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Met Office smart home integration, free and open source

Met Office integration for Gladys Assistant

UK Met Office forecasts: temperature, wind, rain, UV, visibility, and the next 7 days.

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The forecasts of the Met Office, the UK's national weather service, in Gladys: temperature, feels like, humidity, pressure, wind, chance and rate of precipitation, visibility, UV index and the weather of the hour, for your home or any place, plus the next 7 days on the dashboard. The data comes from the free plan of the Met Office Weather DataHub (the "Site-specific" forecast, the one Home Assistant uses since the old DataPoint service closed).

This integration is not affiliated with the Met Office, nor endorsed by it. It was developed without the hardware and without a DataHub account (only the API key is needed, no device): the answers of the API come from its documentation and from the tests of Home Assistant. Feedback welcome.

Overview​

  • One device per place: the houses of Gladys (their location in the settings), or up to 3 places typed as coordinates.
  • Each device carries the forecast of the current hour: temperature, feels-like temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, gusts and direction, chance of precipitation, precipitation rate, visibility, UV index and the weather conditions as a text ("Light rain", "Sunny"…).
  • A dashboard widget: now, then the next 7 days (tap a day for the details) or the next 24 hours (the temperature curve and the coming hours).
  • A scene action: the forecast of today, tomorrow or the day after (maximum, minimum, chance of rain, gusts, UV, weather) for the next steps of a scene.
  • Read-only: nothing is controlled, nothing is sent to the Met Office but the position of the places.

The Met Office model covers the whole world ("Global Spot"), and is best over the United Kingdom.

Requirements​

  • Gladys 5.1 or later.
  • A free Met Office Weather DataHub account and API key: sign up on datahub.metoffice.gov.uk, open the Site Specific product, subscribe to its free plan (Global Spot), then copy the API key of the subscription. It is shown only once: if lost, reset it under My subscriptions.
  • A place: a house of Gladys located in Settings → Houses, or coordinates.
  • Gladys must reach the Internet (data.hub.api.metoffice.gov.uk).

Configuration​

  1. In Integrations, install Met Office. The install screen says it reads the location of your houses: this is how it forecasts for them without asking for coordinates again.
  2. Open the Configuration tab and paste the API key.
  3. Places to forecast: The houses of Gladys (default) takes every located house, 3 at most; a house without a location is skipped. Coordinates uses the Coordinates field: latitude and longitude in decimal degrees, an optional name before a colon, places separated by semicolons, for example Exeter: 50.7184, -3.5339; Leeds: 53.7997, -1.5492.
  4. Pick the refresh interval (30 minutes by default) and the language of the texts.
  5. Save, then click Test the connection: each place answers with its temperature, its weather and the distance to the model point, and the report says how many API calls a day the settings use.
  6. Open the Discovery tab and add the places.

The feature names are chosen when a place is added: change the language before adding it. A house keeps its device when its location is moved; typed coordinates changed by more than about 100 m make a new device.

The place devices​

Each place is a device named "Met Office" and the name of the house, the name typed, or else the name the Met Office gives to its model point ("Met Office Wavertree"). Its features, in metric units:

FeatureUnitNote
Temperature°Cat 1.5 m
Feels like°Cwith the wind and the humidity
Humidity%relative humidity
PressurehPasea-level pressure
Wind speed, wind gustskm/hat 10 m
Wind direction°where the wind comes from: 0 = north, 90 = east
Chance of precipitation%of the hour
Precipitation ratemm/h
Visibilitykm
UV index
Weather conditionstext"Light rain", "Partly cloudy"… in the configured language

These are forecasts for the current hour, not measurements: the Met Office model gives a value for every hour, and the device follows the hour nearest to the clock. Only the values that change are sent to Gladys, and every value is sent again at least every 6 hours so it never looks outdated.

If the Met Office cannot be read for 6 hours, the device stops being updated (an old forecast would look current) and its badge in the device list turns orange, or red while the service does not answer. Everything is back at the next successful read.

Dashboard widget​

Add the Met Office forecast widget to a dashboard, pick a place (empty: the first one) and a view:

  • Next 7 days (default): the temperature, chance of rain and wind of now, then one line per day with its weather, its maximum and the minimum of the following night, and its chance of rain. Tap a day: weather of the day and of the night, wind, gusts, UV index.
  • Next 24 hours: the temperature curve with its maximum and minimum, then the next 6 hours.

The time of the model run is shown under the name. The widget follows the units of your Gladys profile (°F and mph in imperial units) and never calls the API: it shows the last forecasts read.

Scene triggers and actions​

Met Office: forecast of a day (scene action) — pick a place (empty: the first one) and a day (today, tomorrow by default, the day after tomorrow). The next steps of the scene can use: the place, the date, the weather of the day (text) and its Met Office code, the maximum temperature, the minimum of the following night, the chance of rain of the day and of the night (%), the midday gusts (km/h) and the maximum UV index. The texts are in the language of the configuration. The action reads the forecast already fetched (refreshed every 3 hours) and costs no API call.

There is no scene trigger: the weather of now is a feature of the place device, which the standard A device state changes card already handles (for example "chance of precipitation above 80").

Scene examples​

  • Garden watering: every evening at 8 pm, run Met Office: forecast of a day for tomorrow, then water only if the chance of rain of the day is below 40 %.
  • Frost warning: every evening, get tomorrow's forecast and send "Frost tonight, cover the plants" when the minimum temperature is below 1 °C.
  • Awning: when the Wind gusts of the place go above 40 km/h, retract the awning.
  • Washing line: every morning, send "Good day to hang the washing out" when today's chance of rain is below 20 %.
  • Morning briefing: at 7 am, send "Today: {weather}, {max} °C, {rain} % chance of rain" with the outputs of the action.

API quota and refresh​

The free plan of the Site-specific forecast allows 360 API calls a day, for every tool using the key (an unused call is not carried over to the next day). Each place costs one call per refresh of the hourly forecast and one call every 3 hours for the 7-day forecast: 56 calls a day for one place at 30 minutes, 104 at 15 minutes. 3 places at most fit in the quota at any interval; the integration keeps about 10 % of it for restarts and tests, and slows down by itself when needed. Only the places added to Gladys are refreshed. If the key is used elsewhere (another home automation system, a script), pick a slower interval.

When the quota is spent anyway (HTTP 429), the reads pause for one hour. A refused key is tried again every hour, or as soon as the configuration is saved. The Met Office model runs every hour: refreshing faster than 15 minutes would bring nothing new.

Troubleshooting​

  • "The Met Office refuses the API key": copy the key again from the DataHub, My subscriptions (reset it if it was lost), and check that the subscription is the Site Specific one.
  • "No place to forecast": locate a house in Settings → Houses of Gladys, or choose Coordinates and fill the field.
  • "Ignored, not coordinates" in the test report: an entry of the field could not be read; write latitude, longitude in decimal degrees (51.5072, -0.1276).
  • "Daily API quota spent": see "API quota and refresh"; the reads resume after an hour.
  • "The Met Office Weather DataHub does not answer": Gladys cannot reach data.hub.api.metoffice.gov.uk: check its Internet connection and DNS.
  • The model point is far away (test report): the forecast is for the nearest point of the Met Office grid, usually within a few kilometres.
  • Details: set LOG_LEVEL=debug on the container to see each read in the integration logs. The API key is never written in them.

Limits​

  • Forecasts, not observations: the values of "now" are the model's forecast for the current hour.
  • Wind in km/h on the devices (Gladys speed sensors know km/h and m/s, not mph); the widget shows mph to the users with imperial units.
  • 3 places at most, the limit of the free quota. A paid plan is not taken into account.
  • The weather conditions text is written in the language of the configuration, not of each user.
  • The day of a daily forecast is the date of the Met Office (UK time): for a place far from the UK, the "today" of the widget may start a few hours early or late.
  • No weather warnings: the Met Office warnings are not part of this API.
  • The data and its availability depend on the Met Office, which may change its plans at any time.
  • Developed without the hardware or an account: the answers come from the API documentation and from the tests of Home Assistant, not from a real key yet. Feedback is welcome on the GitHub repository.

Configuration settings​

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

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Your free API keysectionNoCreate a free account on the Met Office Weather DataHub, subscribe to the free plan of Site Specific Global Spot, and copy the API key it shows once. The free plan allows 360 calls a day.
API keysecretYesThe key of the Site Specific subscription (a long text, not your password).
Places to forecastselectNoThe houses located in the Gladys settings, or the coordinates below. 3 places at most.
CoordinatesstringNoUsed with Coordinates only. Latitude, longitude, an optional name before a colon; places separated by semicolons.
Refresh intervalselectNoHow often the hourly forecast of each place is read; the 7-day one every 3 hours. Fits the 360 calls a day.
Language of the textsselectNoFeature names given when a place is added, and the weather conditions (Light rain...).

How to install Met Office in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Met Office appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-met-office:1.0.1), 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/guim31/gladys-met-office.

Met Office 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​

Met Office 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.

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