Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations

gotta agree with kmanā€¦ isnā€™t there a way to get the IRO to use weather data from weather underground? Or at the very least, a PC program that can sync weather underground to pwsweather.com?

If no to both, then this should be a priority. The closest weather station is 7 miles away and in FL that might as well be on a different planet. Esp when there are two weather underground stations <1 mile away.

@johnny2678, not at this time.

There are some work arounds, but they take some work to setup. In short, youā€™d need to direct your wunderground PWS to CWOP, then CWOP to PWSweather.com.

Hereā€™s some resources to explore:

Will do some digging again to see if thereā€™s any new workarounds to scrape wunderground data via a PC.

Thanks for the response emil. I found this on github but itā€™s 6 years old so little chance of it working for our needs. The other links you posted are either for a) yet another appliance or b) for those that have a personal weather station set up on their property. I donā€™t desire eitherā€¦ just the ability to pull conditions from a weather station reporting close by.

The Wunderground API allows for 500 free calls / day so there is the potential to write something that will scrape conditions every 5 minutes and post to pwsweather. Need to find what format PWS weather needs for submissionsā€¦ and this seems a little hacky just to get accurate local conditions.

@johnny2678, Iā€™m gonna see if we can hack something together for you. No promises, but Iā€™ll get another set of eyes on it.

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Iā€™m impatient so I had to give this a shot myself.

github - wupws

Iā€™ve been shipping Weather Underground data to pwsweather for 18 hours now using this script. Check the README for info. Iā€™m no coder and have limited time to support so feel free to branch and improve.

Oh, and yes, it shows up in Rachio after about 10-15 minutes.

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Sorry for the workaround but seems like it is magical :wink:

We are evaluating all of our weather data for next year, and will have more options along with higher quality and granularity.

:cheers:

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@johnny2678, thanks for sharing! Glad to hear itā€™s working for you. Weā€™ll recommend this to future wunderground users :smile:

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I just got an Iro 1st gen and a Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP. Has there been any update on using WU data with the Iro? I have an old Windows laptop to turn into a ā€œhubā€, but most programs only work for acurite weather stations, Linux, or Mac. I might do the DLink mod if there is no other way.

Not the best solution, but for now this is what some of our users have been doing for an integration.

We will be largely expanding our weather service footprint as well as accuracy, so stay tuned. Big plans in this arena :wink: Timeframe is unclear, but something we want to focus a good amount of time on.

:cheers:

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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€¦