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Swiss Hydro smart home integration, free and open source

Swiss Hydro integration for Gladys Assistant

Unofficial connector: flow, level and water temperature of the Swiss FOEN stations.

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Not an official warning system, nor the FOEN regional warning. For floods, follow the official warnings of the FOEN and of your canton (natural hazards portal).

Unofficial connector, not affiliated with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). It brings the hydrological stations of the FOEN into Gladys: the Aare in Bern, the Rhône at the Porte du Scex, Lake Geneva, the Rhine in Basel and about 230 other rivers and lakes.

Status: never been tested in a real Gladys installation. The parsing was checked by hand against the real public services during development (read-only calls, 2026-10-18), but the module has not run in Gladys yet. Please report what you see.

Source: FOEN. Public open data, no account, no key.

What you get​

One device per station, with:

FeatureUnitNotes
Flowm³/sA plain value: Gladys has no m³/s unit, so it shows in the name. A brook measured in l/s is converted. Lakes have none.
Water levelmMost stations give the altitude of the water (m above sea level), a few a relative height.
Water temperature°COnly the stations that measure it. Kept out of the room temperature of Gladys.
Measured attextThe date of the measurement, in Swiss time with CET or CEST ("2026-10-18 05:30 CEST"), whatever the time zone of your Gladys.
Flood danger level1 to 5FOEN source only: the official FOEN level, as LINDAS gives it (1 no or low danger, 2 moderate, 3 considerable, 4 high, 5 very high). Never computed; none when LINDAS has none.
Hydrodaten map thresholds wl_1 to wl_4m³/s or mThe values wl_1 to wl_4 of the hydrodaten.admin.ch map (flow for a river, level for a lake), assumed to be where the levels 2 to 5 start. Shown only, never used.

A feature only appears when the station gives its value. Once a device is created, a feature never disappears from it, even if the station stops sending it for a while.

Configuration​

  1. Install the integration from the store, then open its configuration.
  2. Stations: FOEN station numbers, separated by commas, for example 2135, 2009. A name works too (Rhône Porte du Scex) if it matches one station only. 20 stations at most.
  3. To find a number, type a river, a lake or a place in the Search stations button (for example Rhone or Leman), or use the FOEN map.
  4. Data source:
    • FOEN open data (LINDAS), the default: the official values and danger level, published by the FOEN on LINDAS, the linked data service of the Swiss federal administration.
    • swisshydroapi (Bouni): the service read by the swisshydrodata library (and the Home Assistant integration), run by its author. It knows more stations and gives the unit of each value, but no danger level: with it, no danger level is published and the danger trigger never fires.
  5. Read interval: 10 minutes by default, 10 at least (the FOEN measures every 10 minutes), 60 at most. All the stations are read together, in one request (one request per station with swisshydroapi).
  6. Click Test the stations, then add the devices from the Discovery tab.

Scenes​

Two triggers:

  • Flow above (Swiss Hydro): the flow of a station reached a chosen value (1 to 4,000 m³/s). It fires once per rise, and again only after the flow fell under 95 % of the value. For any other value, use the usual device trigger on the Flow feature ("value above").
  • Flood danger level reached (Swiss Hydro): FOEN source only. The official danger level rose to the chosen level (2 to 5). A jump from 1 to 3 fires level 2 and level 3. It fires again only after the level stayed under it for 30 minutes (a level wavering between 2 and 3 fires 3 once).

Nothing fires, the triggers are only armed, on the first reading of a station, after a gap of more than 3 hours without a current measurement, and when the source or the discharge unit of the station changed. Their state is kept across restarts, so nothing fires twice. An event Gladys could not take (restarting, down) is kept and sent again for 30 minutes, then dropped. Both give the station, its flow, its level, the date of the measurement and a summary in English and French.

These triggers follow the published data, with up to 10 minutes of delay and more if a service is down: they never replace the official warnings.

Limits and behavior​

  • A measurement older than 3 hours (a station out of service) is not published; nor is one with an aberrant date (in the future, or more than 30 days old). The test button still shows it. A reading older than the one already kept is ignored.
  • If a 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 than the interval, restarts included.
  • The thresholds and the discharge units come from the map layer of hydrodaten.admin.ch, read once a day; a unit once known is kept. Without that layer, the FOEN source gives no flow (LINDAS does not say whether a station is in m³/s or l/s); the other values go on. A station missing from the layer has no flow with the FOEN source: choose swisshydroapi for it.
  • Do not rely on an old danger level. With the swisshydroapi source, or when LINDAS stops giving a level for a station, nothing new is published for it: Gladys keeps showing the last value it received, which may be outdated. Check the date of the measurement and the official warnings.
  • If Gladys does not give the configuration at start, the integration says it in its status and asks again after 1 minute, then 2, 4... up to 30.
  • Nothing is sent but the station numbers. The integration writes only its state file in /data.

Credits​

  • Data: Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), "Current hydrological monitoring data from the FOEN", open government data on LINDAS, terms "Open use" of opendata.swiss; the thresholds from hydrodaten.admin.ch.
  • Code: a JavaScript port of swisshydrodata 0.3.1 by Bouni (MIT). See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings Swiss Hydro asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Swiss rivers and lakes in GladyssectionNoNot an official warning system, nor the FOEN regional warning: follow the official warnings of the FOEN and of your canton. Unofficial connector, not affiliated with the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). For each station you choose (Aare, Rhône, Lake Geneva...), it brings into Gladys the flow, the water level, the water temperature, the date of the measurement, the official flood danger level (FOEN source) and the thresholds of the hydrodaten map. Public open data, no account. Source: FOEN. The FOEN measures every 10 minutes: the stations are read every 10 minutes at most. Never tested against the real service by a Gladys installation yet.
StationsstringNoFOEN station numbers, or names, separated by commas (20 at most). A name must match one station only; the "Search stations" button gives the numbers.
Data sourceselectNoFOEN open data (LINDAS): the official values and danger level. swisshydroapi: the service the swisshydrodata library reads, run by its author; it has no danger level, so none is published with it.
Read interval (minutes)numberNoAll the stations are read together. 10 minutes at least: the FOEN measures every 10 minutes.

How to install Swiss Hydro in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Swiss Hydro 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-swiss-hydro: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-swiss-hydro.

Swiss Hydro 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​

Swiss Hydro 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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