Current best weather API (2023)?

[TotallyInformation]

@krambriw

Isn't it anyway always raining in UK??

No, sometimes it snows or is simply so foggy you can't see whether it is raining or snowing.

@smcgann99

best bet is to put light sensor outside facing the sky where it will never be in the shade

Perhaps. Though the roof would mean running wires - not going to happen. I have one in my office, I need to get round to analysing the match between outside light and inside light.

Or maybe I could mount a laser pointing upwards to measure cloud thickness?

[smcgann99]

I have one on a windowsill which faces the sun, but there is a big difference in light levels at the back of the house, where its facing north.

I guess I will need to figure out some kind of offset to switch things on at the back of the house, while the front is still brighter.

Then of course I have some outside lights that shine through the front window on a night

[Paul-Reed]

@TotallyInformation do you have solar panels fitted?
I've previously used the solar generation feed to determine light levels.

(Worked ok until we got 6" snow on the panels )

[TotallyInformation]

No, but a nice idea. Going to have to wait till the next house for that one I'm afraid. Unless the prices come down again and the number of reliable fitters goes up. But a really good idea to remember for the future.

[krambriw]

I have a small, cheap, wireless and nice working solution to measure the light intensity. The "thing" is an ESP32 with a dfr0026 sensor attached. See image below. In the ESP32 I run ESPHome and the current light level is reported via MQTT to Node-RED once per minute (smoothing, further calculation etc is all handled by Node-RED)

The dfr0026 sensor is a very cheap sensor and it works good

DFRobot_Ambient_Light_Sensor_SKU_DFR0026-DFRobot

My use case is to switch the operation mode of my video cameras depending on light levels. In the graph I have 3 separate "areas", starting from bottom up; night mode, transition mode and day mode. My cameras are good day/night cameras but still not so good in bad light conditions. So I found out that I could "trim the visibility" by increasing the exposure level and change some other params when it gets darker. In this way I now have pretty good visibilty also during early & later evenings & mornings as well as during night (see result below, it is still very dark outside here right now)

Since earlier I do also have a light sensor up in my roof antenna, connected via wire (1-wire) to control my awnings based on light levels. This has also worked excellent since years, all controlled thanks to Node-RED.

I was now looking for a wireless solution, thats why I did this. If you put it in a weather proofed box you can of course install it outside on the roof, mine is currently and temporarily just placed in a window and it seems LED lamps does not "disturb" it

[TotallyInformation]

Cool. I use BH1750 Digital Light Sensors rather than analogue sensors. Seem to work well. It is very well supported with libraries and setup in my favourite ESPHome is easy.

[ghayne]

@TotallyInformation

BH1750 Digital Light Sensors

That's one of the easiest sensors to integrate, as you say. For nitpickers they can also be calibrated.

[yoba]

To me there is no better/simpler "API" than the Norwegian Meteorological Institute: yr.no
There you can just enter your city (e.g. London) and click at the bottom "Forecast as SVG" to get your URL: yr.no/en/content/2-2643743/meteogram.svg

Embed the link in your dashboard and here you go!

[TotallyInformation]

There's always this if you want more weather fun:

Windy as forecasted

[dynamicdave]

Oh that is impressive.