[RELEASE] Enhanced Weather Underground Driver

[dJOS]

v5.6.0 released:

@dJOS

20 Nov 2020 - v5.6.0 - add selectable language eg en-GB or en-US
(I can add more options if requested)

You can update your driver by importing the below URL:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dJOS1475/Hubitat_WU_Driver/main/WU_Driver.groovy

EDIT: for those curious as to why this matters - WU actually returns different narrative results for the same location depending on the Language selected (even when the rest of the query is identical) eg:

US English:

British English:

[alexd51]

Stupid question.... How do i get more than just one line of info per tile? like i have a tile that has the attribute of todays weather icon another with temperature and so on.
Is there a way to get a tile with certain weather info?

[dJOS]

Not stupid questions at all, You’ll need one of the fancy dashboard tile programs to make a custom tile.

Unfortunately only apps can make custom tiles and not drivers.

I’ve thought about making a wrapper app for it, but haven’t had the time.

[alexd51]

Then i will have to wait for you to make that wrapper. I think i tried 2 different apps for tiles and i could not get them to work at all. And there's nit that many videos or walkthroughs to get to understand some of these apps.
I'm still learning how to use RM because is so confusing to me.
All my automation are simple for now and using the simple automation rules app.
I made a rule somewhere to turn certain lights on after sunset when a motion sensor got someone walking around and also to send me a txt message. Well i tried finding that rule and i cant find it anywhere so every time I go by that sensor i get a darned txt and if i stop moving fir a bit it will send another and just keep going until I leave the area lol

No darned clue. I think it was a rule i tried at the beginning with RM and befire i finished i hit back and it stayed in memory?

[dJOS]

Hmm, let me know what your ideal tiles will contain and I’ll look at it in the coming week.

[kampto]

I loaded this driver and put in my API and device ID from WU. The device populates with the correct WU temperature but the Lat/Long numbers seem to be coming from my hub location. This weather station is at a cabin 300miles away from my hub. Can it not poll the correct location from WU and the correct forecasts?

[thebearmay]

There is an option to override the lat-long in the preferences...

[dJOS]

Hmm, I can make that an option.

One of the changes I made was to take the location data from your hub rather than WU.

[kampto]

Yeah, that would be nice. Although I recall it used to pull the Lat/Long from WU but I could be wrong. Also seems to be missing some stuff in the tile.

The old Smartthings Device handler I had contained this

[dJOS]

I’m not sure where that tile is from but chances are it’s using the old field names.

I renamed them to make more sense.

[kampto]

The location where the weather station is still has a Smartthings Hub and im using a DH I found a few years ago, name space "timeteo". It still works but soon im gonna change that location to Hubitat. So looking for an alternative DH to work with my Davis VP2 to WU on Hubitat. These tiles are from my SharpTools dash.

[josh]

Here's some details on what SharpTools is looking for in a weather device:

@josh

The main thing the Weather Tile is looking for is the device to implement a weather attribute. That triggers the weather tile being rendered instead of a generic thing tile.

It’s looking for a few key attributes:

• weather - description of the weather/forecast [ required ]
• weatherIcon - reports a Weather Underground or TWC compatible icon id
• forecastIcon - should report a Weather Underground compatible icon name
  • The weather tile falls back to this attribute if the weatherIcon is not available
• city - replaces the device name in the top-left ( location is used as a fallback)
• temperature - numeric temperature (without units)
• feelsLike - numeric temperature (without units)
• wind - in MPH
• illuminance - hidden for now
• humidity - as a percentage (without units)
• percentPrecip - as a percentage (without units)
• localSunrise - time
• localSunset - time

[kampto]

Got around to looking into this driver, its indeed missing a lot of those key attribute names that a dashboard "weather" tile looks for.

[jeff.lilliquist]

Did you use a delay and then recheck the state of the sensor. Also, if you want an AND condition set only one trigger and then do and "if then" "and" "end if". The triggers are for any of those events. I have a light that if it is one during certain hours I want to go off again. It was pain to program compared to the simplicity of the action. You have to wait for it to go on then check the level then check the time the do the action.

[msncookie]

Hi all. I'm new to Hubitat, but I've had a PWS uploading to WU for a few years. Just got this driver up and running with my API key, and was curious about the alert attribute. I don't see it in the list of attributes (either in the driver details nor in the dashboard) but it's in the driver code (and even Cobra's screenshots). I'd like to have the ability to create rules - ie. make a light bulb red - if a weather alert is active.

By chance, is that attribute not available when no alert is active? I'm in Canada, but I know WU does display alerts for my area (I presume from Environment Canada) on the site, so I'm assuming the API would provide the same.

Thanks much!

[dJOS]

Hi, I didnt think I removed the alert Attribute. I'll have a look.

EDIT: the attribute is still present and looking back at Cobra's driver Im not sure how he populated this as there is only a single definition reference in his code.

[dJOS]

So I think the "alert" attribute is a left over from the previous WU API - there's nothing in the doco regarding alerts and I even checked the Home Assistant Driver and there's nothing in that either.

I'm fairly certain that alerts are now bundled into the long-form forecast fields (forecastToday and forecastTomorrow) eg:

[msncookie]

OK thanks for the info and example. I appreciate it.

[dJOS]

No worries.

[msncookie]

I've been digging into this driver and learning how to customize it a bit. I'm wondering about all the sendEvent calls, and how that apparently causes - particularly with lots of dynamic weather data - the device log to fill-up with thousands of events over a short period of time.

From what I'm gathering on the community there are ways to check if a value in the database is the same as the new value and hence reduce the number of events created. Wondering if @dJOS or anyone else has any thoughts on this and how to keep the database from exploding with unnecessary data.

EDIT: I just read that the nightly job to clean up events has a threshold of 1000 for each attribute, as opposed to 1000 total. So I guess if the polling doesn't go more often than the typical 5 mins then perhaps I'm panicking for nothing.

Thanks all!