This awesome weather-based Raspberry Pi project lets you know if rain is on the way

Credit: alex-soul Published Sep 18, 2026, 1:20 AM EDT Simon is a Computer Science BSc graduate who has been writing about technology since 2014, and using Windows machines since 3.1. After working for an indie game studio and acting as the family's go-to technician for all computer issues, he found his passion for writing and decided to use his skill set to write about all things tech. Since beginning his writing career, he has written for many different publications such as WorldStart, Listverse, and MakeTechEasier. However, after finding his home at MakeUseOf in February 2019, he would eventually move on to its sister site, XDA, to bring the latest and greatest in Windows, Linux, and DIY electronics. Sign in to your XDA account Summary Raspberry Pi rain radar shows the last hours of observed rain for a quick, glanceable forecast. It's a single-purpose display that tracks recent rain movement and is open source. It runs on the Pi with Docker, caches radar files locally so it still works during internet outages. One of the trickiest arts when living in the UK is trying to predict whether it will rain or not. Precipitation chance percentages mean next to nothing, as predicted rain fails to appear and supposed dry days soak everyone looking for a nice day out. As such, someone made their own cloud tracker with a Raspberry Pi to give them at least an educated guess as to how the weather will be. This Raspberry Pi rain radar gives an early warning of potential soggy days It's also just nice to look at Over on the Raspberry Pi subreddit, user alex-soul showed off the rain radar they've been working on. As is what's usually the case in the Raspberry Pi scene, this project was inspired by another excellent example: A few years ago I used Eric Lewin’s Pi weather station and loved the idea, but for this one I wanted something much more stripped back. I already have Home Assistant for forecasts, temperatures, trends and all the other weather stuff, including my own Tempest Weather Station. This screen only has one job: show the last couple of hours of observed rain moving across the map, so I can glance at it and make my own call about where it’s heading. The whole thing runs on the Pi using Docker, and it will download and parse radar data to its storage. That way, if the internet goes down, it still has the latest data on hand to show you the most recent prediction it could grab. There's a little indicator that warns you if the weather data is very delayed, and once the internet comes back, it quickly grabs the new data to keep everything fresh. Very smart. You can check out all the details, plus instructions on how to make your own, on the Raspberry Pi Rain Radar GitHub repo.