IPMA smart home integration, free and open source
Official Portugal weather by IPMA: forecasts, station data, warnings, UV and fire risk.
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.1
- Requires Gladys >=5.2.0
- ★ 0
The official weather of Portugal — mainland, Madeira and the Azores — in Gladys, from IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera), the Portuguese weather service: forecasts, station observations, weather warnings, UV index and fire risk. For the family house over there, or simply for living in Portugal.
The integration reads IPMA's free open data: no account, no API key. It is not affiliated with IPMA.
Developed without a real Gladys instance and without network access to IPMA: it was built and tested on real IPMA responses published by the
pyipmalibrary. Feedback welcome — open an issue on GitHub if a value looks wrong.
What you get
- One device per location (a municipality, among IPMA's 423 forecast locations), named
IPMA <location>, with:- the current temperature, humidity, pressure, wind and rain of the closest weather station;
- today's and tomorrow's minimum and maximum, chance of rain and weather;
- today's wind (strength and direction) and UV index;
- today's fire risk (mainland only);
- the warning level (green, yellow, orange, red) and the current warnings in words.
- A dashboard widget: five-day forecast with weather icons, live temperature, UV, fire risk and the warnings.
- A scene trigger "IPMA weather warning issued", with the level, the phenomenon and the period.
Everything is read only: nothing in Gladys can change anything at IPMA.
Requirements
- Gladys 5.2.0 or later.
- Internet access from Gladys to
api.ipma.pt(HTTPS). - Nothing else: no account, no key.
Configuration
Settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Location | The IPMA location to follow: a municipality of mainland Portugal, Madeira or the Azores (Portuguese names, with the district or island). |
| Other locations | Optional. More locations, separated by commas: Funchal, Ponta Delgada, Lagoa (Faro). Names are matched without accents or case; add the district when a name is ambiguous. 10 locations at most. |
| Refresh interval | 15 minutes, 30 minutes (default) or 1 hour. |
| Language of the names and texts | Language of the feature names of new devices, of the weather and warning texts and of the scene variables. French by default. |
Then open the Discover tab and add the device of each location. The values arrive within seconds.
Location nearest to a house
The Use the location nearest to a house button picks the IPMA location closest to a house of Gladys and saves it as the main location. Gladys asks, at installation, to share the position of the houses with the integration: it is read only when you press this button, and never written in the logs. A house more than 60 km away from any IPMA location (a house in France, for instance) is refused: IPMA only covers Portugal.
The device
| Feature | Type in Gladys | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature (station) | temperature, °C | closest IPMA station (within 50 km), last hourly record of the last 3 h |
| Humidity (station) | humidity, % | same station |
| Pressure (station) | pressure, hPa | same station (not every station measures it) |
| Wind (station) | speed, km/h | same station |
| Rain last hour (station) | precipitation, mm/h | same station (not every station has a rain gauge) |
| Min / Max today, Min / Max tomorrow | minimum / maximum, °C | IPMA forecast of the location |
| Chance of rain today / tomorrow | counter, % | IPMA forecast |
| Weather today / tomorrow | text | IPMA weather type, translated ("Light rain or drizzle") |
| Wind today | text | IPMA wind class and direction ("Moderate, NW") |
| UV index | UV index | IPMA forecast, maximum of the day |
| Fire risk (1-5) | counter | IPMA RCM: 1 low, 2 moderate, 3 high, 4 very high, 5 maximum (mainland) |
| Warning level | risk level | highest warning on now: 0 none (green), 1 yellow, 2 orange, 3 red |
| Weather warnings | text | "Orange: Rough sea · Yellow: Wind", or the next warning to come |
The warning level uses the Gladys risk badge: green, yellow, orange, red — IPMA's own colours. A value IPMA does not give (no station nearby, no UV forecast for that day) is simply not updated. The weather texts follow the language of the configuration; the feature names are set when the device is added.
Dashboard widget
Add the IPMA forecast widget to a dashboard and choose the location (empty: the first one). It shows:
- the station used and the time of its last record;
- the live temperature, the UV index, the fire risk and the warning level;
- the warnings not over yet (ongoing or upcoming), with IPMA's text (in Portuguese) when tapped;
- five days: weather with its icon, minimum / maximum, chance of rain.
Scene trigger
IPMA weather warning issued fires once for each warning IPMA issues for a location — often the day before it starts. A warning raised to a higher level (yellow to orange) fires again. A restart of the integration does not fire the same warnings again.
Filters: the location (device), the levels (yellow, orange, red), the phenomena (rain, thunderstorms, wind, rough sea, hot weather, cold weather, snow, fog, other).
Variables for the next actions of the scene:
| Variable | Example |
|---|---|
location | Aveiro |
level | orange |
level_label | Orange |
phenomenon | coastal |
phenomenon_label | Rough sea |
starts_at | 2022-07-29T05:00:00.000Z |
ends_at | 2022-07-29T20:00:00.000Z |
active | false (not started yet) |
description | IPMA's text, in Portuguese |
Configuration buttons
- Use the location nearest to a house: see above.
- Check IPMA now: reads IPMA for every configured location (added to Gladys or not) and says what came back: station temperature, today's minimum and maximum, number of warnings, unknown location names, unreachable files.
Scene examples
- Storm at the family house: trigger "IPMA weather warning issued", location Aveiro, levels
orange and red → send a message built with the
level_label,phenomenon_labelandlocationvariables: "IPMA Orange warning in Aveiro: Rough sea". - Heat wave: trigger "IPMA weather warning issued", phenomenon hot weather → remind the neighbour to water the garden.
- Fire risk: when the "Fire risk (1-5)" feature goes above 3 → notification "no barbecue today".
- Chance of rain: every evening at 20:00, if "Chance of rain tomorrow" is above 70 % → close the awning.
Data and refresh
The integration refreshes itself (it does not depend on Gladys polling): every 15, 30 or 60 minutes it reads five IPMA files — the stations (once a day), the observations of the last 24 hours, the warnings, today's fire risk, and one forecast per location. These files cover the whole country, so ten locations cost ten forecast files plus four shared ones per refresh. IPMA publishes no quota for its open data; the integration stays far below what its own website loads. Nothing is read for a location whose device is not added to Gladys.
IPMA updates its forecasts a few times a day, its stations once an hour and its warnings as needed. An unchanged value is sent again to Gladys every 6 hours, so it never shows "no recent value". The data is © IPMA, reused under its open data terms with attribution.
Troubleshooting
- "Choose a location in the configuration": no location is selected — pick one, or use the house button.
- "IPMA does not answer": not a single IPMA file could be read. Check that Gladys reaches the Internet, then press Check IPMA now. The integration keeps trying at every refresh and says in its logs when IPMA answers again.
- The station values stay empty: no IPMA station within 50 km sent a record in the last 3 hours (frequent on small islands). The forecast still works.
- A location of "Other locations" is ignored: the name is unknown — check the spelling, or
add the district:
Lagoa (Faro). The Check IPMA now button lists the unknown names. - More details: set
LOG_LEVEL=debugon the integration to see every refresh in its logs.
Limits
- Portugal only (mainland, Madeira, Azores): IPMA covers nothing else.
- No fire risk on Madeira and the Azores: IPMA only forecasts it for the mainland.
- The forecast file used is the one of IPMA's website (
public-data), like the Home Assistant integration; IPMA may change it without notice. - IPMA writes its warning texts in Portuguese: the level and the phenomenon are translated, the free text is not.
- Not affiliated with IPMA. Developed without a real Gladys instance: feedback welcome.
Configuration settings
These are the settings IPMA asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portuguese weather | section | No | Forecasts, observations, weather warnings, UV index and fire risk from IPMA, the Portuguese weather service: mainland Portugal, Madeira and the Azores. Free open data, no account. Choose a location, then add its device in the Discover tab. Not affiliated with IPMA. |
| Location | select | Yes | IPMA location (municipality) to follow. The button “Use the location nearest to a house” below can choose it for you. |
| Other locations | string | No | Optional: more IPMA locations, separated by commas, one device each (10 locations in all). |
| Refresh interval | select | No | How often IPMA is read. Its stations report once an hour. |
| Language of the names and texts | select | No | Feature names of new devices, weather and warning texts, scene variables. |
How to install IPMA in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: IPMA appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-ipma:1.0.1), 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-ipma.
IPMA 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
IPMA 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