO codes, and it shows a forecast with min-max temperatures for the next 7 days.

Next up I’ll do an xkcd widget and dark mode

Devlog 3 of Situationboard

Things I added:

• A live time widget
• A description window for each widget that uses a markdown renderer
• A customisable weather widget (currently only shows temperature and location but will be updated with week-ahead forecast)
  Things I might add soon:
• dark mode
• xkcd widget?

Devlog #11 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation (prob the final one)

In this devlog I:

• added this vitals screen which includes battery percentage, flash storage space used and the amount of PSRAM free. It doesn’t show the percentage when its plugged in because for some reason the battery reader always gives 100% when its plugged in
• published the weatherstation website to https://weatherstation.nouxinf.net/
• fix a few bugs

Devlog #10 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

In this devlog I:

• added some more effective error handling
• moved a bunch of functions out of __init__.py into their own files to make the code cleaner
• add an attribution screen (pictured) to be legally compliant with copyright

Devlog #9 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

In this devlog I:

• stripped down the fork of the badgeware web emulator to onl have the badge screen and console log
• then added content to the homepage talking about the app
• added a new page with installation instructions for users unfamiliar with the badgeware tufty
• in that tutorial page i made a tool that generates options.json configurations where you can set temperature unit and pick out coordinates on a map

Devlog #8 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

In this devlog I:

• forked the badgeware web simulator with permission
• modified the backend slightly to “work on my machine”
• also modified the actual badge code to use badgeware libraries instead of micropython libraries to let it work on the emulator
• added a github action to automatically update whats on the simulator repo when a new weatherstation release comes out

things i’ve yet to add:

• automatic time zone setting in the simulator: will add that by overriding secrets.py somehow
• reskinning the whole site to be a weatherstation homepage

Devlog #7 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

In this devlog I:

• Made it that the A button allows refetching weather data
• Automatically refresh weather data every 10 minutes
• Have a text display that shows when the weather was last updated (respecting TIMEZONE setting in secrets.py)
• Fixed some issues so now most of the time you can plug and replug the multisensor stick. Doesn’t work very reliably though due to issues where the cable is half-connected yet the badge is trying to read from the sensor.

Devlog #6 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

In this devlog I:

• removed unused functions that were replaced by native 3.0 functions
• made it so that the app works without internet so you can just use it as a sensor

Devlog #5 of the Badgeware Tufty Weatherstation

Stuff added since the last devlog:

• Updated firmware version: While I was working on a side project Pimoroni made new firmware versions so I ported it from 2.0.2 to 3.0.2 though I’m pretty sure it works with 3.0.0 3.0.1
• Along with that I changed some functions to native ones like word wrapping and centering text that came with 3.0
• I added a temperature icon to the internet weather, and added precipitation and wind direction both with icons (pictured)
• I modified someone else’s screenshot code to work on windows and have a few extra features, which is how the screenshot attached was taken.
• Added comment boxes generated by one of my side projects, https://commentboxgenerator.lemonsite.uk/
• Write a readme and roadmap

Things that have yet to be added (from the roadmap)

• Offline support
• internet is optional just like sensor
• Update weather every 1 hour or on request- Some basic forecast information (e.g. weather icons per day of the week) in another screen
• Web editor for options.json through Flask or Bun (preferrably something self contained though)
• Badge diagnostics page (e.g. storage space, RAM, battery)
• Fork badgeware web simulator to work with weatherstation by adding proxy

Devlog #4 of Comment Box Generator

Comment Box Generator is a super lightweight site for making unicode boxes to put in comments in your code that are centred, for example:

# ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
# ▓              EXAMPLE               ▓
# ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓

(which looks centred if you are using a monospace font)

This is probably the last devlog for this project, meaning all these changes are finishing touches. For example:

• Loads more box options - there are now 9 of them
• Started using Liberation Mono to make appearance consistent between OSs instead of relying on the default monospace font
• Some SEO: Meta tags have been added to the HTML and I put the site on Google Search Console so hopefully soon people will find this site naturally
• Simple favicon
• A copy button to the output plus wrapping it in a container
• A proper README + CONTRIBUTING.md
• A dialog fade/zoom in and out animation. Cross-browser quirks are INSANELY annoying, took 19 Qwen prompts to sort that one out

Will be shipping it soon!

Devlog #3 of Comment Box Generator

Comment Box Generator is a super lightweight site for making unicode
boxes to put in comments in your code that are centred, for example:

/*
╔════════════════════════════════════╗
║              EXAMPLE               ║
╚════════════════════════════════════╝
*/

(trust me this looks normal in a code editor)

It’s made with Bun on the backend, so it builds and hosts fast. When
distributed, it loads super fast as it’s only 50KB minified. This is
done by removing all whitespace in HTML, CSS and JS and removing
unnecessary glyphs in the one font that’s bundled, Stack Sans.

Things that have been added since the previous devlog:

• Unicode box symbols: this is far more reliable than using just one
  character like = because there are far fewer of those that work with
  centred box comments. Now you define eight characters for each box
  preset, for each side and corner.
• Proper CSS! and Dark mode with that too.
• Minifying fonts in the Bun build script
• Forcing multiline for languages like HTML where there are no single
  line comments
• Removed RobotoMono and instead used the browser’s default monospace
  font as that was causing issues with the unicode box approach
• Colour scheme options and Github, Hack Club Stardance links and an
  info dialog in the top right

Things yet to come:

• A proper README
• More box options
• SEO (I want people to organically find this site after all)
• A favicon
• A copy button for the output, plus generally styling that up

Updated the README to have clear instructions on how to install the app before shipping