The end of Weather Underground!

Well, this is very disappointing.

https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api

Clearly left and right hands of IBM not talking. IBM seem to be removing the free tier of data as they subsume WU into their other services. I'm told (via Twitter so take with pinch of salt), that even people who send data freely to WU will not get free access to the API any more.

It is very unclear whether current API access will last long.

To improve our services and enhance our relationship with our users, we will no longer provide free weather API keys as part of our program.

Hmm, sounds like a one way enhancement to me. Yahoo also recently 'enhanced' their relationship with their users by removing their stock price API. Seems to be a growing trend.

Yes, we may well be seeing the slow demise of the free and open Internet.

Especially annoying to see from IBM though of whom I generally expect better.

For anyone looking or needing to change try darksky.net. They have free access for low access rates and there is an excellent node available - node-red-node-darksky. I have been using it for about 6 months now and the forecasts are very accurate. I can post my flow if anyone is interested, I am saving to an InfluxDB database and displaying data with Grafana.

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Well, looking on the bright side, at least it means that I can again simplify my weather processing. Trouble is that I live in Sheffield where the weather is different almost street to street so processing decent weather forecasts is hard.

But I also save to InfluxDB and use Grafana for my main dashboard for detailed analysis. I also use a Node-RED dashboard for a simple view of a weather forecast and current internal conditions; along with the status of all of the Node-RED controlled switches.

We live in Wales next to the Black Mountain Julian, Dark Sky is the only service that provides a pretty accurate forecast here.

:smile:

Oh wow! First image upload - this is SOOOO much better than Google Groups where I had to save a screenshot as an image then upload the image, In Discourse, you just paste the image from clipboard! :partly_sunny: :fireworks:

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I would love that flow if you are happy to make it available ??

Craig

Please post your flow. Thank you!

You need to add your credentials to the DarkSky node and configure the InfluxDB node to use your database.

[{"id":"49edae65.ef262","type":"inject","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","name":"","topic":"","payload":"","payloadType":"date","repeat":"300","crontab":"","once":false,"x":110,"y":73,"wires":[["feb0b755.bd3578"]]},{"id":"feb0b755.bd3578","type":"darksky","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","darksky":"","name":"","lon":"0","lat":"0","date":"","time":"","mode":"message","lang":"en","units":"uk2","x":330,"y":73,"wires":[["466bfce1.811934","771a7867.4b18f8"]]},{"id":"466bfce1.811934","type":"debug","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","name":"","active":true,"console":"false","complete":"true","x":580,"y":71,"wires":[]},{"id":"771a7867.4b18f8","type":"change","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","name":"","rules":[{"t":"set","p":"payload","pt":"msg","to":"[\t{\t\"Temperature\":data.currently.temperature,\t\"temperatureApparent\":data.currently.apparentTemperature,\t\"pressure\":data.currently.pressure,\t\"windSpeed\":data.currently.windSpeed,\t\"windGust\":data.currently.windGust,\t\"windBearing\":data.currently.windBearing\t}\t]\t","tot":"jsonata"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":465.5,"y":164,"wires":[["ecc8200a.61d48","65afdf7b.a7fdc"]]},{"id":"65afdf7b.a7fdc","type":"influxdb out","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","influxdb":"4388a798.ca22d8","name":"","measurement":"darksky","precision":"","retentionPolicy":"one_week","x":706.5,"y":225,"wires":[]},{"id":"ecc8200a.61d48","type":"debug","z":"1bb8c233.f79fae","name":"","active":false,"console":"false","complete":"true","x":715.5,"y":272,"wires":[]},{"id":"4388a798.ca22d8","type":"influxdb","z":"","hostname":"127.0.0.1","port":"8086","protocol":"http","database":"weather","name":"","usetls":false,"tls":""}]
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On the other side of the pond, https://openweathermap.org
They have free access to their API for low frequency usage.
I'm connecting with the HTTP Request node and getting a json object back with current weather info.

{"coord":{"lon":-119.74,"lat":39.38},"weather":[{"id":802,"main":"Clouds","description":"scattered clouds","icon":"03n"}],"base":"stations","main":{"temp":88.03,"pressure":1017,"humidity":9,"temp_min":82.4,"temp_max":96.8},"visibility":16093,"wind":{"speed":16.11,"deg":300},"clouds":{"all":40},"dt":1534035300,"sys":{"type":1,"id":2068,"message":0.0037,"country":"US","sunrise":1534079345,"sunset":1534129089},"id":420025494,"name":"Reno","cod":200}

You'll have to signup for a key but it's free and easy.

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Charles, DarkSky are on your side of the pond, based in Cambridge MA. :slight_smile:
And you can get 1000 free API calls a day. They really are incredibly accurate too.

I have started using DarkSky and have run into a problem. When I want to access the sunrisetime it requires a text 1 in the date/time get, "new Date(msg.payload.daily.data.1.sunriseTime*1000)" but the function interprets it as a numerical 1 and tosses an error.
I tried using escape characters but can't get it to work.
Any ideas?

Try ....data[1].sunriseTime ...

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Ok, that worked. Why didn't I think of that... :wink:

Well it looks as though existing Wunderground members are now also losing api functionality.
My api data has been severely restricted over the past few days, and when I check my Wunderground profile I can see why....

wunder

Paul

There are many other great options to Weather Underground in addition to Dark Sky.

Weather Source (www.weathersource.com) has a free trial API access (https://developer.weathersource.com/) and the RESTful API is extremely easy to use and paid plans start as low at $300 per month.

Further, unlike Dark Sky or Weather Underground whose data is is tied to "airport reporting" stations as the sole input (only 12,000 of these worldwide), Weather Source uses up to 15 different inputs that they use to basically builds a virtual weather station at your Lat / Lon. so you have weather & climate data that is truly relevant for your location.

With respect to forecast accuracy, all of these data providers all use the National Weather Service or NOAA forecasts so they are not creating the forecasts but simply making available for industry,.

You wouldn’t happen to be the Craig Stelmach who's LinkedIn profile lists them as Senior Vice President of Business Development and Sales at Weather Source LLC?

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Absolutely same person and just letting people know there are other many free options for weather & climate data out there.

I purposely used my full name as I want to engage in meaningful dialog on the forum as I think there are a lot of great weather based topics.

Cheers!

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But probably still useful to mention that in the post…

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