Something I made. I really Like it. I feel it's soothing to have just running. Every so often I see a cool animation, and it matches the decor of my place. Plus it's functional and I can check it out on my way out the door in the morning.

The cloud uses WIFI to get the weather for the area you live in. The display runs for about 15 minutes, at the top of every hour, and it uses the current weather to generate the display.

Possible display's are

Rain

Snow

Lightning

Sunny

Special surprise!

Step 1: Step One: Assemble Parts

You need some Metal Wiring.

http://www.amazon.com/Aluminum-Craft-Wire-Gauge-SI...

Some stuffing material.

http://www.amazon.com/Fairfield-Poly-Fil-Premium-P...

A coathangar

a Raspberry Pi

http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Model-512MB-Com...

( one of the newer, cheaper models MAY work, I haven't tested it yet. )

A flash card ( for the Raspberry Pi )

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Class-Micro-Adapter-...

A string of LED's

http://www.amazon.com/kapata-digital-strings-Addre...

(there are lots of options here... I used WS2801, but there are other formats you could use if you wanted. )

A power supply.

Something like this should work.

http://www.amazon.com/SHCHV-Orange-Supply-Charger-...

I also used a power adapter for the RPI. ( not 100% required. )

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MHUN7S?psc=1&...

And finally a WiFi USB dongle

http://www.amazon.com/ZTC-Wireless-Adapter-802-11N...

It would help if you had a little bit of wire lying around.

Step 2: Step Two : Software

First you need to flash your flashdrive with Weezy

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installa...

source code is below. Extract it and put the files in the same folder anywhere on your Raspberry Pi.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxTr2OsIPb3uQWZS...

You have to install the weather utility for linux as well.

Type the following command into the terminal on the Pi.

$ sudo apt-get install weather-util

you can do this many ways. One way is by following the instructions at https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-a...

**important** make sure to open up First.py and edit the 2nd and 3rd line to match your zip code.

os.system ("weather 20110 > 20110.txt")

fh = open('20110.txt')

20110 is MY zip code. So change it to yours...

Also, edit any other line in First.py to whatever date you want the special surprise to trigger. For example, I have a special surprise run on Aug 16 and Jul 12.

for line in fh:

if "Jul 12" in line: execfile("Birthday.py")

if "clear" in line: execfile("sunny.py")

if "rain" in line: execfile("rain.py")

if "mist" in line: execfile("rain.py")

if "snow" in line: execfile("Snow.py")

if "storm" in line: execfile("lightning.py")

if "Aug 16" in line: execfile("Birthday.py")

if "Jul 12" in line: execfile("Birthday.py")

Finally, you have to edit the Crontab as follows

Use Putty to interface with your Pi, and type: "crontab -e" at the terminal

Change your crontab to look like this

@reboot sh /usr/share/Cloud_Lamp/launcher.sh >/home/pi/logs/cronlog 2>&1
59 * * * * sh /usr/share/Cloud_Lamp/launcher.sh >/home/pi/logs/cronlog

Change the filepath to the location where you extracted the contents of the zip file.

Plug in your USB WIFI dongle and configure to your network per the tutorial below

http://weworkweplay.com/play/automatically-connect...

The code is written to run the animation for about 15 minutes at the top of every hour. It can be tweaked to your liking by editing each of the scripts First.py calls on.

Step 3: Step 3: Hardware

You need to do a little bit of soldering.

Connect the LED strip to the Raspberry Pi according to the instruction above.

Step 4: Assemble the Cloud

Assemble the coat hanger and the gauged aluminum wire in such a way that it resembles the outline of a cloud. Stuff the Raspberry Pi inside the unit first so all you have to do is plug it in. You can then fill the outline with the stuffing. Arrange the LED strip so that it is completely covered by the fluff. . Once there is enough stuffing inside the wire, simply "fluff" the stuffing so as to hide the wire.

Congrats, the cloud is ready to hang, all you should have to do is plug it in and let it do its thing!