Gemini AI Generated Snow Scraper Promo

 I was fooling around with the latest Gemini model and came up with this short promo video for the Snow Scraper. Its not perfect, definitely has some AI jank, but I thought it was pretty neat and wanted to share it none the less.  

Snow Scraper GUI Progress

I have made significant progress on the touchscreen GUI interface. So far I have the splash logo, main menu, resort selection screen, Wi-Fi configuration screen (with onscreen keyboard) working. Here are a couple screen shots:

I am working on finishing up the actual resort snowfall display screen but here is the current prototype I am working on:

Its been a lot of work but I am really happy with the progress that's been made so far. I think it makes for much more interesting display and the touchscreen is a way better way to interact with device.

New Feature: Avalanche Canada Forecasts

 

I have added the ability to display Avalanche Canada's forecasts as an option. Avalanche Canada has created an API that is easy to use and integrating it into the Snow Scraper turned out to be quite straight forward. I think it is a great addition and will be a useful feature for those looking to venture out into the backcountry. People can quickly check the region they are headed to to get an idea of what kind of conditions are currently forecasted in the area. 

Here is a prototype screen that I am currently working on implementing:

Screen upgrade

Just doing a quick update to show how the new screen is working. I think it looks great. It even has an animated snow effect. It is a touchscreen so I plan to implement a new touch screen interface as well.

Here's my first prototype:

I've also started designing a new enclosure to fit the screen. Stay tuned.

End of the season

Well the end of the season has arrived with this weekend being the closing weekend at Sun Peaks my local mountain. I was hoping to add Whitewater to the list of scrapable ski hills but it looks like they are already closed. I managed to scrape 8 of my planned 10 this season which I am quite pleased with.

So far the current version of the Snow Scraper supports the following ski hills:

• Sun Peaks
• Big White
• Whistler
• Kicking Horse
• Red Mountain
• Revelstoke
• Banff Sunshine
• Lake Louise

Off to a good start. Over the off-season I have plans to add auto update support so that the Snow Scraper can update to the latest revision with the press of a button. That will update the software to work with any new mountains that are added and to update any existing that change their webpages. I am going to switch to an OLED display and create a new 3D model around it. I'm hoping I can come up with something much better looking and a bit smaller. It will still use the same sized snow globe and led light as well as the same input module and raspberry pi zero. 

Kicking Horse and Red Mountain Resorts Added

Phew! These two took a fair bit of work to get running. Unlike all of the previous resorts scraping these two required the use of additional software as their content is dynamically generated. The page must be prerendered before being able to scrape the relevant data from them. This posed quite a challenge and I struggled for quite some time trying to get this to work on the pi zero. Unfortunately the hardware doesn't seem capable of performing the pre-rendering so I had to outsource it to my PC. The way this works is using Splash on a more power system to remotely pre-render the dynamic content and then scraping the results using the traditional method I had been previously using. This will have to be the way it is for any future resorts that use dynamically generated content. I have it setup to work on my local network for now but in the future I plan to have a dedicated server hosting this software so that all Snow Scrapers will be able to contact it in order to request the generated html necessary to scrape the sites. I will update the source code to include the new hills I've added once they have shut down for the season. I have one more left on my list to complete before that happens, Whitewater. Unfortunately I have not been able to use this method to successfully scrape SilverStar's website. If anyone has any ideas id be open to try them but so far I'm at an impasse. 

3D Model Published

I have released the 3D printable model on printables.com for anyone who would like to print the enclosure. I am happy with this revision and think it will suffice for the initial release. Its fairly bulky but easy to assemble and houses all the components nicely. 

I plan on working on adding a few more ski hill's snow data next before they all shut down for the season. However, afterwards I think I will focus on creating a better enclosure and switching to an OLED display. Hopefully this will make the unit more sleek and compact since its intended to be a centerpiece. I hope to have a much more stylish looking version to release by next season.