Community Support
Hi,
After the closure of Weather Underground, one of my clients has got access to new weather.com API for this from IBM. I'd like to keep using this plugin to represent data (it's used in local towns across a region to show current temps, high low and etc).
Am actively putting together an integration - wondering if you'd like a PR for this (paid) service to integrate with this plugin? I believe (though I could be wrong, because we're talking multiple stations in the case of this client) that IBM will provide those who feed their stations in with a similar access, so this could be useful in the future?
Note I have got docs for this if you'd like a peek - but would need to private message them.
Hello @robin!
If I understand well, you have a client who have many stations. She/he pushes data from these stations to WU. If it's wrong, do not hesitate to correct me. If I'm right, could please tell me :
- How many stations are concerned?
- What sort of stations is it (brand/model)?
- How data are pushed to WU?
- Do she/he have a paying API key, or is it a free API key for PWS owner?
- What is your role? (web integrator, etc...)?
Regarding your answers, I may have no, or some solutions... 🙂
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Hi,
I'm a developer - I work on reasonably big projects for Silicon Dales, most often WordPress eCommerce projects via WooCommerce.
Client is a Cable TV provider in a specific region in USA. They publish local weather information in their website. I set this up using your plugin a long while back, and it worked well. Unfortunately, we used Weather Underground, and they did what they did!
They own a number of these stations and push the data to (what was) Weather Underground. Other stations are PWS belonging to others on the WU network. They were paying for API access to WU before, and it (largely) was working okay, though data wasn't as stable as we'd like.
They are paying on the new IBM service. I have docs for this. I'm looking to integrate this with your plugin.
We have:
a) Station directly (where this is theirs)
b) Alternative data (from OpenWeatherMap)
I already built templates to work with A and B and this is all good.
Client wants (I'm not entirely sure why) to use the IBM option, for which there is an API. My task for part c is this:
c) Add support for this API into your plugin.
I'm looking to see if you'd be interested in having this as an option in the "core" plugin - if you'd like me to submit any of this for your use. As things stand, I will be doing this "our side" whatever happens - because we get nice backup options from your plugin (as opposed to building an "only IBM" option which is reliant on their data availability). So as I'm forking and testing this - would you be interested in a Pull Request once it's done?
Hello Robin.
First of all, I'm glad you have a workaround plan. To be totally honest, I do not plan to offer features related to Weather Underground / Weather.com before the two (important) main points for me:
- WU publish an official API to PWS owners: for now, their "migration" is just a fucking joke, as they decommissioned the old API before publishing the new one - and who knows when the new one will appears?
- WU stabilizes its API: I think there will be some turbulence in the coming months (in terms of endpoints, "run issues", stability, reliability, SLAs, etc.)
When I consider these 2 points "covered", I will reintroduce the ability to collect data from WU. But not before that.
So, if you have a working workaround, and as your client doesn't want to go with OpenWeatherMap (but why???) - and they don't want (or can't) collect from station systems, just use it!
When the 2 main points are covered I will get back to you, as you're proposition to share code is great 🙂
In the meantime, if you have time to send me the documentation you have, that's would be cool (weather@station.software).
Thank you for your involvement. And thank you to use Weather Station 😉
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Hello Pierre,
It seems that WU is now quite stable in termof api support, they have also provided support to pws owners to get an api key for free. The instructions are here: https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/end-of-feb-wu-api-update
look in the first response, they link to this address to get an api key: https://www.wunderground.com/member/api-keys
Do you think you will support again w.u.? Sorry to bother but many stations can connect only to w.u....
Hello Stefano.
I must admit I am a bit annoyed by the attitude of WU against developers.
It would bother me to develop something that would be hard to maintain and difficult to use. For the moment, I have no confidence in them to offer something stable and sustainable, so I chose to wait to see how things are going in the next years. But for the moment, it is not glorious: they have never answered my emails, no longer provide support and the stability measures of their APIs are catastrophic ... ????
So, sorry, it's not for now.
If you like Weather Station, please consider to make a review to help make it known. That would be the best way to thank me...
Hi, I see you're still not confident in supporting the weather.com API, but how about including data from thingspeak.com? Here it gathers data from thousands of Raspberry Pi and Arduino based stations. If you wish, I can provide you with my access data so that you can get to know the service.