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Buienradar smart home integration, free and open source

Buienradar integration for Gladys Assistant

Unofficial connector: Buienradar weather, 2-hour rain forecast and rain radar (NL, BE).

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Unofficial connector, not affiliated with Buienradar. It makes Buienradar the weather provider of Gladys for the Netherlands and Belgium, and adds what Buienradar is known for: the rain of the next two hours, in 5-minute steps. No account, no key, nothing to enter. Data: Buienradar.nl; Buienradar and its data are © Buienradar / RTL.

What you get​

SurfaceContent
Weather of Gladysthe current weather of the nearest Buienradar station (temperature, feels-like, humidity, pressure, wind and gusts, visibility, dew point, sunrise and sunset) and the 5-day forecast, for the weather widget and the chat
Rain radarthe Buienradar radar maps of the Netherlands and of Belgium, in the weather widget
Scene triggersrain expected within 5 minutes to 2 hours (any rain, moderate or heavy), rain stopped
Scene actionrain in the next 2 hours of a house: dry or not, minutes until the rain, peak, total, a summary
Dashboard widgetRain next 2 hours: next rain, peak, total and a bar every 5 minutes

Once installed, the integration takes precedence over the OpenWeather service built into Gladys. The weather widget can also pick it explicitly.

Coverage​

  • Weather: the 40 or so stations Buienradar publishes are all in the Netherlands. A house up to 80 km from one of them gets its weather (the whole country, northern Belgium, the German border). Farther away, Gladys is told the location is outside the coverage and uses its next provider.
  • Rain forecast and radar: the Netherlands and Belgium.
  • Buienradar writes its descriptions in Dutch only: the conditions of Gladys (sunny, cloudy, rain, snow…) are read from Buienradar's icons, so they show in your language.

Setup​

  1. Install the integration from the Gladys catalog (Gladys 5.1 or newer) and accept the access to the location of your houses: the rain triggers, the scene action and the widget watch them.
  2. Check that your house is placed on the map (Settings → Houses).
  3. In the Configuration screen, click Test Buienradar: the message names the station used for each house and its rain forecast.
  4. Put the Rain next 2 hours widget on a dashboard. For the radar, turn on the "provider images" option of the weather widget.

Configuration​

  • Language of the scene texts (English by default) — the summaries sent to the scenes, in English, French or Dutch.
  • Rain check interval (5 minutes by default, 5 at least) — how often the rain forecast of each house is read for the triggers. Buienradar updates it every 5 minutes.
  • Rain radar in the weather widget (on by default).

Scenes​

  • Rain expected (Buienradar): pick Rain within (5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, 1 or 2 hours) and the minimum intensity: any rain (from 0.1 mm/h), moderate (2.5 mm/h) or heavy (10 mm/h). Optional: the exact name of the house. The scene runs once per rain episode, when the radar forecast first shows that rain within that time, not at every check. Variables: house, starts_in (minutes), start_time (local "14:35"), max_intensity (mm/h), total_mm and summary.
  • Rain stopped (Buienradar): it was raining at the house and the radar now shows at least 15 dry minutes. Variables: house, next_rain_in (empty when the next 2 hours are dry) and summary.

Nothing fires at startup: the first check only learns what is going on.

The action Buienradar rain in the next 2 hours (field house, empty for the first located house) gives dry, raining, minutes_until_rain, rain_time, minutes_until_dry, max_intensity, total_mm and summary, for a message or a condition that follows.

Examples: rain within 15 minutes → close the roof window and send "Bring in the laundry: {{triggerEvent.data.summary}}"; every morning at 7:30, send the summary of the action before leaving for school.

How often Buienradar is read​

  • The weather feed: at most once every 10 minutes (Buienradar refreshes it every 10 minutes), only when Gladys asks for the weather.
  • The rain forecast: once per house every 5 minutes (the option), shared with the widget and the scene action.
  • The radar maps: only when the weather widget shows them, at most every 5 minutes.

Troubleshooting​

  • "Outside the Buienradar coverage": the location is more than 80 km from a Buienradar station; Gladys takes the weather from its next provider.
  • No rain trigger: the house needs a location in Gladys, in the Netherlands or Belgium; the status of the integration and the Test Buienradar button tell which houses are watched.
  • "Buienradar does not answer": the last weather stays served for an hour; everything comes back by itself.
  • Logs: the integration's log level is set with the LOG_LEVEL variable.

Privacy​

The weather feed and the radar maps are the same for everyone: no location is sent to get them. The rain forecast is asked for the coordinates of each house rounded to 2 decimals (about 1 km).

Data and terms of use​

The data comes from Buienradar.nl. Buienradar's terms allow non-commercial use with attribution: the source credited as buienradar.nl with a link to www.buienradar.nl. This free, non-commercial connector shows "Data: Buienradar.nl" in the widget, the radar labels and the configuration screen. Keep your own use non-commercial too (no paid service built on it).

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Buienradar asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Buienradar weather in GladyssectionNoUnofficial connector, not affiliated with Buienradar. It makes Buienradar the weather provider of Gladys for the Netherlands and Belgium: the current weather of the nearest Buienradar station, the 5-day forecast and the rain radar maps, nothing to enter, no account, no key. With the location of your house, it also watches the 2-hour rain forecast (every 5 minutes) for the "rain expected" and "rain stopped" scene triggers, a scene action and a dashboard widget. Data: Buienradar.nl, free for non-commercial use with attribution.
Language of the scene textsselectNoThe summaries sent to the scenes (rain expected, rain stopped, rain forecast). Buienradar writes in Dutch only: in English and French the texts are built from the forecast itself.
Rain check interval (minutes)numberNoHow often the 2-hour rain forecast of each house is read for the rain triggers. Buienradar updates it every 5 minutes: 5 is the minimum.
Rain radar in the weather widgetbooleanNoOffers the Buienradar radar maps (Netherlands and Belgium) to the weather widget of Gladys, shown when its "provider images" option is on.

How to install Buienradar in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Buienradar appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/lm1lc3n7/gladys-buienradar:0.1.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/LM1LC3N7/gladys-buienradar.

Buienradar requires Gladys >=5.1.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

Buienradar is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by LM1LC3N7, not by the Gladys core team.

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