Personal Weather Station use without WUnderground API Key
Implemented
As I'm sure you are aware WUnderground no longer supplies API keys to access our personal data. Does Rainmachine have a plan going forward to allow the use of personal weather data if your not located in California, Florida or don't own a Netamo device?
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This is excellent news.
There is a growing community of folks installing the newly released WeatherFlow weather stations, several of whom (including myself) would appreciate your adding WeatherFlow to the list of devices supporting a direct data feed to Rainmachine.
WeatherFlow has a published API, for reference.
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Hi Brad,
Thanks for the heads up, I've looked at the REST API, we will probably add it. There doesn't seems to be a way to acquire one of these stations for now so we can do a real test but developer key might be enough to get started.
What's more interesting is that they send a local network broadcast with data, which could be used to be completely independent of internet connection or remote servers.
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Thanks, Nicholas.
There is a community of home automation/weather enthusiasts who're intent on making their basic data/control structures "cloud free", which is one of the reasons that the WeatherFlow, with their local UDP data broadcasts is catching on with them.
A developer for my home automation platform has completely engineered a solution (two solutions, actually - one written in the .NET framework and the other written in Node.js) for inserting WeatherFlow data into the platform without the benefit of a local weather station, so it's entirely possible to do without having the hardware locally.
Here's a link to his Node.js GitHub repository (MIT license).
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Glad to hear there is a pending WUnderground work around for the API issue. The PWS support in RainMachine is a primary reason I purchased it. Currently I have an Acurite Station which feeds to WUnderground, but am locked out unless I change to hardware and use parsers. I'm looking to upgrade the PWS sometime in near future, and would love to know what brands/stations will be supported for direct data feed. I too agree avoiding the necessity of bi-lateral data going to the "cloud" then back to RainMachine is redundant when its generally available on the LAN.
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Hi Brad,
The 1st generation RainMachine has limited API, you won't be able to extend weather services to get data from WeatherFlow. If you are interested we could upgrade you to the latest version for free so you can integrate WeatherFlow UDP/REST data. I can help you with integration details, but it shouldn't be difficult.
I will send you an email so you can tell us your address if you are interested.
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Hi Nicholas,
It's Bob, and yes, I'm interested in helping to get the integration with WeatherFlow. I've been working on both a WeatherFlow plug-in and RainMachine Plug-in for the HomeSeer home automation software so have some familiarity with both. I've also provided WeatherFlow integration for Universal Devices Inc. ISY controller which is what Brad was referencing above.
Can you get my email from my account here or do I need to post it?
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Patrick,
I currently have an Acurite weather station but I'm going to be replacing it with the WeatherFlow station. I'm actually simulating the UDP data stream that WeatherFlow stations send with a couple of programs and a USB TV tuner. The USB TV tuner and some software called rtl_433 can receive the data directly from the Acurite 5-n-1, I then send that through a converter that changes it to the UDP format WeatherFlow uses and I have the data all available locally. The programs and the USB tuner are on a Raspberry Pi. With this setup I don't need to have a Acurite Access setup or running.
The github for rtl_433 is https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433
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The 4.0.495 beta was available as soon as I set up my mini-8, so I used its web interface to copy and paste my WUnderground station name from www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard/
.. but sadly misunderstood the prompt about "REFRESH NOW" and pressed that after enabling and pasting, which wiped out those settings.
After repeating that sequence a few times with the same results, I eventually figured out to instead press [ SAVE ] after pasting.
After that, "REFRESH NOW" did generate a list of stations 18 stations within 10km. Bottom line:
WUnderground access implementation seems solid, but initial setup prompting was unintuitive.
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I think the private discussion may be what I'm referring to. I had requested that Ed reach out to you.
features RESTful and Real Time API support. It is well documented here:
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As an alternative - www.pwsweather.com ?
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There is a extension for weewx that was written by RainMachine developers that will push your local data to your RM.
Of course, you have to have weewx up and running, but if you have a weather station, why not?
Then you currently need to be on the beta RM release.
I've been running this for a couple of weeks and it works well.
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