Tuesday, March 16, 2021


This is a bill of materials for a METAR sectional map project
You will need a raspberry pi. If you are going to do some experimentation with the pi for fun, I recommend a cana kit with the container, OS pre-loaded, cables, etc. that you need:

If you want to experiment with other pi stuff, I highly recommend the Freenove kit, which comes with all kinds of goodies:

For the project itself, I think a pi zero will work fine, but I would still get the cana kit for the other accessories:

You will need a power supply, or possibly two. The Pi is powered by USB-C, or USB-micro for the pi zero. This device will work with a Pi 4B:

The reason you want the above power supply is that you will also want a string of lights to work with, which has 4" separation between lights. You can get 25, 50, 100, or chain them together. These run on 12 volts, which will help with longer runs of lights.

You will want the code from github:
https://github.com/hfahle/METARmap
Note that this requires the ws2811 c library too:
https://github.com/jgarff/rpi_ws281x
You will also want this 12 volt power supply to tie into both the lights and the USB power converter:

This will allow you to plug and unplug your map once it's complete. You will wire the konnected USB converter and the lights to this output, and ground it all together.
Finally, you will want a sectional map, and some kind of frame for it. You will also need a soldering iron and some 18-gauge wire to extend the distance between airports as needed.

We are also looking at an add-on for the map that we haven't finished the code for yet, so it's preliminary, but if you want to go ahead and order we'll get straightened out before the workshop:


If you'd rather work in Python completely, here's a link to some instructions for where to get that code:
https://slingtsi.rueker.com/making-a-led-powered-metar-map-for-your-wall
Setting up a Pi headlessly:
https://www.brewpiremix.com/headless-raspberry-pi