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Marées Canada smart home integration, free and open source

Marées Canada integration for Gladys Assistant

Unofficial connector: Canadian tides, high and low tides, observed water levels.

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Not to be used for navigation. The tide predictions come from the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS); for boating, fishing or any outing on the water, follow the official tide tables, charts and notices of the CHS (tides.gc.ca).

Unofficial connector, not affiliated with Fisheries and Oceans Canada nor endorsed by the Canadian Hydrographic Service. It brings the tide and water level stations of the CHS into Gladys: Halifax, Saint John, Rimouski, Québec, the St. Lawrence, Victoria, Vancouver, Tofino, the Great Lakes, the Arctic and about 1,000 other stations.

Status: tried against the real service in a test Gladys, but never been run by a Gladys installation in use yet. On 2026-10-29 the module ran against the real IWLS API (read-only calls) inside a local test Gladys (devices discovered, status, test button), and its tests replay answers of the same shape (synthetic: no CHS Data in this repository). Scenes and the dashboard were not tried. Please report what you see.

Source: Canadian Hydrographic Service, IWLS API (Integrated Water Level System). Public data, no account, no key.

What you get​

One device per station, with what the station has: up to 10 features for a station with predictions, high and low tides and a tide gauge (wlp, wlp-hilo, wlo); fewer otherwise (a lake gauge with observations only has 3; a station without high and low tide predictions has no "next tide" and no tide event):

FeatureUnitNotes
Predicted water levelmThe official predicted level, one point every 15 minutes (the last one in force), so its history stays small. Gladys keeps the last value if the service stops giving the curve (the status says so).
Next high tide heightmFrom the official high and low tide predictions.
Next high tidetextIts time in the time zone of the station, with the abbreviation ("2026-10-29 23:25 ADT"), whatever the time zone of your Gladys.
Minutes to the next high tideminutesUpdated every minute; 0 at the tide.
Next low tide height, time, minutesm, text, minutesThe same for the low tide.
Observed water levelmOnly the stations that measure (a tide gauge in service). The last measurement, published while it is less than 2 hours old and not flagged questionable.
Observed attextThe time of that measurement, station time.
Observed minus predictedmThe gap between the measurement and the prediction at the same instant (a storm surge, a river in flood...).

Heights are in metres above the chart datum of the station (the reference of the nautical charts and tide tables, close to the lowest tides), as the CHS gives them: no conversion. A value the service does not give is not published (never a 0). Once a device is created, a feature never disappears from it.

Configuration​

  1. Install the integration from the store, then open its configuration.
  2. Stations: CHS station codes (5 digits), separated by commas, for example 00490, 02985 (Halifax, Rimouski). 490 is read as 00490. 20 stations at most.
  3. To find a code, type a place in the Search stations button (for example Rimouski, Saint-Joseph, Tofino), or use the CHS station map.
  4. Observations read every: 10 minutes by default, 5 to 60. Only the stations that measure are read that often; the predictions are read every 6 hours (48 hours of curve, 72 hours of high and low tides), and the station itself (name, time zone, notices) once a week.
  5. Click Test the stations, then add the devices from the Discovery tab.

Scenes​

One trigger, High or low tide (Marées Canada): a predicted high or low tide of a station is at the chosen time ahead: 3 hours, 2 hours, 1 hour, 30 or 15 minutes before, or at the tide. Choose the station, the tide (high or low) and when. It gives the station, the predicted height, the time of the tide (station time), the minutes left and a summary in English and French.

  • It follows the predictions, not the observations: a storm can bring the water earlier or higher. Not for navigation.
  • One event per tide and per "when", remembered in /data: not sent twice, even after a restart.
  • An event is sent at most 10 minutes late (the container was stopped, Gladys restarting); later, it is dropped, a late warning being a wrong one.
  • For a level (the observed level above 4 m, say), use the usual device trigger on the feature.

Limits and behavior​

  • A silent tide gauge. Some stations stop measuring for hours (Halifax on the evening of 2026-10-29): the observed level is then not published, the status names the station, and the predictions go on. Gladys keeps showing the last observed value it received: check "Observed at".
  • One request at a time, 6 seconds apart at least: 10 a minute, a third of the 30 the API allows per address (several installations may share one address). A first start with 20 stations takes about 10 minutes.
  • The API gives neither ETag nor Last-Modified: each read asks only what is new (the observations since the last one).
  • If the service answers "too many requests" (429), the integration pauses for the time it asks (one minute to six hours), even across restarts. A failure never makes it read sooner, reconnections included, and restarts too while /data is writable (the instant of each read is written there before the request; without it, a restarted container still waits 6 seconds before its first request). A failed read is tried again after 2 minutes, then 4, 8... (30 minutes at most for the predictions, an hour for the station); a 429 does not add that wait to its pause; the test button asks again a minute after the last try; a station id the service no longer knows is looked up again, once a day at most.
  • A part that fails with an error other than a 429 (the metadata, the high and low tides) does not stop the others: without the metadata, times are shown in UTC, said in the test button.
  • If Gladys does not give the configuration, the integration says it in its status and asks again after 1 minute, then 2, 4... up to 30, without end.
  • If the clock of the container drifts more than 5 minutes from the clock of the service, the status says it: the countdowns and the tide events follow the container clock.
  • Nothing is sent but the station codes and ids. The integration writes only its state file in /data, asynchronously (a frozen /data never freezes it); a state file it cannot read is left untouched and read again at the next start; one that is not valid JSON is set aside as marees-canada-state.json.bad, and the integration starts afresh (said in the status).
  • A predicted tide that is neither higher nor lower than its neighbours, the curve not telling either, is left out (no tide event for it), said in the status.

Credits and licence of the data​

Data: Canadian Hydrographic Service, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, IWLS API. Using this integration means accepting the CHS licence agreement: each installation reads the API itself, as "the User" of that licence. In short: not for navigation, no commercial derivative product, the copyright of the Data stays with the Crown. If CHS ends the licence (a public notice on its website), the users must destroy their copies of the Data within 15 days: uninstall the integration, or delete its state file in /data (it keeps the predictions and the last observations). The notice the licence asks for:

This product is not to be used for navigation. This product was made by or for the User [the gladys-marees-canada project] and contains intellectual property (Data) of the Canadian Hydrographic Service of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The copyrights in the Data are and remain the property of His Majesty the King in Right of Canada and shall not be sold, licensed, leased, assigned or given to a third party. The incorporation of the Data in this product does not constitute an endorsement or an approval of this product by the Canadian Hydrographic Service, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans or His Majesty the King in Right of Canada.

Code: Apache-2.0, written from the published OpenAPI description of the IWLS API. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Configuration settings​

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

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Canadian tides in GladyssectionNoNot for navigation: follow the official tide tables and notices of the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Unofficial connector, not affiliated with Fisheries and Oceans Canada nor endorsed by the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS). For each station you choose (Halifax, Rimouski, Victoria, the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes...), it brings into Gladys the predicted water level, the next high and low tides (height, time, minutes left), and, where the station measures, the observed level and its gap to the prediction. Scenes can start before a high or low tide. Public data of the CHS (IWLS API), no account; using it means accepting the CHS licence agreement (link below). Tried against the real service in a test Gladys, never run by a Gladys installation in use yet.
StationsstringNoStation codes of the Canadian Hydrographic Service (5 digits), separated by commas (20 at most). The "Search stations" button gives them.
Observations read every (minutes)numberNoFor the stations that measure the water level. The predictions are read every 6 hours whatever this value.

How to install Marées Canada in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Marées Canada 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-marees-canada: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-marees-canada.

Marées Canada 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​

Marées Canada 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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