NOAA Weather Plus discussions

I actually have a good weather station (Davis VantagePro 2), but it isn't tied to anything because the cable/software is way too expensive ($200-300 or something). However, I recently found a cheap knockoff cable without software for like $18, so I might give that a try and see how it goes. I had found an open source software package, but I'll checkout WeatherSnoop since it might could save some time/headaches.

My backup option was a rain sensor but those are relatively expensive too so perhaps a leak sensor would be an option. Thanks for that thought!

I do like the extended NOAA information, especially the forecasts, up on my weather control page... but sounds like this is definitely the route to take for more detailed decisions.

I'm interested to hear about your nock off cable. I have the USB connector for my Davis station but would like to switch it to the IP connector (which is like $300).

[jay (support)]

WeatherSnoop is awesome. And the next version of the plugin, which will support WS3, is going to be even better (I've just started working on it).

I haven't tried this cable out yet (or even purchased it), but I found this link in a forum after a google search a while back:
http://wx.sloweather.com/dsi-01.php
Somewhere I saw it referenced for $18, but that may have been an old price or just what that person paid off eBay or something. Still, $30+shipping beats the alternatives, as you have obviously researched/seen.

The poster(s) in that forum had ordered and used it from there, but I know nothing about them or the cable itself. From what I read you can actually make your own if you get the pins correct -- a subset of the full pins make up a straight pass-through serial. However, it seems that people found a hard time getting a decent connector to fit and still look good.

At this point I am hoping to use that to get to serial then, ideally, some type of connection to go over ethernet or a straight Cat6. Haven't found an ideal solution to that part other than a series of adapters. On the computer itself I'll give WeatherSnoop a try for data access.

Patch update 1.1.15 released:

(See main NOAA Weather Plus thread for download link).

Changes Since Version 1.1.14

• Fixed a bug that could cause the plugin to crash if the NOAA server stopped responding after a connection was established.

I quite often see this error in my log:

NOAA Weather Plus Error Unknown error getting weather for coordinates XX.0158, -XXX.4514: <urlopen error timed out>

It shows up intermittently, sometimes in quick succession, perhaps 5-10 times a day.

Any thoughts as to what I may have done wrong?

Things have taken a turn for the worse... I quit/relaunched Indigo Server and saw the following:

NOAA Weather Plus Error Error parsing XML from NOAA for device NOAA Weather Plus: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 84. Try using GPS coordinaetes for a nearby airport (NOAA often places weather stations at airports).
NOAA Weather Plus Error Error parsing XML from NOAA for device NOAA Weather Plus: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 111. Try using GPS coordinaetes for a nearby airport (NOAA often places weather stations at airports).
NOAA Weather Plus Error Error parsing XML from NOAA for device NOAA Weather Plus: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 84. Try using GPS coordinaetes for a nearby airport (NOAA often places weather stations at airports).
NOAA Weather Plus Error Error parsing XML from NOAA for device NOAA Weather Plus: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 111. Try using GPS coordinaetes for a nearby airport (NOAA often places weather stations at airports).
NOAA Weather Plus Error Unable to find current condition or forecast data in the resulting data file. Try using different GPS coordinates.

I've tried various different sets of GPS Lat/Lon coordinates, all derived through the Weather Plus methodology, to no avail.

Also note that "coordinates" is misspelled in the error.

I'm seeing the same not well-formed errror, when grabbing the contents of the url the plugin is requesting for me I see a javascript redirect being returned:

Device NOAA SF using URL http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.ph ... =-122.4344

Code: Select all

curl -v "http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=dwml&lat=37.7694&lon=-122.4344"
* About to connect() to forecast.weather.gov port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 184.51.102.80...
* Adding handle: conn: 0x7fd6c8808200
* Adding handle: send: 0
* Adding handle: recv: 0
* Curl_addHandleToPipeline: length: 1
* - Conn 0 (0x7fd6c8808200) send_pipe: 1, recv_pipe: 0
* Connected to forecast.weather.gov (184.51.102.80) port 80 (#0)
> GET /MapClick.php?FcstType=dwml&lat=37.7694&lon=-122.4344 HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.33.0
> Host: forecast.weather.gov
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
* Server Apache/2.2.15 (Red Hat) is not blacklisted
< Server: Apache/2.2.15 (Red Hat)
< Content-Length: 123
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Expires: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:47:01 GMT
< Cache-Control: max-age=0, no-cache, no-store
< Pragma: no-cache
< Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 21:47:01 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=hoimj9qg68rkpdg1tjvg5jj0v4; path=/
<
* Connection #0 to host forecast.weather.gov left intact
<script language='javascript'>window.location.href='http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=CAZ006&zflg=1'</script>


Suddenly started seeing similar errors in my log. I suspect something is up with the basic data coming from NOAA.

Yes. I'm seeing it too. Yes, it appears that NOAA changed everything around. I don't see any XML feeds any longer (which is what NOAA Weather Plus uses), but I'll keep looking to see if I can find where they relocated things (if they didn't just completely discontinue the service).

The resulting page from the JavaScript redirect reported by @screen (as well as the redirect I see for my area) shows

The "Forecast At A Glance" icons, hourly weather graph feature, Spanish version, and temperatures in Celsius are temporarily not available for this location for technical reasons. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Hopefully, once they get those fixed, the XML used by NOAA Weather Plus will start working again as well. Sorry guys. Wish I could fix it sooner too.

First, let me thank you for creating the plugin! Any chance you could insert some kind of error fallback to minimize the streams of error messages? Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into it. Glad you like the plugin, though NOAA's unreliability isn't making it look so good right now.

www.worldweatheronline.com ?

They have API access, so maybe something reliable? Haven't looked at it though.

The NOAA servers appear to be working again. You may still see the "urlopen" errors. I'm not sur of the causes for those, but you shouldn't see any more of the XML parsing errors.

After recovering from the above NOAA changes, I'm finding that my variables aren't updating even though the forecast appears to be coming in correctly.

When I look at my device list, I can see that NOAA Weather Plus has the current temperature correct in the "state" column. However, in the variable list the weather_temperature_F variable is showing a value from 4 days ago.

In trying to trouble shoot this I've stopped and restarted Indigo, rebooted the machine, updated the plugin to version 1.1.15, started/stopped numerous times. Am I missing something simple like a trigger that should repopulate the weather_* variables?