PVOutput Weather Service

Wunderground will be discontinuing API access to weather data which we have used for temperature data.

We are proposing to add a simple weather upload service to PVOutput that will accept 5-minute temperature data which can then be shared across all PVOutput systems.

e.g.

https://pvoutput.org/service/r2/addtemperature.jsp?d=20180525&t=10:00&temp=37.5&station=SYD_AIRPORT

Then anyone can use SYD_AIRPORT as their weather station.

Having our own temperature service ensures that we don’t have to rely on third parties those services may be shutdown down in the future.

Welcoming comments/feedback below.

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What if your in Melbourne or elsewhere?

Bazzle

Worth including the observed daily solar exposure from the local weather station in the daily outputs?

When more stations report you will be able to find a station close to you.

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We’ll look at supporting most of the data that was previously reported on wunderground.

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This sounds like a great idea!

There seems to be a bug with the current weather reporting. Through out the day it will show the correct temperature per every 5 minutes. However, on the daily page it shows each day as max-max rather than min-max? why is this

Here is a pic of it https://imgur.com/wvaghwg

This is a great idea! I used a local weather station that I think someone had at their house, only down the road from me, but often it wouldn’t work, getting the wunderground api sorted was also a hassle. Would definitely love this feature!

When BOM weather station is selected, the BOM station’s min/max will be used to record temperature min/max.

The system is assigned to Logan City which has limited observations, if only one reading is shown for the day then min temperature will equal max temperature

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.95581.shtml

To record the wunderground min/max, remove the BOM weather station assignment in the PVOutput system configuration. The BOM station is not needed when using live temperatures.

Proposed upload fields - only date, time and temperature will be required.

  • date
  • time
  • temperature ©
  • humidity (0-100)
  • solar radiation (W/m^2)
  • rain (mm) cumulative
  • wind speed (km/h)
  • wind direction (0-360)
  • pm2.5
  • pm10

How about time zone? Unless you plan on getting that from the users settings or requiring it to be in UTC. Also, just for basic completeness, you might add barometric pressure (kPa).

The thing is, how will I get my weather station to upload to this site? I have a New PanTech Weather Station Wifi Wireless Professional Solar Power UV WH2900 ( https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/262912140855 ) that uploads to wunderground and can also upload to weathercloud and weatherbug.

How will I redirect it to your site though. I am not sure if there is a custom setting, and I didn’t really want to run a computer or raspberrypie when it already connects to the internet.

perhaps we could also look at allowing weathercloud and weatherbug to be used. Looks like weatherbug has an api too.

I am wondering about the station ID’s - what will be the source of truth for this? or could it be latitude and longitude?

It would be from the system’s timezone, similar to how generation/consumption is uploaded currently. Barometric pressure will be added too, thanks.

It should be easy enough to upload to the PVOutput service provided the manufacturer allows access to the upload program.

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You will get to choose your own unique name, similar to how the system and teams work.

It might be worth noting that current Wunderground APIs are still reporting, as several have commented in the “General” thread. I take their message to mean that they will issue no new keys, but the old ones seem to be still working.

Good to hear they haven’t revoked access yet.

Been prototyping with a temperature sensor on rpi zero and uploading to PVOutput via wifi. Only thing missing is some graphs.

Will do a write up on the setup if anyone is interested, total cost is about $AUD 50 including 16GB SD card :slight_smile:

image

2 Likes

Using an Ecowitt device, works great! uploads to it’s own service, WU and Weathercloud. Would be great if insolation (Watts/m2) could be recorded PVOutput too.

Is WU still not issuing new API’s? I started mine up last year and seems to be working fine.

i need a decent one. since WU closed the API i had setup a new one from somewhere and it does 15 min not 5 min and is only available at a capital city 100km away.

anyone got something that can grab and upload data from BOM or the likes?