Weather

weather / wx — Current conditions (Open-Meteo, no API key)

Fetches current weather for the Home Launcher hero from the Open-Meteo API — free and keyless (no API key, so nothing secret is stored on the SD card).

Weather cannot be known offline. It is live server data. GPS/location only tells the query where you are — the actual temperature and conditions come from the network. So this needs WiFi (cw).

CMD> wx                        # show status (location / units / last reading)
CMD> wx loc <lat> <lon>        # set location (when there is no GPS fix)
CMD> wx units metric|imperial  # °C or °F
CMD> wx now                    # fetch immediately and show the result

On a T-Deck Plus with a GPS fix this works with zero configuration — no key, no location to set.

Location — automatic, best source first

wx now picks the best available location; you normally never set anything:

  1. GPS fix (most accurate) — on the T-Deck Plus, used the moment GPS has a fix.
  2. Manual wx loc <lat> <lon> — an explicit override, if you set one.
  3. WiFi IP geolocation (coarse, automatic) — when there’s no GPS/manual location, the device looks up its approximate location from its public IP via ip-api.com (free, no key). Cached after the first lookup.

So on a Plus you get GPS automatically, and on the base board it auto-locates over WiFi — wx loc is only an optional override, never required.

Privacy note: IP geolocation sends your public IP to ip-api.com. A GPS fix or a manual wx loc avoids that third-party call entirely.

Configuration file — /config/weather.conf

Self-seeded on first boot as a commented template. Since Open-Meteo is keyless, there’s nothing secret to store — only (optionally) a location:

# weather.conf — Al-Anqa weather (Open-Meteo, no API key), shown in the `home` launcher
# On the T-Deck Plus with a GPS fix, location is automatic.
# Otherwise set your coordinates below (or run: wx loc <lat> <lon>), then reboot.
# lat=31.9539
# lon=35.9106
units=metric   # or: imperial
  • Inline # comments and surrounding whitespace are stripped by the parser.
  • Setting values with wx loc / wx units rewrites this file.
  • No API key means no plaintext secret on the removable card — a small OPSEC win over key-based weather APIs.

How it fetches (GDMA-safe)

The request uses plain HTTP (WiFiClient) — Open-Meteo serves the same keyless response over HTTP, and a weather reading needs no confidentiality. HTTPS was dropped because the TLS handshake’s ~30–40 KB internal-DRAM allocation fails under the Home launcher, where a full-screen PSRAM sprite and the VLW fonts are already resident: weather fetched fine from the CLI (wx now) but failed inside the undercover Home app. Plain HTTP has no such memory cost, so it works in both.

The request runs only from wx now and Home-launcher entry — never from the background input loop. This is deliberate: netspy/isoscan run associated-with-promiscuous, and any fetch while promiscuous is live would corrupt the filesystem/WiFi engine (the GDMA rule). The launcher is a benign cover screen with WiFi idle, so fetching there is safe.

The last successful reading is cached in RAM and shown even after WiFi drops (until reboot). Refresh interval is 15 minutes.

See also: Home Launcher, Timezone, WiFi.