Indigo Domotics

Greetings ! .. Enjoying NOAA (Thanks Nathan), i am looking for a good frost warning (for my fruit trees, in California). So far I am thinking of using Temperature (eg less than 40F) and Current Condition (eg key words "Ice, Cold, Freez, Snow, Frost, Hail, Icing"). Would you have better ? Much appreciated, Eric

Hi Eric.

Though I've never attempted to use the NOAA information to predict frost, your proposed solution may work. You may also be able to use the "Weather Advisory" NOAA Weather Plus device states to help predict this. According to this NOAA page, they do provide a "Frost Advisory" as well as a number of "Freeze" and "Freezing" warnings in their weather advisory information. The NOAA Weather Plus plugin populates your Indigo weather device with up to 3 of these NOAA weather advisories (if they're provided by NOAA for your area). So, in addition to looking for Ice, Freez, Frost, Hail, etc. in the forecast, you could also look for those in the 3 weather advisory text states. (Note that looking for text in a plugin device's state requires either the use of Python scripting, or inserting the state into an Indigo variable then using AppleScript to look for text in that variable).

Thanks Nsheldon !
So all programed and will see how it fairs over this coming winter. I have enough monitoring via email for that ...
Thanks again ! ... Eric

I like the idea of a frost warning to protect my citrus in So Cal.

So I tried this test:

The action is 'send a email'

I'm getting nothing. My test is for 70º and my current 'low temps' are in the 65º-68º range.

Am I correct in that the 'low temp' is a forecast, which is posted once [at what hour?] and doesn't move during the day like 'current temp'

'Becomes less than'. Does this mean that, at the 'low temp' posted time the temp is below 70º = email sent? 'BECOMES' sounds more like 72>71>70>69 email sent

CraigM wrote:

Am I correct in that the 'low temp' is a forecast, which is posted once [at what hour?] and doesn't move during the day like 'current temp'

'Becomes less than'. Does this mean that, at the 'low temp' posted time the temp is below 70º = email sent? 'BECOMES' sounds more like 72>71>70>69 email sent

Correct. "Low Temperature Tonight" is the forecast for the evening. From my observations, it seems that around 6:00 AM is when NOAA sets this value for the first time in any particular day (e.g. early on Monday morning prior to 6:00 AM, the Low Temperature Tonight represents the low for Sunday night, after 6:00 AM, the Low Temperature Tonight represents the low for Monday night). The value can change if NOAA changes their prediction sometime during the day, but for the most part, it's constant for the entire day.

"Becomes Less Than" means that it has to first be greater than or equal to the value you enter. If the Low Temperature Tonight was never at or above the value you entered, that trigger will never fire. If you want Indigo to send you an email each time the low temperature is updated with a value less than 70, set the trigger to "Has Any Change" rather than "Becomes Less Than", then specify a condition in the Conditions tab that requires the "Low Temperature Tonight" value of the device to be less than 70. That way, each time the state is updated with a value less than 70, you'll get an email. NOTE, however, that NOAA Weather Plus, clears and re-updates each of it's states every 15 minutes. This means that you'd be getting an email every 15 minutes with the same information. I don't have an elegant work-around for this at the moment. I'll need to think about a better way to reliably update the device states without having to clear them out first. An update to improve upon this may not be available real soon unless a number of people have a pressing need though.

Nathan, as usual thanks for the clarifications.

Are you sure about the 'email every 15 min'?

I reconfigured my trigger per your instructions on 10/17 at 2:00pm pst, but as of this posting I have only received one email on 10/18 at 4:06am pst.

No, I'm not positive about the 15 minute thing. If you only received one email, it may be that I'm thinking of the current condition states that get updated every time the NOAA Weather Plus plugin checks. It's been a bit since I've looked at the code in detail.

Hello all, the latest from my side. I am now using the Weather Condition from NOAA with key word search (eg Frost .) combined with Weather Plus Minimum Temperature forecast (for the next 7 nights compared to eg 43F) to get a Frost warning email ... I am trying to get a warning few days before so i can protect the trees and such ... Thanks for all inputs ... Right now lowest predicted is 47F over the next week ...

Great! Glad to hear it's been useful.

nsheldon wrote:

Great! Glad to hear it's been useful.

Indeed and very happy to keep digging ... So the latest setup is :
* Using NOAA Weather Plus to get an early warning on freezing condition (I am using their minimum night temperatures for the next 7 nights)
* Using NOAA Weather (weather condition) and NOAA Weather Plus (minimum temperature for the night) to both warn and stop any watering ...

Just wanted to update info from my previous post.

I'm getting warning emails every day as per my testing.

The NOAA warning times for NOAA Plus 'low temp tonight' are a bit erratic.

4:06a
4:09a
1:41p
1:58p
4:13p
2:14p

It's great to hear that it's working for you guys!

As for the erratic times, I guess that reflects when NOAA decides to make those changes to the low temperatures for your area (+/- 15 minutes, which is how often NOAA Weather Plus updates).

Today was the first time I have received multiple warnings from NOAA the same day.

3:32a
4:03a

Nathan,

I received a 'frost warning" email from 11/11, 9:06 pm [<40º]

Is this warning me of <40º for the night of 11/11, early am of 11/12, or the eve of 11/12?

My control panel shows "low temp tonight" at 44º

When did it detect a 39º or less?

CraigM wrote:

Nathan,

I received a 'frost warning" email from 11/11, 9:06 pm [<40º]

Is this warning me of <40º for the night of 11/11, early am of 11/12, or the eve of 11/12?

My control panel shows "low temp tonight" at 44º

When did it detect a 39º or less?

That completely depends on your trigger and from what event it's configured to be triggered. Without knowing what your trigger settings are, I couldn't say which bit of information triggered the email. In my own NOAA Weather Plus device (set up for the CA central valley), there was a weather advisory for frost. Perhaps your trigger is set to look for frost warnings, or for similar words in the forecast descriptions. But again, I have no idea how you've set it up.