Put near-realtime picture of Earth as your desktop background

goes16-background is a Python 3 script that fetches near-realtime (~15 minutes delayed) Full Disk Natural Color image of Earth as its taken by GOES-16 and sets it as your desktop background.

Set a cronjob (or systemd service) that runs in every 15 minutes to automatically get the near-realtime picture of Earth.

• Unity 7
• Mate 1.8.1
• Pantheon
• LXDE
• OS X
• GNOME 3
• Cinnamon 2.8.8
• KDE

• any other desktop environments that are not mentioned above.

usage: goes16-background [-h] [--version] [-s {678,1356,2712,5424,10848}]
                         [-d DEADLINE] [--save-battery]
                         [--output-dir OUTPUT_DIR]
                         [--composite-over COMPOSITE_OVER]

set (near-realtime) picture of Earth as your desktop background

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -s {678,1356,2712,5424,10848}, --size {678,1356,2712,5424,10848}
                        increases the quality (and the size) the image.
                        possible values are 678, 1356, 2712, 5424, 10848
  -d DEADLINE, --deadline DEADLINE
                        deadline in minutes to download the image, set 0 to
                        cancel
  --save-battery        stop refreshing on battery
  --output-dir OUTPUT_DIR
                        directory to save the temporary background image
  --composite-over COMPOSITE_OVER
                        image to composite the background image over

Increasing the size will increase the quality of the image, the time taken to download and the memory consumption.

You should set a deadline compatible with your cronjob (or timer) settings to assure that script will terminate in X minutes before it is started again.

You might use --save-battery to disable refreshing while running on battery power.

If you pass an image path with --composite-over, the image from goes16-background will be scaled to fit inside, centered, and pasted over it to be used as the background instead. This works great with, for example, an image of the Milky Way.

If you use nitrogen for setting your wallpaper, you have to enter this in your ~/.config/nitrogen/bg-saved.cfg.

[:0.0]
file=/home/USERNAME/.goes16-background/goes16-latest.png
mode=4
bgcolor=#000000

• You need a valid python3 installation including the python3-setuptools package

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/cameronleger/goes16-background.git

# install
sudo python3 setup.py install

# test whether it's working
goes16-background

# Get the installation path of goes16-background by running the command
which -- goes16-background

# Set goes16-background to be called periodically

    ## Either set up a cronjob
        crontab -e

        ### Add the line:
        */10 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH> # command line arguments here

    ## OR, alternatively use the provided systemd timer

        ### Configure
        vi systemd/goes16-background.service
        # Replace "<INSTALLATION_PATH>" with the output of the aforementioned command and command line arguments

        ### Copy systemd configuration
        cp systemd/goes16-background.{service,timer} ~/.config/systemd/user/

        ### Enable and start the timer
        systemctl --user enable --now goes16-background.timer

To change the wallpaper in KDE 5.7+, desktop widgets must be unlocked. If you don't want to leave them unlocked, the pre-KDE 5.7 method can still be used.

To unlock desktop widgets (from the KDE userbase):

Open the Desktop Toolbox or the Panel Toolbox or right click on the Desktop - if you see an item labeled Unlock Widgets then select that, and then proceed to add widgets to your Desktop or your Panel.

So the issue here is that KDE does not support changing the desktop wallpaper from the commandline, but it does support polling a directory for file changes through the "Slideshow" desktop background option, whereby you can point KDE to a folder and have it load a new picture at a certain interval.

The idea here is to:

• Set the cron for some interval (say 9 minutes)
• Open Desktop Settings -> Wallpaper -> Wallpaper Type -> Slideshow
• Add the ~/.goes16-background dir to the slideshow list
• Set the interval check to 10 minutes (one minute after the cron, also depending on your download speed)

Many thanks to xenithorb for the solution!

OSX has deprecated crontab, and replaced it with launchd. To set up a launch agent, copy the provided sample plist file in osx/org.cameronleger.goes16-background.plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents, and edit the following entries if required

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
cp osx/org.cameronleger.goes16-background.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

• ProgrammingArguments needs to be the path to goes16-background installation. This should be /usr/local/bin/goes16-background by default, but goes16-background may be installed elsewhere.

• StartInterval controls the interval between successive runs, set to 15 minutes (900 seconds) by default, edit as desired.

Finally, to launch it, enter this into the console:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.cameronleger.goes16-background.plist

# Remove the cronjob
crontab -e
# Remove the line
*/15 * * * * <INSTALLATION_PATH>

# OR if you used the systemd timer
systemctl --user disable --now goes16-background.timer
rm $HOME/.config/systemd/user/goes16-background.{timer,service}

# Uninstall the package
sudo pip3 uninstall goes16-background

If you would like to share why, you can contact me on github or send an e-mail.

Thanks to Bora M. Alper for the base Himawari-8 background version, which was a huge starting point for this version.

Obviously, thanks to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for opening these pictures to public.