Indigo Domotics

I have noticed that Dark Sky data is almost useless (even outside of Indigo). It will keep reporting clear and sunny skies hours after we just had a thunderstorm with hail (happened yesterday).

Coupled with it being shut down this year, I am looking for alternatives that I can integrate with Indigo.

I tried using NOAA Weather, but there aren't any stations anywhere near me, and NOAA Weather Plus lacks things like wind speed.

I have found that AccuWeather and to a lesser degree Weather Underground seem to be fairly good for my area, but don't see any plugins for them.

Wondered what others are using?

This is a tricky one for sure, and depends greatly on where you're located in the world.

Dark Sky seems hit or miss since Apple bought the API. I'm guessing that they're not spending any time on the open API and it's dying a slow death. It's fairly stable for our area, but there have been other reports of sketchy quality from others. Not sure what you mean "even outside Indigo"; Dark Sky only has one API that I know of. When Apple brings the new version online, the subscription cost will be very high.

NOAA stations are where they are, but an upcoming update to the app will include location-based weather (based on lat/long) which may suit your purpose. I've not looked at NOAA Plus, but I assume it uses NOAA's "legacy" API (although I'd expect the data available would agree, but I wouldn't bank on that without doing some research). It's also US-based, so won't work for many Indigo users.

Weather Underground no longer has an open API, and the paid API is extremely expensive.

Another source I'm testing is called Open Weather. It seems to be very stable and pretty accurate for my area. There's no plugin for it, but you can bring the date into Indigo with the GhostXML plugin. There are other sources depending on where you are in the world, but I don't know a whole lot about any others except for their existence.

All I meant is that Dark Sky had poor data for other apps that use the API, like Carrot Weather.

Carrot Weather on iOS is the main app I use to compare different weather sources like Dark Sky, Foreca, Accuweather, etc.

AccuWeather is pretty good, but checked their API, and it is very expensive as well.

I looked at https://openweathermap.org and looks decent.

I expect that I'll go with a combination of Open Weather and NOAA when my Dark Sky key runs out. That's the plan for now, anyway.

Good luck!

Here's hoping Apple does two things once Dark Sky dies:

1. makes the data reliable.

2. Exposes it to HomeKit.

1. I suspect they will or it won't be of very much value to them.

2. They are exposing the data through an API for developers for sure. I don't know whether they'll use it for their own Weather app or HomeKit.

I think they will very likely expose the data to HomeKit. Its very useful for various HomeKit automations.

sumocomputers wrote:

All I meant is that Dark Sky had poor data for other apps that use the API, like Carrot Weather.

Carrot Weather on iOS is the main app I use to compare different weather sources like Dark Sky, Foreca, Accuweather, etc.

AccuWeather is pretty good, but checked their API, and it is very expensive as well.

I looked at https://openweathermap.org and looks decent.

I agree. Even going to darksky.net on a given day it will report rain for the day but the hour by hour forecasts are 0% precipitation.