Moving from DarkSky.io

General
1

I have been using darksky.io weather service for many years, until it was purchased by Apple and now they stopped the free API service.

Could you recommend a different service that I can call with a simple HTTP request node and get roughly the following data. Ideally something you use and happy with the service.

  • Current, today min and max temperature
  • Windspeed and direction
  • Chance of rain
  • Percentage of cloud cover
  • All this for today and the next day as well

Thanks

2

I use OpenWeatherMap's OneCall API https://openweathermap.org/api/one-call-3
The free tier gives 1000 calls per day.

They say " This product designed to ensure easy migration from the Dark Sky API."

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3

Thanks, and I guess you are happy with the results.

4

I would like to know how granular their forecasts are, and whose supercomputer does the modelling.

You can request forecasts for two places 20 miles apart. Do they get the same answer or do OWM interpolate anew for each request? I have never tested.

I have noticed that their forecast max and min temperature for today can change quite a lot during the day.
eg at 00:30 they say today will reach 19.7°, at 10:00 they say 18.5°, at 14:00 22.0°

So the precision of even short range predictions is questionable.

But weather forecasting is just chucking straws in the wind anyway.

I am very happy with OpenWeatherMap, especially considering the price.

5

Thanks for the link to the OneAll API and their table to help a person migrate from DarkSky.
I've now managed to get my daily weather forecast to Alexa working again. Yippppeee.

daily_forecast
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6

Same here, I just moved to flow that feeds my info display in my house to get data from OWM.

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The only information that is missing which was in darksky is what type if precipitation is expected. There was a field with values like rain, snow, sleet. I had icons for that.
And for me the rain and snow fields are missing from the response. Is that only included if there there is a change for rain or snow?

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7

Weather Icons for OWM API are displayed using this flow. Not sure if this is what you need.

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8

The snow quantity is only shown if snow is forecast. Ditto rain I think. It's an irritating feature

9

Thanks for all the response I will check rain and snow and if the attribute is missing I will default it to zero.

10

Checking my weather page it looks like the forecast values for rain and snow are delivered as msg.payload.daily[n].rainmm and msg.payload.daily[n].snowmm, msg.payload.hourly[n].rainmm and msg.payload.hourly[n].snowmm

Edit: I found some rain in my future - this is hourly[47]

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11

Hi,

Maybe you should have a look at OpenMeteo.
See: https://open-meteo.com/

  • Open source
  • A lot of data available
  • Up to 16 days forecast
  • Fair use policy. Maximum 10,000 calls/day
  • No API key required

I created already a NR flow to send data to Domoticz in order to replace DarkSky

Regards

2 Likes
12

Other options:

  • UK Met Office (mostly UK only of course)
  • Storm Glass
  • Norway MET (not just Norway)
1 Like
13

can you share your flow?

14

Hi @xx_Nexus_xx,

Sure I can, but as I'm currently on holiday and have limited access to my NR, it will be next weekend.

Regards

15

Some month ago I've seen this post on Reddit about this guy that has created a Pirate Weather APIs, have a look at it!

3 Likes
16

The API is well documented ... I did my flow :wink: thx

17

Hello @xx_Nexus_xx,

Okay, then I leave it so

Regards

18

Now if someone could clone node-red-node-darksky and get it to work. :thinking:

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19

Depends where you are located. For Germany I use government dwdweather service, sponsored by taxpayers.

20

I've asked it to the developer, let's see what he'll say.

1 Like