Tag Archives: api

Writing first Mastodon bot

Over the years I’ve written quite a few Twitter bots. But since Elon Musk took over – the bird site has become unbearable, so I, like many others, migrated to Mastodon. What Mastodon is, and how it operates is a whole another story, but for our intents and purposes it is similar to Twitter: there is a home timeline where posts from people you follow appear, and you can post to the timeline as well.

Back on Twitter I used to have a bot that would tweet one-liners from Pink Floyd lyrics every hour. Follow me along as I recreate it on Mastodon.

First and foremost you have to make sure the Mastodon instance you’re on allows bots. Some do, some don’t – read the server rules to find out. I am using botsin.space instance that is specifically meant to host bots. Continue reading →

API keys for weather providers

Many apps and watchfaces for Pebble smartwatch provide weather information and many of them require you to have your own key, unique for each weather provider. Here’s how to obtain API keys for 3 major most popular weather providers:

  1. For Forecast.io register at https://developer.forecast.io/ – and at the very bottom of the page there will be long string of letters an numbers – that’s the key.
  2. For OpenWeatherMap register at https://home.openweathermap.org/api_keys and you will see a form create your API key there
  3. For WeatherUnderground go to https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api, click LOGIN button, fill the form to create account, go to “Key Settings” in menu and generate your API key there

It is *highly* recommended once you get your keys – save them at https://www.pmkey.xyz service. Then all you have to remember to get them is simple 5-digit pin and more and more watchfaces (CobbleStyle 2 being one of them) use this service for easy key retrieval.