Kits / Starter Kit: Weather Station / Projects / Display Environment Measurements on LCD / Using Ruby

Using Ruby to write to LCD 20x4 Bricklet¶

For this project we are assuming, that you have a Ruby development environment set up and that you have a rudimentary understanding of the Ruby language.

If you are totally new to Ruby itself you should start here. If you are new to the Tinkerforge API, you should start here.

Goals¶

We are setting the following goals for this project:

Temperature, ambient light, humidity and air pressure should be shown on the LCD 20x4 Bricklet,
the measured values should be updated automatically when they change and
the measured values should be formated to be easily readable.

Since this project will likely run 24/7, we will also make sure that the application is as robust towards external influences as possible. The application should still work when

Bricklets are exchanged (i.e. we don't rely on UIDs),
Brick Daemon isn't running or is restarted,
WIFI Extension is out of range or
Weather Station is restarted (power loss or accidental USB removal).

In the following we will show step-by-step how this can be achieved.

Step 1: Discover Bricks and Bricklets¶

To start off, we need to define where our program should connect to:

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 4223

If the WIFI Extension is used or if the Brick Daemon is running on a different PC, you have to exchange "localhost" with the IP address or hostname of the WIFI Extension or PC.

When the program is started, we need to register the ::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE callback and the ::CALLBACK_CONNECTED callback and trigger a first enumerate:

ipcon = IPConnection.new
ipcon.connect HOST, PORT

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE) do |uid, connected_uid, position,
                                                              hardware_version, firmware_version,
                                                              device_identifier, enumeration_type|
end

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_CONNECTED) do |connected_reason|
end

ipcon.enumerate

The enumerate callback is triggered if a Brick gets connected over USB or if the #enumerate function is called. This allows to discover the Bricks and Bricklets in a stack without knowing their types or UIDs beforehand.

The connected callback is triggered if the connection to the WIFI Extension or to the Brick Daemon got established. In this callback we need to trigger the enumerate again, if the reason is an auto reconnect:

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_CONNECTED) do |connected_reason|
  if connected_reason == IPConnection::CONNECT_REASON_AUTO_RECONNECT
    ipcon.enumerate
  end
end

An auto reconnect means, that the connection to the WIFI Extension or to the Brick Daemon was lost and could subsequently be established again. In this case the Bricklets may have lost their configurations and we have to reconfigure them. Since the configuration is done during the enumeration process (see below), we have to trigger another enumeration.

Step 1 put together:

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 4223

ipcon = IPConnection.new
ipcon.connect HOST, PORT

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE) do |uid, connected_uid, position,
                                                              hardware_version, firmware_version,
                                                              device_identifier, enumeration_type|
end

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_CONNECTED) do |connected_reason|
  if connected_reason == IPConnection::CONNECT_REASON_AUTO_RECONNECT
    ipcon.enumerate
  end
end

ipcon.enumerate

Step 2: Initialize Bricklets on Enumeration¶

During the enumeration we want to configure all of the weather measuring Bricklets. Doing this during the enumeration ensures that Bricklets get reconfigured if the stack was disconnected or there was a power loss.

The configurations should be performed on first startup (ENUMERATION_TYPE_CONNECTED) as well as whenever the enumeration is triggered externally by us (ENUMERATION_TYPE_AVAILABLE):

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE) do |uid, connected_uid, position,
                                                              hardware_version, firmware_version,
                                                              device_identifier, enumeration_type|
  if enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_CONNECTED or
     enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_AVAILABLE

The LCD 20x4 configuration is simple, we want the current text cleared and we want the backlight on:

if device_identifier == BrickletLCD20x4::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
  lcd = BrickletLCD20x4.new uid, ipcon
  lcd.clear_display
  lcd.backlight_on

We configure the Ambient Light, Humidity and Barometer Bricklet to return their respective measurements continuously with a period of 1000ms (1s):

elsif device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLight::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
  ambient_light = BrickletAmbientLight.new uid, ipcon
  ambient_light.set_illuminance_callback_period 1000
  ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
  end
elsif device_identifier == BrickletHumidity::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
  humidity = BrickletHumidity.new uid, ipcon
  humidity.set_humidity_callback_period 1000
  humidity.register_callback(BrickletHumidity::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |humidity|
  end
elsif device_identifier == BrickletBarometer::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
  barometer = BrickletBarometer.new uid, ipcon
  barometer.set_air_pressure_callback_period 1000
  barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
  end
end

This means that the Bricklets will call the CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE, CALLBACK_HUMIDITY and CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE callback functions whenever the value has changed, but with a maximum period of 1000ms.

Step 2 put together:

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE) do |uid, connected_uid, position,
                                                              hardware_version, firmware_version,
                                                              device_identifier, enumeration_type|
  if enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_CONNECTED or
     enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_AVAILABLE
    if device_identifier == BrickletLCD20x4::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      lcd = BrickletLCD20x4.new uid, ipcon
      lcd.clear_display
      lcd.backlight_on
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLight::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      ambient_light = BrickletAmbientLight.new uid, ipcon
      ambient_light.set_illuminance_callback_period 1000
      ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletHumidity::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      humidity = BrickletHumidity.new uid, ipcon
      humidity.set_humidity_callback_period 1000
      humidity.register_callback(BrickletHumidity::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |humidity|
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletBarometer::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      barometer = BrickletBarometer.new uid, ipcon
      barometer.set_air_pressure_callback_period 1000
      barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
      end
    end
  end
end

Step 3: Show measurements on display¶

We want a neat arrangement of the measurements on the display, such as:

Illuminanc 137.39 lx
Humidity    34.10 %
Air Press  987.70 mb
Temperature 22.64 °C

The decimal marks and the units should be below each other. To achieve this we use two characters for the unit, two decimal places and crop the name to use the maximum characters that are left. That's why "Illuminanc" is missing its final "e".

text = "%6.2f" % value

The code above converts a floating point value to a string according to the given format specification. The result will be at least 6 characters long with 2 decimal places, filled up with spaces from the left if it would be shorter than 6 characters otherwise.

ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
  text = 'Illuminanc %6.2f lx' % (illuminance/10.0)
  lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
end

humidity.register_callback(BrickletHumidity::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |humidity|
  text = 'Humidity   %6.2f %%' % (humidity/10.0)
  lcd.write_line 1, 0, text
end

barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
  text = 'Air Press %7.2f mb' % (air_pressure/1000.0)
  lcd.write_line 2, 0, text
end

We are still missing the temperature. The Barometer Bricklet can measure temperature, but it doesn't have a callback for it. As a simple workaround we can retrieve the temperature in the CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE callback function:

barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
  text = 'Air Press %7.2f mb' % (air_pressure/1000.0)
  lcd.write_line 2, 0, text

  temperature = barometer.get_chip_temperature
  text = 'Temperature %5.2f %sC' % [(temperature/100.0), 0xDF.chr]
  lcd.write_line 3, 0, text
end

Step 3 put together:

ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
  text = 'Illuminanc %6.2f lx' % (illuminance/10.0)
  lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
end

humidity.register_callback(BrickletHumidity::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |humidity|
  text = 'Humidity   %6.2f %%' % (humidity/10.0)
  lcd.write_line 1, 0, text
end

barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
  text = 'Air Press %7.2f mb' % (air_pressure/1000.0)
  lcd.write_line 2, 0, text

  temperature = barometer.get_chip_temperature
  # 0xDF == ° on LCD 20x4 charset
  text = 'Temperature %5.2f %sC' % [(temperature/100.0), 0xDF.chr]
  lcd.write_line 3, 0, text
end

That's it. If we would copy these three steps together in one file and execute it, we would have a working Weather Station!

There are some obvious ways to make the output better. The name could be cropped according to the exact space that is available (depending on the number of digits of the measured value). Also, reading the temperature in the CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE callback function is suboptimal. If the air pressure doesn't change, we won't update the temperature. It would be better to read the temperature in a different thread in an endless loop with a one second sleep after each read. But we want to keep this code as simple as possible.

However, we do not meet all of our goals yet. The program is not yet robust enough. What happens if it can't connect on startup? What happens if the enumerate after an auto reconnect doesn't work?

What we need is error handling!

Step 4: Error handling and Logging¶

On startup, we need to try to connect until the connection works:

while true
  begin
    ipcon.connect HOST, PORT
    break
  rescue Exception => e
    puts 'Connection Error: ' + e
    sleep 1
  end
end

and we need to try enumerating until the message goes through:

while true
  begin
    ipcon.enumerate
    break
  rescue Exception => e
    puts 'Enumerate Error: ' + e
    sleep 1
  end
end

With these changes it is now possible to first start the program and connect the Weather Station afterwards.

We also need to make sure, that we only write to the LCD if it is already initialized:

ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
  if lcd != nil
    text = 'Illuminanc %6.2f lx' % (illuminance/10.0)
    lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
    puts "Write to line 0: #{text}"
  end
end

and that we have to deal with errors during the initialization:

if device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLight::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
  begin
    ambient_light = BrickletAmbientLight.new uid, ipcon
    ambient_light.set_illuminance_callback_period 1000
    ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
    end
    puts 'Ambient Light initialized'
  rescue Exception => e
    ambient_light = nil
    puts 'Ambient Light init failed: ' + e
  end
end

Additionally we added some logging. With the logging we can later find out what exactly caused a problem, if the Weather Station failed for some time period.

For example, if we connect to the Weather Station via Wi-Fi and we have regular auto reconnects, it likely means that the Wi-Fi connection is not very stable.

Step 5: Everything put together¶

That's it! We are already done with our Weather Station and all of the goals should be met.

Now all of the above put together (download):

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# -*- ruby encoding: utf-8 -*-

require 'tinkerforge/ip_connection'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_lcd_20x4'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_ambient_light'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_ambient_light_v2'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_ambient_light_v3'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_humidity'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_humidity_v2'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_barometer'
require 'tinkerforge/bricklet_barometer_v2'

include Tinkerforge

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 4223

lcd = nil
ambient_light = nil
ambient_light_v2 = nil
ambient_light_v3 = nil
humidity = nil
humidity_v2 = nil
barometer = nil
barometer_v2 = nil

ipcon = IPConnection.new
while true
  begin
    ipcon.connect HOST, PORT
    break
  rescue Exception => e
    puts 'Connection Error: ' + e
    sleep 1
  end
end

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_ENUMERATE) do |uid, connected_uid, position,
                                                              hardware_version, firmware_version,
                                                              device_identifier, enumeration_type|
  if enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_CONNECTED or
     enumeration_type == IPConnection::ENUMERATION_TYPE_AVAILABLE
    if device_identifier == BrickletLCD20x4::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        lcd = BrickletLCD20x4.new uid, ipcon
        lcd.clear_display
        lcd.backlight_on
        puts 'LCD 20x4 initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        lcd = nil
        puts 'LCD 20x4 init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLight::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        ambient_light = BrickletAmbientLight.new uid, ipcon
        ambient_light.set_illuminance_callback_period 1000
        ambient_light.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLight::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Illuminanc %6.2f lx' % (illuminance/10.0)
            lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 0: #{text}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Ambient Light initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        ambient_light = nil
        puts 'Ambient Light init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLightV2::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        ambient_light_v2 = BrickletAmbientLightV2.new uid, ipcon
        ambient_light_v2.set_configuration(BrickletAmbientLightV2::ILLUMINANCE_RANGE_64000LUX,
                                           BrickletAmbientLightV2::INTEGRATION_TIME_200MS)
        ambient_light_v2.set_illuminance_callback_period 1000
        ambient_light_v2.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLightV2::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Illumina %8.2f lx' % (illuminance/100.0)
            lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 0: #{text}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Ambient Light 2.0 initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        ambient_light = nil
        puts 'Ambient Light 2.0 init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletAmbientLightV3::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        ambient_light_v3 = BrickletAmbientLightV3.new uid, ipcon
        ambient_light_v3.set_configuration(BrickletAmbientLightV3::ILLUMINANCE_RANGE_64000LUX,
                                           BrickletAmbientLightV3::INTEGRATION_TIME_200MS)
        ambient_light_v3.set_illuminance_callback_configuration 1000, false, 'x', 0, 0
        ambient_light_v3.register_callback(BrickletAmbientLightV3::CALLBACK_ILLUMINANCE) do |illuminance|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Illumina %8.2f lx' % (illuminance/100.0)
            lcd.write_line 0, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 0: #{text}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Ambient Light 3.0 initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        ambient_light = nil
        puts 'Ambient Light 3.0 init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletHumidity::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        humidity = BrickletHumidity.new uid, ipcon
        humidity.set_humidity_callback_period 1000
        humidity.register_callback(BrickletHumidity::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |relative_humidity|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Humidity   %6.2f %%' % (relative_humidity/10.0)
            lcd.write_line 1, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 1: #{text}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Humidity initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        humidity = nil
        puts 'Humidity init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletHumidityV2::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        humidity_v2 = BrickletHumidityV2.new uid, ipcon
        humidity_v2.set_humidity_callback_configuration 1000, true, 'x', 0, 0
        humidity_v2.register_callback(BrickletHumidityV2::CALLBACK_HUMIDITY) do |relative_humidity|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Humidity   %6.2f %%' % (relative_humidity/100.0)
            lcd.write_line 1, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 1: #{text}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Humidity 2.0 initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        humidity_v2 = nil
        puts 'Humidity 2.0 init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletBarometer::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        barometer = BrickletBarometer.new uid, ipcon
        barometer.set_air_pressure_callback_period 1000
        barometer.register_callback(BrickletBarometer::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Air Press %7.2f mb' % (air_pressure/1000.0)
            lcd.write_line 2, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 2: #{text}"

            begin
              temperature = barometer.get_chip_temperature
            rescue Exception => e
              puts 'Could not get temperature: ' + e
              return
            end

            # 0xDF == ° on LCD 20x4 charset
            text = 'Temperature %5.2f %sC' % [(temperature/100.0), 0xDF.chr]
            lcd.write_line 3, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 3: #{text.sub(0xDF.chr, '°')}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Barometer initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        barometer = nil
        puts 'Barometer init failed: ' + e
      end
    elsif device_identifier == BrickletBarometerV2::DEVICE_IDENTIFIER
      begin
        barometer_v2 = BrickletBarometerV2.new uid, ipcon
        barometer_v2.set_air_pressure_callback_configuration 1000, false, 'x', 0, 0
        barometer_v2.register_callback(BrickletBarometerV2::CALLBACK_AIR_PRESSURE) do |air_pressure|
          if lcd != nil
            text = 'Air Press %7.2f mb' % (air_pressure/1000.0)
            lcd.write_line 2, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 2: #{text}"

            begin
              temperature = barometer_v2.get_temperature
            rescue Exception => e
              puts 'Could not get temperature: ' + e
              return
            end

            # 0xDF == ° on LCD 20x4 charset
            text = 'Temperature %5.2f %sC' % [(temperature/100.0), 0xDF.chr]
            lcd.write_line 3, 0, text
            puts "Write to line 3: #{text.sub(0xDF.chr, '°')}"
          end
        end
        puts 'Barometer 2.0 initialized'
      rescue Exception => e
        barometer_v2 = nil
        puts 'Barometer 2.0 init failed: ' + e
      end
    end
  end
end

ipcon.register_callback(IPConnection::CALLBACK_CONNECTED) do |connected_reason|
  if connected_reason == IPConnection::CONNECT_REASON_AUTO_RECONNECT
    puts 'Auto Reconnect'
    while true
      begin
        ipcon.enumerate
        break
      rescue Exception => e
        puts 'Enumerate Error: ' + e
        sleep 1
      end
    end
  end
end

while true
  begin
    ipcon.enumerate
    break
  rescue Exception => e
    puts 'Enumerate Error: ' + e
    sleep 1
  end
end

puts 'Press key to exit'
$stdin.gets
ipcon.disconnect