Skip to main content

NOAA Tides smart home integration, free and open source

NOAA Tides integration for Gladys Assistant

Tides at the NOAA stations of the United States: next high and low tides, level, alerts.

View on GitHubAll integrations

Brings the tide predictions of NOAA (CO-OPS, Tides & Currents) into Gladys, at the 3,500 tide stations of the United States and its territories: the next high and low tides, the predicted water level now, whether the tide is rising or falling, and, where the station measures them, the observed water level and the water temperature. No account, no key.

For the harbours of France, use the Marées France integration by William-De71: this one is its counterpart for the United States, with the same features as far as NOAA allows.

Not for navigation. Predictions are astronomical: wind, pressure and river flow can move the real water level well away from them. The integration depends on your Gladys, your Internet access and a public service. Use the official NOAA products and the National Weather Service warnings for anything that matters. This integration is not affiliated with NOAA.

What you get​

  • One device per station you follow, named "Tide <station>": the predicted level now, the tide (rising or falling), the next tide as a sentence ("High tide at 5:39 PM (1.80 m)"), the minutes to the next high tide and to the next low tide, and their heights.
  • At the stations that measure them: the observed water level (every 6 minutes) and the water temperature.
  • Heights above MLLW (Mean Lower Low Water, the datum of the US nautical charts), in metres or feet; temperatures in °C or °F.
  • Two scene triggers: a high or low tide (at its time or up to 6 hours before), and a high tide above an alert level (yours, or the NOAA minor flood level of the station), up to 24 hours before.
  • A scene action that gives the next tide to the following actions (time, height, sentence).
  • A dashboard widget: the tide curve of the day with its high and low tides, the next four tides and live levels.
  • A "Find stations" button: the stations near your house, near a point, by name or by id.

Requirements​

  • Gladys Assistant 5.1.0 or later (widget, scene triggers and action).
  • Internet access from Gladys to api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov.
  • The location of your house in Gladys, only for "Find stations" without text.

Configuration​

Settings​

  • Stations: ids or names of the stations, separated by commas, 10 at most. An id (9414290) is exact. A name ("Boston", "San Francisco") takes the matching station, a reference station first. A tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov page with ?id= works too.
  • Units: metres and °C (default) or feet and °F. Gladys freezes the unit of a feature when the device is created: after a change, click Update on the devices in the Discover tab.
  • Alert levels of the high tides: for the trigger "High tide above the alert level", in the units above, above MLLW. One level for every station (2.1), one per station (9414290=2.1; 8443970=3.6), or both. Empty: the NOAA minor flood level of the station, when it has one (water level stations).
  • Language of the texts: of the device and feature names (frozen at creation) and of the texts sent to the scenes. French by default.

Save, open the Discover tab and create the devices you want.

Finding your stations​

The Find stations button lists up to 10 stations with their id, their state, their distance and their kind:

  • leave the field empty for the stations nearest to your house;
  • type a latitude and a longitude (37.8, -122.47) for the stations nearest to that point;
  • type a name, with its state if needed (Sausalito CA), or an id.

A reference station has the full 6-minute curve. A subordinate station only has its high and low tides (offsets of a reference station): its level in between is computed by the cosine interpolation of the tide tables, a few centimetres off.

Devices​

FeatureTypeNotes
Predicted levellevelnow, curve of the reference stations, else interpolated
TidetextRising / Falling
Next tidetext"High tide at 5:39 PM (1.80 m)"
Next high tide indurationminutes
Next high tide heightlevel
Next low tide indurationminutes
Next low tide heightlevel
Observed water levellevelstations with an active water level sensor, 6-minute
Water temperaturetemperaturestations with an active water temperature sensor

The states are refreshed every minute by the integration itself (the countdowns move every minute). An observation older than one hour (three for the temperature) is not sent again. Times are shown in the timezone of your Gladys, whatever the timezone of the station.

Dashboard widget​

Next tides: for the station chosen in its settings (or the first one created), the predicted level and the observed values as live tiles, the curve from 2 hours ago to 22 hours ahead with its high and low tides and a "now" marker, the next four tides, the alert level of the high tide trigger, and a link to the station page on Tides & Currents.

Scene triggers​

  • Tide: high or low tide: choose the station, high tide, low tide or both, and when: at the time of the tide, or 15, 30, 45 minutes, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4 or 6 hours before. The scene receives the station, the tide, its time, its height, the unit and a ready-made sentence.
  • Tide: high tide above the alert level: a predicted high tide reaches the alert level of the configuration (or the NOAA minor flood level): at its time, or 30 minutes to 24 hours before. The scene also receives the alert level.

A threshold on the observed level needs no trigger: use the Gladys condition "a device value goes above" on the Observed water level feature.

Scene action​

Tide: get the next tide: for a station, the next high tide, low tide or either. The following actions can use its time, its height, the minutes until it, the predicted level now, the trend and a sentence ("High tide at 5:39 PM (1.80 m)").

Scene examples​

  • Low tide walk: trigger "Tide: high or low tide", low tide, 1 hour before → send the sentence of the trigger to your phone, time to go to the beach.
  • King tide warning: trigger "Tide: high tide above the alert level", 12 hours before → send the sentence to the family and close the garage door in time.
  • Morning briefing: at 7 AM, action "Tide: get the next tide", then send its sentence with the weather.

Data sources and quotas​

  • Data: NOAA CO-OPS (Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services), API api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov, public domain. No key; every request names the application (application=gladys-noaa-tides), as NOAA asks.
  • Requests, per station: details once a week, predictions every 6 hours (2 requests), latest observations every 6 minutes for the created devices whose station measures them (1 or 2 requests). The station list (about 3,500 stations) once a week, kept in /data.
  • Predictions use the epoch and the datums published by NOAA; they cover the next two days, so a short outage of NOAA changes nothing.

Troubleshooting​

  • "Unknown station" on the Configuration screen: the id or the name is not in the NOAA list of the tide stations. Use Find stations and copy the id.
  • No observed level or temperature: the station has no active sensor (most stations only have predictions). NOAA marks a broken sensor as inactive: the feature appears again after "Update" in the Discover tab once it is repaired.
  • Heights in metres after choosing feet: click Update on the device in the Discover tab.
  • "NOAA Tides & Currents does not answer": the service is down or unreachable from Gladys; the countdowns and the triggers keep running on the predictions already known.
  • Detailed logs: set LOG_LEVEL=debug on the container.

Limits​

  • Tide stations of NOAA only (United States, Puerto Rico, the Pacific islands…): no currents, no Great Lakes levels.
  • Heights above MLLW only; other datums are not offered.
  • Not for navigation: astronomical predictions, without wind or pressure.
  • The NOAA minor flood level exists only at the water level stations.
  • This integration is not affiliated with NOAA.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings NOAA Tides asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Your tide stationssectionNoFollow the tide predictions of NOAA (Tides & Currents) at the stations of the United States and its territories. "Find stations" below gives their ids. Save, then create the devices in the Discover tab.
StationsstringNoStation ids or names, separated by commas (10 at most). An id is exact; a name takes the closest match.
UnitsselectNoOf the heights and temperatures. After a change, click "Update" on the devices in the Discover tab.
Alert levels of the high tidesstringNoFor the trigger "High tide above the alert level", above MLLW, in the units above: one level (2.1) or one per station (9414290=2.1; 8443970=3.6). Empty: the NOAA minor flood level, where the station has one.
Language of the textsselectNoOf the device and feature names (set when the devices are created) and of the texts sent to the scenes.

How to install NOAA Tides in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: NOAA Tides 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-noaa-tides:1.0.0), 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/guim31/gladys-noaa-tides.

NOAA Tides 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​

NOAA Tides 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.

Subscribe to the Gladys Assistant newsletter

A few emails per month about new releases and project news. Sent by Pierre-Gilles Leymarie, founder of the project. Unsubscribe anytime 🙂
Last updated on