I have a SmartiPi Touch 2 and a SmartiPi Touch Pro I want to install MM on with both focusing on weather and maybe an item based on user request.

Do you recommend going for the latest greatest Bookworm install or an older Pi OS version to build off of? I’m not averse to a learning experience but don’t want to beat my head on a cinderblock wall either.
I had the infamous magic smoke :dashing_away: come out of the Pi 4 on my Ender 3D Printer and thinking about doing a MM or two while new parts come for printer. Nothing like feeding the Pi 4B with 24V instead of 5V.
Melted my Logitech Mouse/Keyboard dongle.

@Egnos The Endpoints and Midpoints are the devices that boost the I2C signal because according to what I have read I2C by itself is distance limited.
You buy the Endpoints and Midpoints to give you the distance capability. I’m not advocating Endpoints and Midpoints because of the JST connectors.

Your original question was to the effect “I have this gesture sensor but I also have a distance requirement that I2C alone can’t handle” or words to that effect.

I suggested you look at the Sparkfun Endpoint and Midpoints because that is what their function is.
The best I have to offer is that I took a Raspberry Pi 4B, wired a Sparkfun Midpoint right next to the Pi. On a plastic panel, so the Midpoint was maybe 2 inches (50 mm) from Pi.
I plugged a 50 ft (15 meter) standard ethernet cable into that Midpoint.
I then took a Sparkfun ENDPOINT and plugged it into the far end of the ethernet cable. I connected 3 sensors to Endpoint.

As far as Seeed/Grove it says it is I2C on your link but I have no experience with the brand and connection other than I think the Grove connection, may be proprietary. That is inconsequential though as you can get the Qwiic sized JST and splice the connector.
When I first got the hardware I wanted to test the distance claim so slapped together the setup outlined above.
All I can say is that the Midpoint and Endpoint purpose is to give you the distance. I have attached a picture of my ad-hoc test. The Raspberry Pi + Midpoint are another 10 - 15 ft beyond the tail of the blue line. That blue line and white line are the 50’ of ethernet cable and red circle is Endpoint and 3 sensors which are all Adafruit I2C. I want to reiterate that my experience is with Adafruit and Sparkfun sensors and as a general rule those are the only brands I buy so can’t vouch for other brands. In the past I have bought sensors from other companies that advertise as I2C but are really SPI .
These companies will put their brand stamp on their connection by giving it a name such as “Qwiic Connector” or “Grove Connector” but they appear to be JST connectors except Grove may be proprietary.
The easiest way out is to buy this cable but it is dependent on you buying a Midpoint and an Endpoint from Sparkfun. I’m no expert but I know of no other way to push that I2C signal a longer distance.
If Grove is Seeed Studio’s proprietary connector you have to see if Seeed Studio has a solution for pushing I2C long distances and commit to using all Seeed Studio components. The other option is to get the parts I have provided links to.

A member of the MM community asked me about long runs between a sensor and a Pi if I remember the original question correctly. I had already assembled a project doing just that using Sparkfun Midpoint and Endpoint connections. They are part of the Qwiic "ecosystem but they work real well. As a trial a had a 50 ft length of standard ethernet cable plugged it in as shown and then hung several environmental sensors at the far end using Qwiic cables coming of the Endpoint.
I refer to the wiring between instruments as “Jst TYPE” because I can’t keep up with all the various proprietary and industry standard connections in the market these days. There are different lengths of those Qwiic<–>Qwiic cables out there and have bought cables from both reputable venders and Amazon. Not entirely unexpected but have had a few of the Amazon cables that were bad.
There was a question about could you get away with just buying an Endpoint and as I recall, Sparkfun says no. I think the reason has to do with you require a termination but not being a network person that is beyond my knowledge of setting up networks.

A while back I posted that if you were using the National Weather Service and noticed it had quit, that was due to a lack of funds to purchase a piece of hardware that was long overdue for replacement.

New Year, new hardware.
You can pull multi-day or current so it is now up and running.

This is more of an announcement/awareness thing than a question but if anyone is using the weather.gov api to show various weather items, and have maybe noticed they aren’t working, due to a lack of funding, some component that had an End of Life several years past, finally went belly up and once the NWS gets some 2024 funding from our elected officials they will replace the dead hardware and get everything back up and running.

All my weather stuff on my MM is down and some NWS people have suggested sending emails if you are so inclined. They aren’t happy taking the heat for issues not in their control.

@rmonkey That is really really nice.

@sdetweil Dig that. First thought was “exactly what major value does that bring to the table?”
So loading Python packages from the PYPI package repository breaks Python.
That’s a good one.

@sdetweil They left RealVNC out in the cold initially but looks like RealVNC solved their problem.
There was an apology note put out by RealVNC which was mostly “we apologize to the Raspberry Pi community but we are working as hard as we can to allow you to continue using RealVNC”

I have no idea what relation different companies have to be part of the default installation of Pi OS but seeing that note I immediately thought RealVNC was trying to push on RaspberryPi.org and Pi called their bluff

You all may have already addressed this and if so can you point me to the appropriate Topic?

I am working on a different project and since I didn’t want to blow up what I had already done I installed what turned out to be the new Debian/Pi OS on a spare Pi
I ran headlong into this virtual environment requirement or VENV.
Is that going to cause problems installing modules because it whipped me installing environmental sensors and being able to install their corresponding drivers. Seems that the Bookworm edition of Pi OS is likely not going see a difference between an Adafruit sensor driver and a MM module but maybe can. Waaaay beyond me.

@sdetweil Saw this and I maybe putting out old news because most people do
sudo raspi-config and then hit enter. Saw some text that appear to type in
sudo raspi-config nonint do_wayland <W1/W2> with

W1 - Use the X11 backend
W2 - Use the Wayland backend