Hochwasserportal smart home integration, free and open source
Water levels, flows and flood alert levels of the German states' gauges (Hochwasserportal).
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.0
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
Brings the water levels, flows and flood alert levels of the gauges of the German states into Gladys: the smaller rivers that the flood centres of the Länder watch (Isar, Neckar, Lahn, Ruhr, Mulde…), with their official alert levels (Meldestufen 1 to 4). The data comes from the state portals joined in the Länderübergreifendes Hochwasserportal (LHP, hochwasserzentralen.de). No account, no key.
Supported states: Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate (about 2,100 gauges, 900 of them with alert levels).
Not a flood warning service. Data can be late, missing or wrong, and the integration depends on your Gladys, your Internet access and public services. In a flood, follow the official warnings (the flood centre of your state, your municipality, 112). This integration is not affiliated with the flood centres of the states.
How it differs from the PEGELONLINE integration: PEGELONLINE covers the federal waterways (Rhine, Elbe, Danube, canals) with their mean and navigation levels; this one covers the gauges of the states, with the alert levels the states publish. Both can run side by side.
What you get
- One device per gauge you follow: the water level (in cm, as on the state portal; in m above sea level for lakes and reservoirs), the flow in m³/s when the gauge measures it, the flood alert level from 0 (no flood) to 4 when the state rates the gauge, the trend (rising, steady, falling) and the date of the last reading.
- A gauge that stops sending is shown as such ("No new reading since…"): an old value is never sent again as if it were fresh.
- Four scene triggers: the alert level goes up, the alert level goes down, a gauge stops sending readings, and sends them again.
- A dashboard widget: your gauges, their level, its trend, coloured by their alert level.
- A "Find stations" button that lists the gauges around your house, by name, by river or by id, with their current level.
Requirements
- Gladys Assistant 5.1.0 or later.
- Internet access from Gladys: the integration reads the portals of the states
(
www.hnd.bayern.de,www.hvz.baden-wuerttemberg.de,www.umwelt.sachsen.de,www.hochwasserportal.nrw,www.hlnug.de,hochwasser.rlp.de) and the LHP map (www.hochwasserzentralen.de) for the coordinates. - For "around my house": the location of your house in Gladys (Settings, Houses). The integration asks for it at installation (the "location" permission). It is only used inside the container to find the nearest gauges: never sent to any portal, never stored nor logged.
Configuration
Settings
- Stations: station ids, gauge numbers or names, separated by commas. The id is the state
code, an underscore and the number of the gauge:
BY_16005701(München, Isar). It is the id of the Home Assistant integration "hochwasserportal": a list from Home Assistant can be pasted as it is. A name can carry its river:Plochingen Neckar,Marburg / Lahn; case, accents and umlauts do not matter (MuenchenfindsMünchen). - Around my house: also follow the 3 nearest gauges that send readings, within 10, 20 or 50 km. Only the gauges whose coordinates are known count: all of them in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse, the flood reporting gauges of the LHP map in Bavaria, Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate.
- Refresh interval: 15 (default), 20 or 30 minutes. Most gauges send a reading every 15 minutes.
- Language of the feature names: names given to the features of new devices (French by default), and language of the texts (trend, last reading) and of the scene variables.
Save, then open the Discover tab and create the devices you want.
Finding your stations
The Find stations button of the configuration lists up to 10 gauges with their id, river, distance from your house and current water level:
- empty: the gauges around your house (20 km, or the distance chosen);
- a name or a river:
München,Isar,Neckar Plochingen; - a state:
BY_,SN_…; - an id or a number:
BY_16005701,16005701.
Copy the ids into Stations, then save. You can also find a gauge on the portal of its state (see "Data sources") and take its number from the address of its page.
Devices
Each device is named "Station / River" (München / Isar), model "Hochwasserportal · Bayern".
Its features, when the gauge has them:
| Feature | Type in Gladys | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Water level | Liquid depth (cm, m) | as on the state portal |
| Flow (m³/s) | Water flow | m³/s (Gladys has no m³/s unit) |
| Flood alert level (0 to 4) | Risk level | 0 no flood, 1 to 4 the alert level |
| Trend | Text | Rising, Steady, Falling (over about 1 hour) |
| Last reading | Text | date, or "No new reading since…" |
The alert level is the one of the state: Meldestufe in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate, Alarmstufe in Saxony, Informationsstufe in North Rhine-Westphalia (3 levels there and in Hesse). Bavaria and Saxony publish the level itself; for the other states, it is computed from the official thresholds the state publishes, as the Home Assistant integration does. A gauge without alert levels has no such feature.
A threshold of your own ("the Lahn above 300 cm") is a native Gladys scene condition on the Water level feature: no trigger of the integration is needed.
Dashboard widget
Add the Hochwasserportal widget to a dashboard.
- Without setting: one line per gauge (10 at most), its water level and trend, coloured by its alert level (green 0, orange 1 and 2, red 3 and 4, grey without a level or a recent reading). A heading names the gauges on alert.
- With a station chosen: its live water level and flow, its alert level, trend and last reading, and a button to its page on the state portal.
Scene triggers
- Flood alert level reached or raised: the alert level of a gauge goes up. Filter by station and by new level (1 to 4).
- Flood alert level lowered: the alert level goes down. Filter by station and by new level (0 to 3).
- Gauge stopped sending readings: no new reading for 6 hours (failure, maintenance, a gauge damaged by a flood…).
- Gauge sends readings again.
Variables: station name, river, state, new and previous level (number and words), water level and its unit, flow; the date of the last reading for the last two.
Scene examples
- Flood on the Isar: trigger "Flood alert level reached or raised", station München / Isar, level 2, 3 or 4 → send a message "{{triggerEvent.data.station_name}}: {{triggerEvent.data.level_name}}, {{triggerEvent.data.height}} cm" and switch on a red light.
- All clear: trigger "Flood alert level lowered", level 0 → message "Back to normal at {{triggerEvent.data.station_name}}".
- Your own threshold: Gladys trigger "a device feature changes", Water level of Marburg / Lahn above 350 → switch on the basement pump, notify.
- Silent gauge during a flood: trigger "Gauge stopped sending readings" → message "No data from {{triggerEvent.data.station_name}} since {{triggerEvent.data.last_reading}}".
Data sources, licence and quotas
- Bavaria: Hochwassernachrichtendienst Bayern (Bayerisches Landesamt für Umwelt), www.hnd.bayern.de, one page for every gauge.
- Baden-Württemberg: Hochwasservorhersagezentrale (LUBW), www.hvz.baden-wuerttemberg.de, one file for every gauge.
- Saxony: Landeshochwasserzentrum (LfULG), www.umwelt.sachsen.de, one page for every gauge.
- North Rhine-Westphalia: Hochwasserportal NRW (LANUK), one file per gauge.
- Hesse: HLNUG, one file per gauge and parameter, the thresholds once a day.
- Rhineland-Palatinate: Hochwassermeldedienst (LfU), hochwasser.rlp.de, one request per gauge.
- Coordinates: the map of the Länderübergreifendes Hochwasserportal, once a week.
The data are public and read without an account; the integration asks every 15 minutes at most, names itself in its requests (User-Agent) and keeps the station lists a week in memory. The portals publish no API terms: please do not lower the interval. Credits: the parsing follows the Python library lhpapi (Apache 2.0) of the Home Assistant integration "hochwasserportal".
Troubleshooting
- "Unknown station": check the id with "Find stations". States other than the six above are not supported yet.
- "No answer from the portal of …": that state portal is down or has changed; the other states go on. The readings come back with it. If it lasts, open an issue: the portals are web pages, and their format can change.
- No alert level on a gauge: the state does not rate this gauge (not a flood reporting gauge).
- "No new reading since…": the gauge sends nothing (failure, maintenance, ice). Some gauges send their values in batches, a few hours late.
- "Around my house" adds nothing: no gauge with known coordinates within the distance; choose a larger distance or type the stations.
- Logs:
LOG_LEVEL=debugshows every refresh cycle.
Limits
- Six states out of sixteen: Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia are not supported yet (see the README).
- The portals of Bavaria and Saxony are web pages read as such: a change of their layout stops their readings until the integration is updated.
- No flow in North Rhine-Westphalia (not published as a file), no forecast.
- The trend needs about an hour of readings after the start.
- 20 stations at most from the configuration.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Hochwasserportal asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your stations | section | No | Follow gauges of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate: by id, number or name, or the nearest to your house. "Find stations" below lists them with their current level. Save, then create the devices in the Discover tab. |
| Sources and limits | section | No | Data: flood centres of the states (HND Bayern, HVZ Baden-Württemberg, LHWZ Sachsen, LANUK NRW, HLNUG, LfU Rheinland-Pfalz), joined in the Länderübergreifendes Hochwasserportal. Not a warning service: the official warnings prevail. Not affiliated with these offices. |
| Stations | string | No | Station ids (BY_16005701), gauge numbers or station names, separated by commas. |
| Around my house | select | No | Also follow the 3 nearest gauges that send readings, within this distance of the location of your house in Gladys. Only the gauges with known coordinates (most flood reporting gauges). |
| Refresh interval | select | No | Gauges send a reading every 15 minutes, some every hour. |
| Language of the feature names | select | No | Names given to the features of new devices (Water level, Flow…), and language of their texts and of the scene variables. |
How to install Hochwasserportal in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Hochwasserportal appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-lhp:1.0.0), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration). - Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
- You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-lhp.
Hochwasserportal 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
Hochwasserportal 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 guim31, not by the Gladys core team.
- Browse all integrations, native and community
- Build and publish your own external integration
- Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation