NOAA Weather Plus discussions

[ckeyes888]

This is the airport closest to us:

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.ph ... 1%2C%20USA

I changed our location to the airports lat and long and now it seems much more accurate.

Thanks,

Carl

[nsheldon]

Thanks for the URL.

The reason for the significant difference is because the data in the XML obtained by the NOAA Weather Plus is different from the forecast information for the airport location you're looking at. In other words, both are correct. Looking at Google Maps, that airport is pretty far from the coordinates specified in your "Weather Plus Forecasts" device, and there are quite a few mountains between your location and that airport, which can have a significant effect on weather conditions between the two locations. A better web page to compare to your "Weather Plus Forecasts" device is this one as it's much closer to the location configured in your device.

On a slightly different, but related topic, I talked to the Technology Officer at NOAA again today about the continued lack of current condition information. He confirmed that it wasn't working still and said he'd have the developer fix the problem as it seemed to be a one-line fix. Hopefully that'll increase the reliability of the current condition information obtained by the NOAA Weather Plus plugin. I'm also working on a new version of the plugin that will attempt to find and obtain data from the same source as Perceptive Automation's "NOAA Weather" plugin should it not be able to pull the current weather information from the expanded information XML file used in "NOAA Weather Plus"... just in case NOAA doesn't fix the lack of current condition information.

[CraigM]

I'm hoping to someday be able to pull data from a very local police/fire station rather than the airport that I use now. I don't know if the NOAA changes you refer to will fix the flakiness from that location, as their webpage has never shown a current weather icon.

police/fire station= http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.ph ... 1%2C%20USA

airport= http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.ph ... 9816894534

[ckeyes888]

Thanks Nathan...getting much better results using the new location.

Carl

[nsheldon]

@CraigM: I tested the upcoming version of the plugin with the coordinates for the police/fire station and, unfortunately, the plugin was unable to find any nearby alternate data source, so the current condition and icon were also blank in the NOAA Weather Plus device just like the web page you linked to. I'll point out this issue to the Technology Officer contact I've been emailing at NOAA. He may or may not be able to help resolve it, but we'll see.

@Carl: Great! Glad that helped!

[nsheldon]

@CraigM: The response I received regarding the lack of a weather condition icon on that page (and the XML data) is that no icon exists because that station has no actual weather sensor equipment installed. I was told that it won't ever have a condition or icon associated with it (at least until sensor equipment is installed at that station). Hopefully someday they'll do that, but until then it appears you'll have to use an alternate location for current condition weather information.

[CraigM]

@CraigM: The response I received regarding the lack of a weather condition icon on that page (and the XML data) is that no icon exists because that station has no actual weather sensor equipment installed. I was told that it won't ever have a condition or icon associated with it (at least until sensor equipment is installed at that station). Hopefully someday they'll do that, but until then it appears you'll have to use an alternate location for current condition weather information.

??? If they have no weather sensors then what is giving the temp's and forecast info??

[nsheldon]

??? If they have no weather sensors then what is giving the temp's and forecast info??

I don't know and I didn't care to ask for an elaboration on that fact. I suppose it's possible they are either estimating the temperature and humidity at that location or they only have temperature/humidity sensors in that location and have no rain or barometric pressure sensors.

[nsheldon]

Version 1.1 Released!

Download version 1.1 here

WARNING: Version 1.1 changes almost all weather forecast state names to be more intuitive. This has the unfortunate side-effect of causing any Device State Change triggers based on old forecast states to no longer work and Control Page objects you may have to not appear correctly until set to show the new forecast states.

Major Changes to Version 1.1:

• Added 9 new device states for up to 3 weather advisories (weatherAdvisory1Text, weatherAdvisory1StartTime, and weatherAdvisory1EndTime, with the ...2... and ...3... versions).
• Changed almost all forecast state names both within the device definition and in the user interface to make it more clear what each state represents. Added code to "align" the high and low temperature forecasts with the bi-daily weather conditions.
• Rearranged the order of many of the state values in the user interface.
• Added code to attempt to find and download weather data from an alternate NOAA weather URL if the information doesn't exist in the primary XML data obtained. This is experimental and may not work for a number of locations.
• Changed what is inserted into states when data is unavailable. The "- data unavailable -" message will no longer appear in states that have no data. Instead, states will be blanked out (or set to zero, if it's a numeric state) when data is unavailable.
• Updated some error messages to indicate possible workarounds for parsing errors.

[CraigM]

Nice job! You no longer need a secret decoder ring to understand the descriptions.

ISSUES:

- Lots of log errors at plugin reload

- Every edit I make on my CP to redefine the old fields to the new fields produces an error

Code: Select all

Aug 24, 2012 12:44:57 PM
  Error                           device state key forecast6Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast6Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp2 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp2 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp2 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp2 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp2Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp2Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined

Aug 24, 2012 12:48:44 PM
  Error                           device state key forecast6Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast6Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp3 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp3Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined

Aug 24, 2012 12:51:04 PM
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast8Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp4 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp4Period not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined

Aug 24, 2012 12:53:37 PM
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast10Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp5 not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined
  Error                           device state key maxTemp5Period not defined

Aug 24, 2012 12:56:15 PM
  Error                           device state key forecast1Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key forecast1Icon not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp1 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp1 not defined

Aug 24, 2012 12:59:29 PM
  Error                           device state key minTemp1 not defined
  Error                           device state key minTemp1 not defined

- 9th Forecast Condition for 4th Day [is '9th' left over from old menu names?]

- Is 'current condition' a title [current, today] or a description? I'm getting nothing, blank data. I need a 'current' title to go with my current icon, temp, hum. The only workaround is to use the caption 'current' on the icon

-Other than that the data looks good

[CraigM]

Explain please

...Added code to "align" the high and low temperature forecasts with the bi-daily weather conditions.

[*] Added code to attempt to find and download weather data from an alternate NOAA weather URL if the information doesn't exist in the primary XML data obtained. This is experimental and may not work for a number of locations.

How will it know what the best plan b is? Is there a way to develop the plugin to allow for the user to define a second set of LAT/LONG to be used as plan b?

[nsheldon]

Hey, thanks.

Those errors are to be expected when editing a control page with elements referencing the old device states. There's not really any way to avoid those errors after removing states from a device's definition. Once all the elements in the control page have been changed to use the new state names, you won't see those errors any longer.

Yes, 9th forecast is left over from the previous 1.0.x version of the plugin which had forecast data 1 through 15 (day and night forecasts from the current day to the 7th day).

"Current Condition" is the short descriptive text describing the current weather condition for the location as provided by NOAA. The plugin doesn't provide a state for the title of the current day (e.g. "Today", "This Evening", etc.) because the current condition is always, well, current. You can create a static text element on the control page that says "Currently" or "Current Condition". A caption under the icon would work too. If the "Current Condition" state in the weather device is blank, it's because the data from NOAA didn't provide that data, and the plugin either couldn't match the device's current location to the alternate NOAA data feed or the alternate NOAA data feed also didn't contain current weather condition information (such as "Partly Cloudy" or "Clear", etc).

...Added code to "align" the high and low temperature forecasts with the bi-daily weather conditions.

In the 1.0.x version of NOAA Weather Plus, the 1st Forecast Condition, 1st Forecast Period, 1st Forecast Time, and other forecast data would represent the predicted condition for the next 12 hour period and was updated every 3 hours or so. It always represented the forecast for the daytime until 3:00 PM, then it would change to the prediction for that evening. The 1st High Temperature would only represent the predicted high for the current day until 3:00 PM. After 3:00 PM, the 1st High Temperature would change to the predicted high for the next day (as there's no such thing as a high temperature for the evening). This means that if you created a control page with the 1st Forecast Condition (e.g. "Mostly Cloudy") and 1st High Temperature (e.g. 84), both states would make sense until about 3:00 PM each day, at which point the 1st Forecast Condition would show the prediction for that evening (e.g. "Chance of Rain") while the 1st High Temperature would show the expected high for tomorrow (e.g. 89). That obviously wouldn't look right to have an evening high of 89. This has been fixed with version 1.1 of NOAA Weather Plus.

How will it know what the best plan b is?

The most common situation is that NOAA Weather Plus downloads the weather data from the primary data source, but that data lacks various current condition information. However, the data obtained almost always contains the GPS coordinates of the data source from which current condition information was gathered. NOAA Weather Plus takes the coordinates of the weather monitoring source and searches another data file for established NOAA weather stations whose coordinates closely match. If it finds a matching NOAA weather station, it then pulls the XML data from that specific station and looks for the current condition information within that file. The reason this feature is experimental is that there isn't always a matching NOAA weather station matching the coordinates specified by the primary data source. In my testing, only about 50 percent of the NOAA Weather Plus device locations matched to an alternate data source.

Is there a way to develop the plugin to allow for the user to define a second set of LAT/LONG to be used as plan b?

Yes. I'm not sure that specifying a second set of GPS coordinates would improve the results though. The matching of coordinates taken from the primary data feed to NOAA stations would still be just as unpredictable. It would be possible to provide the option of specifying the exact NOAA weather station to use (as is done with the NOAA Weather plugin provided by Perceptive Automation), but doing that would essentially duplicate Matt's and Jay's work on the NOAA Weather plugin. If one were willing to find and enter the call signs of the nearest NOAA weather station, they might as well use their NOAA Weather plugin.

[CraigM]

EXCELLENT! You are a plugin making machine

Keep up the great work.

[nsheldon]

Thanks! Glad I could help.

[CraigM]

Houston, we have a problem!

Yesterday I installed the new version, re-configured my CP instances, and any other actions/triggers that are based on NOAA Weather Plus.

Today I noticed that five HVAC actions were ignored. The actions reference 'high temp today' and place the HVAC set point at the proper temp. FYI, these all worked under the previous version.

When I opened each scheduled action I noticed that ALL of my conditions were deleted, so I thought that this happened during the upgrade and that I would need to just re-do them.

I added my conditions back but the UI refuses to save them. You click OK, re-open and they are gone!

Here is a sample of one action in my log:

Code: Select all

 "All" "of the following rules are true"
  	 "If device" "Weather [NOAA Plus]" "High Temperature Today (°F)" "is greater than" "111"
  

  Error (client)                  initFromElem (condition panel)() caught exception: NSInvalidArgumentException -- *** -[NSCFArray insertObject:atIndex:]: attempt to insert nil

FYI, the error is the same for all five actions when I attempt to save the conditions. YES, I have re-started the client, IWS, and the plugin