DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) smart home integration, free and open source

German weather service forecasts, warnings, pollen and UV index, radar. Unofficial.

• Published by LM1LC3N7
• Devices
• Version 1.2.0
• Requires Gladys >=5.2.0
• ★ 0

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This integration makes the German national weather service (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD) the weather provider of Gladys. The dashboard weather widget and the assistant ("what will the weather be like tomorrow?") use its MOSMIX forecasts and its hourly observations. It adds what you need in Germany: the official warnings, the pollen index, the UV index, the precipitation radar and, from the Umweltbundesamt, the air quality index.

Nothing to enter, no account, no key: everything comes from the DWD open data servers, for the location of your house. The forecasts and observations cover the whole of Europe (about 4,300 stations); the warnings, pollen, UV and radar cover Germany.

Unofficial connector: not affiliated with nor endorsed by the Deutscher Wetterdienst.

Installation

1. Install the integration from the Gladys catalog (Gladys 5.2 or newer).
2. Accept the access to the location of your houses: the weather is the one of the house, nothing else to enter.
3. Check that your house is placed on the map (Settings → Houses). Without a location, there is no weather.
4. In the Configuration screen, click Test the DWD sources: the message says what each source answered (forecasts, warnings, pollen, air quality) and which stations are used.
5. Optional: add warn cells (a holiday home, your parents' town, a whole district) by their DWD id; the Find a warn cell button searches the municipalities by name.

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

Where the weather comes from

• Forecasts: the DWD MOSMIX point forecast of the station nearest to your house, 10 days hour by hour (temperature, feels-like, humidity, pressure, wind and gusts, cloud cover, visibility, precipitation and its probability, sunshine). Updated four times a day (03, 09, 15 and 21 UTC). In Germany there is a forecast point every few kilometres; elsewhere in Europe, one per large town or airport.
• Current conditions: the hourly observations of the nearest synoptic station (about 630 in Europe, 60 km away at most). Without one, the forecast of the current hour stands in. The "Test" button names both stations.
• Warnings: the official DWD warnings for the municipality of your house, with a translated title; the texts are in German.
• Pollen: the DWD pollen index of your region.
• UV index: the daily maximum forecast for the nearest of 38 German cities, spread over the day by the sun.
• Radar: the DWD precipitation composite, 1 km, every 5 minutes.
• Air quality: the hourly index of the Umweltbundesamt (the German federal environment agency) at the measuring station nearest to your house, 50 km away at most, from the networks of the Länder.

The feels-like temperature is the apparent temperature of Steadman (air temperature, humidity and wind), the one the Australian weather service uses: the DWD publishes none in its open data.

Configuration

• Official warnings (on by default) — the DWD warnings in force for your house (wind, thunderstorms, rain, snow, frost, black ice, fog, heat…). They show in the weather widget and feed the "Weather alert" scene trigger of Gladys. When a warning appears, changes level or ends, the integration tells Gladys within minutes instead of waiting for its 30-minute check. Germany only.
• Additional warn cells (empty by default) — DWD warn cell ids (9 digits, separated by commas): a municipality (ids starting with 7 or 8) or a whole district (ids starting with 1). Their warnings feed the widget, the scene triggers and the scene action, not the weather of the houses.
• Pollen alerts (off by default) — adds an alert when the pollen index of your region reaches a moderate exposure (2 on the DWD scale), raised to "moderate" severity at a high exposure (3). Not an official warning.
• Air quality alerts (off by default) — adds an alert when the air quality index at the nearest station reaches "poor" (3 on the scale of the Umweltbundesamt), raised to "severe" at "very poor" (4). Not an official warning.
• Precipitation radar (on by default) — a 300 × 200 km radar image centered on your house. Turn on the "provider images" option of the weather widget to see it. Germany and its borders.
• Forecast station (advanced) — empty, the nearest MOSMIX station is used. To force another one, enter its id from the DWD station catalog (10384 for Berlin-Tempelhof, A051 for a local point).
• Air quality station (advanced) — empty, the nearest measuring station of the Umweltbundesamt is used (a traffic station on a busy street reads worse than the air at home: force a background one if you prefer). Its code (DEBE068 for Berlin Mitte) is on luftdaten.umweltbundesamt.de.

The "DWD warnings" widget

For a house in Germany or a typed warn cell:

• two tiles, the level now and the level later (the four levels of the DWD: 1 weather warning, 2 significant weather, 3 severe weather, 4 extreme weather);
• the warnings in force, then the announced ones (and the advance notices of severe weather), most severe first, each with its period in local time, a level badge and the official DWD text and advice (in German) in the detail panel; in German the title is the official headline.

Settings: House, picked in the list of the houses of Gladys (empty: the first area followed), or Warn cell instead, a warn cell id of the configuration, which wins over the house.

The "Pollen" widget

The DWD pollen index (Pollenflug-Gefahrenindex) covers eight pollen: hazel, alder, ash, birch, grasses, rye, mugwort and ragweed, for 27 regions of Germany, today, tomorrow and the day after. The widget shows:

• the exposure today on a gauge, with the level of the highest pollen;
• the peaks of tomorrow and the day after;
• the pollen in the air today, highest first, with their value and level (out of season, one line says that none of the eight is in the air);
• the advice of the level.

Index	Level
0	None
1	Low
2	Moderate
3	High

In-between values ("1-2") round up. The index is published once a day around 11:00; before that, the forecast of the day before applies.

Setting House: picked in the list; empty, the first located house.

The "Air quality" widget

The air quality index of the Umweltbundesamt (Luftqualitätsindex) is computed every hour at each measuring station from the worst of its pollutants: nitrogen dioxide and ozone (hourly means), particulate matter PM10 and PM2.5 (24-hour running means). The widget shows, for the station nearest to your house (50 km at most):

• the level now (the latest complete hour, one to two hours behind);
• the worst level of the last 24 hours when it was worse;
• each pollutant measured with its concentration and its own level;
• the station, its type (background, traffic, industry) and its distance, the time of the measurement;
• the advice of the level, the Umweltbundesamt's.

Index	Level
0	Very good
1	Good
2	Moderate
3	Poor
4	Very poor

The index is the worst of the pollutants: a "good" air with one "moderate" pollutant reads "moderate". The measurement is marked "partial" when a pollutant of the station is missing for that hour.

Setting House: picked in the list; empty, the first located house.

Scenes

Four triggers, checked every 5 minutes:

• DWD warning issued — the DWD issued a warning for an area (a house in Germany or a warn cell), raised its level, or turned an advance notice into a warning. Filters: area (house name or cell id), levels (tick 3 and 4 for severe weather only), warning types (thunderstorms, wind, rain, snow, frost, ice, thaw, fog, heat, UV, other). Variables: title, type, level (1 to 4), level_name, start, end (local, as "tomorrow 06:00"), in_force, description and instruction (the German texts), summary, area_name, house.
• DWD warning ended — no warning of a type remains for an area: its end time passed and the DWD did not extend it. Filters: area, types.
• Pollen level changed — the pollen index of a house (its highest pollen of the day) reaches a new level.
• Air quality level changed — the air quality index at the station nearest to a house reaches a new level: at once when the air gets worse, after two hours at the better level when it improves (the index wavers between two classes from one hour to the next). Filters: level, direction, house. Variables: level, index (0 to 4), pollutant (the one setting the index), station, summary, house.

Warnings are compared by type and level, never by the DWD identifier (an updated warning gets a new one): an update at the same level fires nothing. What was announced is kept in the integration data: a restart fires nothing again, and a warning issued meanwhile fires once.

One scene action:

• Current DWD warnings — a summary of the warnings in force and announced, ready to send in a message ({{summary}}), with count, current_level and upcoming_level for a following condition. Field area: a house name or a cell id, empty for all.

Examples: a level 3 or 4 warning → send "{{triggerEvent.data.title}}, {{triggerEvent.data.start}} – {{triggerEvent.data.end}}" and close the shutters; wind or thunderstorms from level 2 → "put the garden furniture away"; every morning at 7, the summary of the day on Telegram when there is one.

Pollen filters, all optional:

• Level reached — e.g. "High". The scene fires even when the index jumps over this level (from "none" to "high").
• Direction — "Getting worse" or "Getting better".
• House — picked in the list of the houses of Gladys (empty = all).

The next actions can read {{triggerEvent.data.summary}} (a sentence ready to send), {{triggerEvent.data.pollen}} (the pollen at that level), {{triggerEvent.data.value}}, {{triggerEvent.data.current_level}}, etc.

Examples: close the windows and turn the ventilation to recirculation when the level reaches "Moderate" in the birch season; send a notification in the morning when the grasses reach "High".

The first evaluation after a start fires nothing (a restart in the middle of the season must not replay every scene). For the official warnings, use the Weather alert trigger of Gladys itself.

Good to know

• Outside Germany: the forecasts and observations work wherever MOSMIX has a station (all of Europe); the warnings, pollen, UV index, air quality and radar say they are not available.
• Far from any station (the sea, outside Europe), the integration says so in the Configuration screen.
• The MOSMIX forecasts carry no UV index: the UV comes from the DWD daily forecast of the nearest city, 150 km away at most.
• When the DWD does not answer, the last known weather stays shown for up to 6 hours.
• The data is cached 15 minutes (5 for the warnings and the radar, 1 hour for the pollen and UV indices, 15 minutes for the air quality index and a day for the list of its stations).

Sources and licences

Data: Deutscher Wetterdienst, open data (GeoNutzungsverordnung, attribution "Datenbasis: Deutscher Wetterdienst"): MOSMIX forecasts, hourly observations, warnings, pollen and UV indices, radar composite; country borders of the radar image: GeoBasis-DE / BKG. The pollen advice is the integration's, not the DWD's. Air quality: Umweltbundesamt, air data of the measuring networks of the Länder and of the UBA (Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – 2.0); the advice is the Umweltbundesamt's, shortened. This integration is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by the Deutscher Wetterdienst or the Umweltbundesamt.

Configuration settings

These are the settings DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

Setting	Type	Required	Description
Deutscher Wetterdienst weather	section	No	The forecasts of the German national weather service (DWD) for the location of your house in Gladys: nothing to enter, no account, no key. Forecasts and observations for the whole of Europe (MOSMIX, about 4,300 stations); the official warnings, the pollen and UV indices, the radar and, from the Umweltbundesamt, the air quality index for Germany. Open data of the DWD (GeoNutzungsverordnung); this is an unofficial connector, not affiliated with the DWD.
Official warnings	boolean	No	The DWD warnings in force for your house (wind, thunderstorms, rain, snow, frost, black ice, fog, heat…), in German with a translated title. They feed the weather widget, the core “weather alert” scene trigger and the “warning issued / ended” triggers. Germany only.
Additional warn cells	string	No	DWD warn cell ids (9 digits), separated by commas: a municipality or a whole district, for a holiday home or your parents’ town. The “Find a warn cell” button gives them. Their warnings feed the widget, the triggers and the scene action, not the weather of the houses.
Pollen alerts	boolean	No	Adds an alert when the DWD pollen index of your region reaches a moderate exposure. Not an official warning: it comes from the index itself. Germany only.
Air quality alerts	boolean	No	Adds an alert when the air quality index of the Umweltbundesamt at the nearest station reaches “poor”. Not an official warning: it comes from the index itself. Germany only.
Precipitation radar	boolean	No	DWD radar around your house, shown in the weather widget when its “provider images” option is on. Germany and its borders.
Forecast station (advanced)	string	No	Empty: the nearest MOSMIX station is used. To force another one, its id from the DWD station catalog (e.g. 10384 for Berlin-Tempelhof).
Air quality station (advanced)	string	No	Empty: the nearest Umweltbundesamt measuring station (50 km at most) is used. To force another one, its code (e.g. DEBE068 for Berlin Mitte), from luftdaten.umweltbundesamt.de.

How to install DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) in Gladys

1. In Gladys, open Integrations: DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) 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-dwd:1.2.0), 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-dwd.

DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) requires Gladys >=5.2.0. 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

DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) 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.

• Browse all external integrations
• Discover the native integrations built into Gladys
• Build and publish your own external integration
• Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation

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