Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations

Thanks Franz. One more vote here for improved WU integration. I am using an Accurite weather station as well and publishing to WU. I am a new user of the Rachio 2nd generation and overall very impressed. Looking forward to sending it my own weather data.

Ya, I want a much bigger weather footprint.

The development and product team is aware of this and will be incorporating in the future. We definitely understand the upside of having more/closer weather data for our customers :wink:

:cheers:

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Yes please integrate WU PWS My nearest weatherstation is 4 miles away I live on the coast so 4 miles inland do sent reflect the same Temps or humidity.

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ā€¦No solution if you donā€™t have an iOS device, unfortunately :slight_smile: Looks like it requires WeatherSnoop (step 4) :frowning:

Thanks Johnny2678. I started using this today and is working great to copy my WU PWS data to PWSWeather! Definitely like to see Rachio make Weather Underground PWS available so I do not have to do this workaround.

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Wu is the bom isnā€™t it?

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Your script is working well for me also.

For others who would like to use this solution, but donā€™t have or want a linux box lying around running all the time, I have a suggestion.

Go to lowendbox.com or wherever you like, find the cheapest, lowest specā€™d Virtual Private Server you can, and run the script there.

I rented a linux virtual machine for $12 for the year, selected a Ubuntu image (because Iā€™m familiar with Ubuntu), copied over the script and set it up, installed crontab and configured that, and now Iā€™m done.

Could be a very simple solution for people who just donā€™t want to mess with another box in their home. Given the overkill that even the lowest power VPS is, I could add dozens of people to my machine without breaking a sweat.

Hope this idea helps.

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Hey Johnny2678. I am sure you are not offering supportā€¦ But thought I would ask as you may be having the same issue. I have been using this script for a couple weeks now (thank you again), but the past two days (5/1 and 5/2) the precip data from WU did not transfer over to PWSWeather. Any ideas? Possibly WU or PWS changed their format for May? Here are my stations:
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KOHMEDIN16
http://www.pwsweather.com/obs/KOHMEDIN16.html

The ā€˜daily precip totalā€™ is what has been getting populated on PWSWeather. All other data points look to be there.
I do not see any apparent error when it is executed. Copy paste from terminal:


Grabbing JSON using the following URL: http://api.wunderground.com/api/[...]/conditions/q/pws:KOHMEDIN16.json
ā€“2016-05-03 09:13:36-- http://api.wunderground.com/api/[...]/conditions/q/pws:KOHMEDIN16.json
Resolving api.wunderground.com (api.wunderground.com)ā€¦ 23.10.184.120
Connecting to api.wunderground.com (api.wunderground.com)|23.10.184.120|:80ā€¦ connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting responseā€¦ 200 OK
Length: 2595 (2.5K) [application/json]
Saving to: ā€˜/home/[ā€¦]/wu-pws/wu.jsonā€™
100%[======================================>] 2,595 --.-K/s in 0s
2016-05-03 09:13:37 (282 MB/s) - ā€˜/home/[ā€¦]/wu-pws/wu.jsonā€™ saved [2595/2595]
PWSDATEUTC=2016-05-03+12%3A58%3A33
PWSWINDDIR=247
PWSWINDSPEEDMPH=4.7
PWSWINDGUSTMPH=0
PWSTEMPF=46.9
PWSRAININ=-999.00
PWSDAILYRAININ=
PWSBAROMIN=29.91
PWSDEWPTF=46
PWSHUMIDITY=96
PWSSOLARRADIATION=
PWSUV=1
ā€“2016-05-03 09:13:37-- http://www.pwsweather.com/pwsupdate/pwsupdate.php
Resolving www.pwsweather.com (www.pwsweather.com)ā€¦ 54.243.240.101
Connecting to www.pwsweather.com (www.pwsweather.com)|54.243.240.101|:80ā€¦ connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting responseā€¦ 200 OK
Length: 131 [text/html]
Saving to: ā€˜/dev/nullā€™
100%[======================================>] 131 --.-K/s in 0s
2016-05-03 09:13:37 (26.4 MB/s) - ā€˜/dev/nullā€™ saved [131/131]
wget -O /dev/null --post-data=ID=KOHMEDIN16&PASSWORD=[ā€¦]&dateutc=2016-05-03+12%3A58%3A33&winddir=247&windspeedmph=4.7&windgustmph=0&tempf=46.9&rainin=-999.00&dailyrainin=&baromin=29.91&dewptf=46&humidity=96&solarradiation=&UV=1&softwaretype=wu_pws_ver1.0&action=updateraw http://www.pwsweather.com/pwsupdate/pwsupdate.php


ā€˜Dailyraininā€™ is blank (though we have not had any rain today). I am not sure if that is normal, or if it should be 0.00 (possible indicator that it is not getting the data correctly from WU).

Thanks in advance.

Have you had rain the last two days? I didnā€™t see any on the WU station you linked too but Iā€™m on a phone and might have missed it. The -999 number is out of bounds so guessing pwsweather strips it out.

Sorry, travelling now with no access to the scripts (in the air as i write this), but I can check tomorrow when I get back.

Right now weā€™re forecasted for .41 inches tmr so that should definitely register.

Yes. 0.07" on 5/1 and 0.43" on 5/2. The 0.32" on Saturday (4/30) was the last day the precip appeared to work and transferred over to PWSWeather - Sun (5/1) and Mon (5/2) is when it did not carry over. All stated precip does show on WU. Thank you.

could be multiple issues with both the WU API and the PWS API. Or I could just be misunderstanding the whole thingā€¦

Using this mornings data from my weather station as an example (hard rain):

  1. Weather Underground Web UI reports precip rate as 3.9 inches / hr. That value is reported in the WU JSON in the precip_1hr_in key. Total rainfaill is reported as 1.77 inches, but that value never makes it into the JSON - ??

  2. On the pwsweather.com Web UI sideā€¦ the 3.9 is reported as the daily total if you push the value using the RAININ key, or as the precip (see the 2.62 value) if you use the DAILYRAININ key. There doesnā€™t seem to be a variable to populate the precip rate. Might have to ask pwsweather about thisā€¦

OK, well I guess it was good while lasted.
In my case, my AcuRite station does not forward the precip rate to WU, only the running precip accum/total. The WU ā€˜precip accumā€™ is what was populating to PWSWeather as the ā€˜daily precip totalā€™ - until recently. Sounds like they may be making changes. FWIW here is my data from 4/28:

From your screenprint, it sounds like WU is no longer providing the ā€˜precip accumā€™ (which is why it is not forwarding to PWS), but in your case it looks like it is crossing your values. Weird.

The crossing values in my screenshot is my attempt to see if switching the RAININ and DAILYRAININ values made a difference. It didnā€™t

For what itā€™s worth, hereā€™s the response from the pwsweather guy when I wrote him this morning.

Hi John,

The hourly rain has always been a problem because different software and devices send it differently. Some calculate it since the last update, some since the top of the hour and some within the last 60 minutes. We have a number of routines in there to try and come up with a close figure but itā€™s not perfect. We try to do the best we can with the rainin parameter.

Iā€™m going to ask the developers to take another look at rain. I just noticed an anomaly in my numbers for today. Didnā€™t throw the accuracy off, but itā€™s just different.

ā€“
Joe Torsitano
WeatherForYou.com LLC

And thenā€¦

Hi John,

There is a reconciliation program that runs in the morning which compiles all the numbers and comes up with a realistic precipitation number. I havenā€™t checked lately if itā€™s exactly the same as my stations. I actually had some rain today so will probably be looking at that while rain is on my brain.

ā€“
Joe Torsitano
WeatherForYou.com LLC

So maybe changes are coming.

I also posted a question to Weather Underground forums about why the Precip Accum. value isnā€™t in the JSON results. No responses yet, but you can follow here.

Also, the Rachio team can clarify but Precip Accum will affect MAD values. I donā€™t think precip rate affects MAD.

So if we can get this value to show up in the JSON, and load it to PWSweather, I think that will suffice.

Yes/agreed on the precip accum. My flex schedule was adjusting the moisture levels based on my weather stationā€™s precip accum/daily precip that was getting sent to PWS weather. It seems WU mysteriously took it out and if they put it back in we are back in business w/ the script. I really hope that next year the Rachio team will directly integrate with WU. Thank you.

Its a miracle! I just looked at my PWSweather station and daily precip totals are now getting populated again from WU! They started showing up as of 12:01AM today (nothing showed up at all yesterday - or since 5/1). Somebody must have made a change at WU per your post and got it back into the json. Lets hope this sticks.

Well, guess someone was listening :wink:

I can confirm that the precip_today_in JSON value is now populatingā€¦

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I think the power Rachio would have by creating a Vera plugin would make the opportunities limitless. All the sensors and external plugin/api information it has available today could create even more robust logic in when and how long to water lawns and plants. Please create a Rachio plugin for Vera.

Thanks for the suggestion! Weā€™ll take a look.

Is there any chance of using WU PWS in the near future?

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