Weather Underground smart home integration, free and open source
Weather Underground personal weather stations: temperature, wind, rain, pressure, UV, sun.
Published by guim31
- Devices
- Version 1.0.1
- Requires Gladys >=5.1.0
- ★ 0
Your personal weather station, as published on Weather Underground, in Gladys: temperature, humidity, wind, rain, pressure, UV and sun, read every 5 minutes through the official API The Weather Company gives to station owners. Any other public station can be followed too, such as a neighbor's.
This integration is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Weather Underground, The Weather Company or IBM. It was developed without the hardware and without an API key: feedback welcome.
Overview
- One device per station, with its sensors as features: temperature, feels-like temperature, dew point, humidity, pressure, wind speed, gusts and direction, rain rate and rain of the day, UV index, light (from the solar radiation) and the age of the last observation.
- A dashboard widget showing the last observation of a station, with how old it is.
- A silent station is flagged: its values are no longer refreshed, the age of its observation keeps growing, and its badge in the device list turns orange.
- Read-only: nothing is controlled, nothing is sent to Weather Underground.
Any station works, whatever its brand (Ecowitt, Davis, Ambient Weather, Netatmo through a bridge, WeeWX…), as long as it uploads to Weather Underground.
Requirements
- Gladys 5.1 or later.
- A Weather Underground API key. It is free, but only given to members whose personal weather station sends data to Weather Underground: sign in on wunderground.com, open Member settings, then API Keys, and generate a key (32 characters).
- The id of each station to follow: shown on the station page (for example
IPARIS123orKCASANFR1234). It is the ID, not the name of the station. - Gladys must reach the Internet (
api.weather.com).
Configuration
- In Integrations, install Weather Underground, then open its Configuration tab.
- Paste the API key.
- Enter the station ids, separated by commas (10 at most).
- Pick the refresh interval (5 minutes by default) and the language of the feature names.
- Save, then click Test the connection: each station answers with its temperature and the age of its observation.
- Open the Discovery tab and add the stations.
The feature names are chosen when a station is added: change the language before adding it.
The station devices
Each station is a device named after its neighborhood and id ("Les Chartreux (IPARIS123)"), with these features, in metric units:
| Feature | Unit | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | °C | |
| Feels like | °C | wind chill when cold and windy, heat index when hot and humid |
| Dew point | °C | |
| Humidity | % | |
| Pressure | hPa | sea-level pressure |
| Wind speed, wind gusts | km/h | only for a station with an anemometer |
| Wind direction | ° | 0 = north, 90 = east |
| Rain rate | mm/h | only for a station with a rain gauge |
| Rain today | mm/d | since local midnight |
| UV index | only for a station with a UV sensor | |
| Light (solar radiation) | lux | W/m² × 126.7, see the limits |
| Observation age | min | minutes since the last observation of the station |
A feature the station has no sensor for is not created. 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.
When a station stops sending data (power cut, Wi-Fi down), Weather Underground keeps its last observation for an hour. After 30 minutes without a new observation, the integration stops refreshing the values (an old temperature would look current), keeps updating the observation age, and flags the station with an orange dot in the device list. Everything is back at the next observation.
Dashboard widget
Add the Weather station widget to a dashboard and pick a station (empty: the first one). It shows:
- the temperature, humidity, wind, rain of the day and pressure, live;
- the temperature curve of the last 24 hours (once the station is added to Gladys);
- the time of the observation and its age (in orange when the station is silent), the feels-like temperature, dew point, gusts, wind direction, rain rate, UV index and solar radiation in W/m².
The widget never calls the API: it shows the last observation read.
Scene triggers and actions
The integration declares no scene trigger nor scene action of its own: every value is a feature of the station device, which the standard scene cards already handle (A device state changes, with a threshold, and Get a device value). A "it starts raining" trigger would only repeat "rain rate above 0".
Scene examples
- Rain alert: when the Rain rate of your station goes above 0 mm/h, send "It is raining, bring the laundry in" and close the roof window.
- Frost warning: when the Temperature goes below 1 °C in the evening, send a message to cover the plants.
- Skip watering: before the garden watering scene, read Rain today and stop if it is above 5 mm.
- Station down: when the Observation age goes above 60 minutes, send a message to check the station's power and Wi-Fi.
- Awning: when the Wind gusts go above 40 km/h, retract the awning.
API quota and refresh
A Weather Underground key allows 1,500 calls a day and 30 a minute, for all the tools using it. Each station costs one call per refresh: 288 calls a day at 5 minutes. With more than 4 stations, the integration slows the refresh down by itself (5 stations: every 6 minutes; 10 stations: every 11 minutes) and keeps about 10 % of the quota for restarts and tests. If you use the same key elsewhere (another home automation system, a script), pick a slower interval.
When the quota is exceeded anyway, the reads pause for 15 minutes. A refused key is tried again every hour, or as soon as the configuration is saved.
The observations come from the stations themselves, every few minutes: refreshing faster than 5 minutes would bring nothing new.
Troubleshooting
- "Weather Underground refuses the API key": copy the key again from Member settings → API Keys. Weather Underground may disable the key of a station that stopped uploading long ago.
- "No observation in the last hour (offline station or unknown id)": the API cannot tell an
offline station from a wrong id. Check the id on the station page (letters and digits, such as
IPARIS123), and that the station shows recent data on wunderground.com. - "Id refused by the API": the id contains something the API rejects: retype it.
- "API quota exceeded": see "API quota and refresh"; the reads resume after 15 minutes.
- "The Weather Underground API does not answer": Gladys cannot reach
api.weather.com: check its Internet connection and DNS. - A feature is missing: the station sent no value for that sensor when it was added. If the sensor came later, run a scan in the Discovery tab and update the device.
- Details: set
LOG_LEVEL=debugon the container to see each read in the integration logs. The API key is never written in them.
Limits
- Metric units only (°C, km/h, hPa, mm).
- Light is computed from the solar radiation (W/m² × 126.7, the factor Ecowitt stations use to send their lux reading as W/m²): exact for those stations, an approximation of daylight for a pyranometer (Davis). The widget also shows the W/m² value.
- No forecast: Gladys' weather services (OpenWeather, Météo-France…) already provide it; this integration brings what they cannot, the measurements of a station next door.
- 10 stations at most per key.
- The data and its availability depend on The Weather Company, which may change or end this free API at any time.
- Developed without the hardware and without an API key: the API answers are taken from its documentation, not from a real station yet. Feedback is welcome on the GitHub repository.
Configuration settings
These are the settings Weather Underground asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.
| Setting | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your API key | section | No | Weather Underground gives a free API key to anyone whose personal weather station sends data to it: sign in on wunderground.com, then open Member settings, API Keys. The key reads your station and any other public station. |
| API key | secret | Yes | 32 characters. 1,500 calls a day per key: the refresh interval is slowed down to stay below it. |
| Station ids | string | Yes | Separated by commas, 10 at most: yours or neighbors' (the ID on the station page, not its name). |
| Refresh interval | select | No | How often each station is read. Beyond 4 stations, 5 minutes would exceed the daily quota: slowed down automatically. |
| Language of the feature names | select | No | Names given to the features when a station is added (Temperature, Wind speed...). |
How to install Weather Underground in Gladys
- In Gladys, open Integrations: Weather Underground appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
- Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (
ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-wunderground: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-wunderground.
Weather Underground 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
Weather Underground 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