Adding Weather and Gmail info to my i3 Status

September 26, 2014

Today I decided to use a program known as i3blocks to customize my i3status. It allows me to run outputs of scripts and colorize sections as well.

Installing and configuring i3blocks

First you need to install i3blocks:

1
pacaur -S i3blocks-git

Then add the i3blocks script to your i3 config file.

1
2
3
4
bar 
	{
	status_command i3blocks -c ~/.i3/i3blocks.conf
	}

Now configure your i3blocks configuration file:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
separator_block_width=14

[Weather]
command=~/.i3/IconicWeather.sh "10001"
interval=1800
color=#e97ac8


[mail]
command=echo -e " $(sh ~/GmailMonitor/mail.sh)"
interval=100
color=#7F00FF 

[disk-root]
label=:
command=/usr/libexec/i3blocks/disk /
interval=30
color=#1793D1


[disk-home]
label=:
command=/usr/libexec/i3blocks/disk $HOME
interval=30
color=#859900

[ssid]
label=
command=echo "$(iw dev wlo1 link | grep SSID | cut -d " " -f 2-)"
color=#d33682
interval=5

[wireless]
instance=wlo1
command=/usr/libexec/i3blocks/network
color=#00FF00
interval=10

[strength]
command=echo "$(iw dev wlo1 link | grep signal | cut -d " " -f 2-)"
interval=10
color=#cb4b16

[temp]
label=
command=echo "$(sensors coretemp-isa-0000 | awk '/Physical/ {print $4}')"
interval=10
color=#b58900


[battery]
command=~/.i3/battery BAT0

interval=30

[load]
label= 
command=/usr/libexec/i3blocks/load_average
interval=10
color=#6c71c4


[volume]
label=
command=~/.i3/volume-usb
interval=2
signal=10
color=#d70a53


[time]
label=
command=date '+%a %m-%d-%y %l:%M:%S %p'
interval=5
color=#50C878

If you want to remove the separator from a section just include the line: separator=false

Configuring the Scripts

I modified many of the scripts I found on the i3blocks wiki

The Weather Script

I wanted to display weather on my i3status but I wanted to include icons to indicate the type of weather at a location. So I piped the curl script output in a perl script to print a font-awsome icon from a given weather condition.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
#!/bin/bash 

METRIC=0 #Should be 0 or 1; 0 for F, 1 for C
 
if [ -z $1 ]; then
echo
echo "USAGE: weather.sh <locationcode>"
echo
exit 0;
fi
 
curl -s http://rss.accuweather.com/rss/liveweather_rss.asp\?metric\=${METRIC}\&locCode\=$1 | perl -ne 'use utf8; if (/Currently/) {chomp;/\<title\>Currently: (.*)?\<\/title\>/; my @values=split(":",$1); if( $values[0] eq "Sunny" || $values[0] eq "Mostly Sunny" || $values[0] eq "Partly Sunny" || $values[0] eq "Intermittent Clouds" || $values[0] eq "Hazy Sunshine" || $values[0] eq "Hazy Sunshine" || $values[0] eq "Hot") 
{
my $sun = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$sun";
}
if( $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy" || $values[0] eq "Cloudy" || $values[0] eq "Dreary (Overcast)" || $values[0] eq "Fog")
{
my $cloud = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$cloud";
}
if( $values[0] eq "Showers" || $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Showers" || $values[0] eq "Partly Sunny w/ Showers" || $values[0] eq "T-Storms"|| $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ T-Storms"|| $values[0] eq "Partly Sunny w/ T-Storms"|| $values[0] eq "Rain")
{
my $rain = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$rain";
}
if( $values[0] eq "Windy")
{
my $wind = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$wind";
} 
if($values[0] eq "Flurries" || $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Flurries" || $values[0] eq "Partly Sunny w/ Flurries"|| $values[0] eq "Snow"|| $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Snow"|| $values[0] eq "Ice"|| $values[0] eq "Sleet"|| $values[0] eq "Freezing Rain"|| $values[0] eq "Rain and Snow"|| $values[0] eq "Cold")
{
my $snow = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$rain";
}
if($values[0] eq "Clear" || $values[0] eq "Mostly Clear" || $values[0] eq "Partly Cloudy"|| $values[0] eq "Intermittent Clouds"|| $values[0] eq "Hazy Moonlight"|| $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy"|| $values[0] eq "Partly Cloudy w/ Showers"|| $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Showers"|| $values[0] eq "Partly Cloudy w/ T-Storms"|| $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Flurries" || $values[0] eq "Mostly Cloudy w/ Snow")
{
my $night = "";
binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");
print "$night";
}
print"$values[1]"; }'

The Gmail Script

The gmail script in the wiki was not parsing the xml correctly. I fixed the issue. The script shows the number of unread emails you have:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
USER=Your_Gmail_Username
PASS=Your_Password
 
COUNT=`curl -su $USER:$PASS https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom || echo "<fullcount>unknown number of</fullcount>"`
COUNT=`echo "$COUNT" | grep -oPm1 "(?<=<fullcount>)[^<]+" `
echo $COUNT
if [ "$COUNT" != "0" ]; then
    if [ "$COUNT" = "1" ];then
        WORD="mail";
    else
        WORD="mails";
    fi
fi

The battery script

I made the batter script change icons when its charging vs discharging.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
...
if ($status eq 'Discharging') {
    
	$full_text .= " $percent% Bat";
} elsif ($status eq 'Charging') {
	$full_text .= "⚡ $percent% Chr";
}
...

The Volume Script

I had to modify the volume script, becuase I use an external sound card. This means amixer will not be able to see a master device.

1
2
3
...
amixer -c $CARD -M -D $MIXER get Headphone |  
...

Here is the result of my configuration:
You can view the full screen here.

Nikhil Kumar