Indigo Domotics

Dave Durham wrote:

Hi Ben, thanks again for the plug in, very slick. I have a question similar to Mat's above. How do I get a Forecast onto a Control Page??? I don't see the forecast variables in my list, only the current conditions. What am I missing???

Forecasts are not currently translated into variables, simply because I didn't have a good idea on how to condense the information into a single variable.... Or a good way to name the variable (Forecast1, forecast2, etc? MondayForecast, TuesdayForecast? etc)....

I am open to suggestions....

The proper method to display the data would be using states.... But I need to rework the plugin slightly to allow that.... (After hearing back from Matt & Jay, that is).

bschollnick2 wrote:

Matt & Jay, can a device-less plugin have states appear in the control page?

No. States are tied inextricably to devices and that's not likely to change soon. Adding yet another object type (plugin) in the UI seems like a really bad idea - there are already a bunch of objects that a user has to learn about.

If your plugin doesn't have states but needs to expose data, use variables. That's what the Airfoil plugin does so it's a decent example. It creates a folder and adds/updates variables as part of it's normal operation and so far it seems to be working well.

In this case, it seems like you actually want devices that represent different locations. Then you can have a forecast for multiple locations if you want.

All I'm looking for is the forecast temperatures for the next two or three 12-hour periods inserted into Indigo variables, along with the probability of precipitation. Just integers with no units works for my application.

I was getting these from the NOAA XML data with hacked-up AppleScript, but that stopped working (I guess they changed the format) and I don't want to invest the time in fixing it since XML support has apparently gone away in the current version of AppleScript. I'll probably upgrade to Lion someday.

How about 16 variables for the next 4 day forecast, just as google sets it out if you google "weather". That would give you a five day forecast including "today".
Day x 4 ie tomorrow, and following Three days
Temp high for each of the four days
Temp low for each of the four days
Icon ref for each of the four days that relates to the forecast image. I'm sure we can work out how many images there are, and they could be displayed as a hurlistic (sp) variable.

I'm happy to look at getting a set of images, although I think there's a set for NOAA already.

Would love to help with the scripting but my python is no existent this side of christmas!

Just an idea, no pressure intended.

Ps I'm loving being reminded by indigo to defrost my car early now it's frosty.

Mat

mat wrote:

How about 16 variables for the next 4 day forecast, just as google sets it out if you google "weather". That would give you a five day forecast including "today".
Day x 4 ie tomorrow, and following Three days
Temp high for each of the four days
Temp low for each of the four days
Icon ref for each of the four days that relates to the forecast image. I'm sure we can work out how many images there are, and they could be displayed as a hurlistic (sp) variable.

I'm happy to look at getting a set of images, although I think there's a set for NOAA already.

Would love to help with the scripting but my python is no existent this side of christmas!

Just an idea, no pressure intended.

Ps I'm loving being reminded by indigo to defrost my car early now it's frosty.

Mat

I am going to have to rethink the current Weather Conditions model, since the state won't be available...

The idea that Jay suggested of a "Location" would work, but the issue with the web page report....

If I have different locations, then is there a page per location? If so, then the web page needs to be aware of each device.... And have someway to display each location....

It's do-able... But I'm not completely happy with that....

But of course, Weather Conditions was one of the earlier plugins that I made for v5.... So.... Live and learn...

Ben,

It's great as it is. It's only a would like.

Will test the email version over the weekend. Have been busy integrating DMX lighting, and trying to hold down a day job!

Thanks for a great plugin.

Mat

Hey Ben (and everyone else),

I thought you might get a kick outta this one. I am using your plugin and leveraging the current conditions variable along with some image heuristics to paint a purty icon into my control page. See below and thanks for your great work!

morps wrote:

Hey Ben (and everyone else),

I thought you might get a kick outta this one. I am using your plugin and leveraging the current conditions variable along with some image heuristics to paint a purty icon into my control page. See below and thanks for your great work!

Nice... I love it!

Love it. Are the images copywrite free? Are they going to be shared?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9889465/imgs/weather.zip

...depending on the variables you get back, you may have to tweak file names and/or add some images.

Have fun...

Thanks for the share

Mat

Very neat, while the plugin pulls up in, no matter what zip code i put in it defaults to Danbury, CT for weather info...nevermind, saw this was a limitation of using WU vs Google...thanks!

kpfriedberg wrote:

Very neat, while the plugin pulls up in, no matter what zip code i put in it defaults to Danbury, CT for weather info...nevermind, saw this was a limitation of using WU vs Google...thanks!

So Weather Underground only had one weather station nearby to that Zip code?

- Ben

Yep

First off, thank you Benjamin for contributing this plugin... I believe its goal is exactly what I'm looking for.

I'm evaluating a variety of different automation platforms for a client's application that requires looking out 72 hours for rain events. Based on the likelyhood of that rain event, I may trigger off some activities. I was attracted to Indigo based purely on the potential to look at weather forecasts and its ability to integrate with not only Insteon, but also 3rd party hardware. I'm a complete newbie to Indigo with less than a day's work under my belt, but am liking what I see so far.

From your previous posts, I can see that you're investigating how to populate forecast data into variables. For now, I have your plugin working successfully for the Weather Underground w/ Forecast service (at least according to the variables list and event log), but am not clear on how to access the forecast data if it's not populated into variables. Can you (or anyone else) point me in the right direction on how to leverage that data?

From what I've tried so far, I believe your plugin is the only one that actually looks at forecasts. If anyone knows otherwise, I'm all ears. I'm open to writing code to get the forecast data if it comes down to that.

Thanks,
Blaine