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Weather Underground API going away, what happens to the driver?


christophers

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The WU API is ending on 31DEC2018 and they're moving people towards the Weather.com APIs. Is there an existing driver for weather.com and/or would someone be willing to write one? I'm also curious if C4 will work on it 1) at all, or 2) before the existing driver ceases to function. 

 

https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/end-of-service-for-the-weather-underground-api

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  • 1 month later...

DarkSky is great, but I have a great weather station to provide even more accurate data than darksky. it seems they've extended the use of PWS owners API, but eventually that will be moved. IBM is handling this really poorly and not telling PWS owners what will happen, but when they do we will need to update this driver with the new API calls/hooks. 

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  • 1 year later...

Hello,

I am trying to install C4 Weather Station with WU but automatically service selector change to Control4 instead WU.

According to WU service my API key is valid.

I am bit a confuse, if my API key is valid should C4 weather driver work with WU service? 

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3 hours ago, ivanri said:

Hello,

I am trying to install C4 Weather Station with WU but automatically service selector change to Control4 instead WU.

According to WU service my API key is valid.

I am bit a confuse, if my API key is valid should C4 weather driver work with WU service? 

I thought they won’t work any more. We released a DarkSky weather driver which gives a bunch of information for weather as well as the expected forecast in 1, 2 and 3 hours. If you want to check it out: https://www.blackwiredesigns.com/store/control4-weather-information-darksky/

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6 minutes ago, ivanri said:

yes I have my PWS and wondering why C4 driver cannot stay on WU service?

 

Is it because i have old API or something is wrong with c4 driver???

because wunderground changed their API. the old API doesn’t work and no one rewrote the driver other than using some generic forecast. also, new wunderground users can’t get an API key so its EOL anyway 

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6 minutes ago, ivanri said:

I am in contact with WU service to get updated API

the challenge isn't getting the API calls; they're public info. 

the challenge is re-writing the driver, assuming it's not locked. and if it is, then you have to write an entirely new driver. AND you will need to take in to account the fact that legacy API keys are supported as well as new API keys. 

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ref: https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/end-of-service-for-the-weather-underground-api

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eKCnKXI9xnoMGRRzOL1xPCBihNV2rOet08qpE_gArAY/edit << this is the API documentation



other info: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/8tjavu/now_that_the_free_wunderground_api_has_been/ << other methods

 

@Shivam Paw, i love darksky, but unfortunately i can't get real-time data from my PWS (Rainwise MkIII), and (unless I missed it) i'm not able to get triggers from events like tornado warnings. 

 

 

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I also wish someone would fix this. We used to have a nice Cumulus driver (doesnt work past 2.0 I think), then we had the WU driver. Now it doesnt work. 

Wish Control4 offered something for those of us with personal weather stations (some being expensive). 

I invested in a Davis Vantage Pro2 back in the day cause it worked with Control4. 

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1 hour ago, R_Willis said:

I also wish someone would fix this. We used to have a nice Cumulus driver (doesnt work past 2.0 I think), then we had the WU driver. Now it doesnt work. 

Wish Control4 offered something for those of us with personal weather stations (some being expensive). 

I invested in a Davis Vantage Pro2 back in the day cause it worked with Control4. 

same, i picked up a rainwise mkiii-LR and can't even use the data from it in my system, like outside temp and humidity. 

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The real villain here is IBM which bought WU and totally changed the business model, despite the fact that the value of WU comes from the thousands of us that willingly provide data from our own PWSs.  They begrudgingly continue to provide data to those of us with Weather Stations (thanks for providing me with my own data!) but they have totally changed their model to make it uneconomic for most users.  They used to provide some data for free or have other services that cost around $10-$20 per month.  Now the cheapest subscription is some like $950 per month.

WU has come a long way from its founding in 1991 at Univ of Mich when it was created to provide open source weather data - you could access the data from gopher.

 

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13 minutes ago, zaphod said:

The real villain here is IBM which bought WU and totally changed the business model, despite the fact that the value of WU comes from the thousands of us that willingly provide data from our own PWSs.  They begrudgingly continue to provide data to those of us with Weather Stations (thanks for providing me with my own data!) but they have totally changed their model to make it uneconomic for most users.  They used to provide some data for free or have other services that cost around $10-$20 per month.  Now the cheapest subscription is some like $950 per month.

WU has come a long way from its founding in 1991 at Univ of Mich when it was created to provide open source weather data - you could access the data from gopher.

 

totally agree, but i also saw that WU has having trouble scaling and supporting on their own. their servers were constantly down for hours at a time, inconsistent data, loss of data, and more issues. while the people and the application were great, they needed help. 

i wish that IBM helped them in a less shitty way, but they DID need help. unfortunately, the fallout from this is widespread issues and disappointment. as an example, take a look at the response to the latest android app update :(

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But there are other models of similar services that can run charging reasonable rates for their services.  Schedules Direct is one example - $25/year for TV program data that is widely used by DVR programs.  Their services get hit a lot and process lots of data - full program data and descriptions for hundreds of TV channels per user.

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5 minutes ago, zaphod said:

But there are other models of similar services that can run charging reasonable rates for their services.  Schedules Direct is one example - $25/year for TV program data that is widely used by DVR programs.  Their services get hit a lot and process lots of data - full program data and descriptions for hundreds of TV channels per user.

Definitely, I don't disagree. What IBM did is they took a great, consumer- and business-facing service from all angles (www, api, analytics, and more) and cut all other services to consumers by pricing them out. As a company who is generally out of the consumer-facing game, this is what they're good at. I totally agree that there are other services, ones like DarkSky, which provide all of the stuff that they do to both consumer AND businesses. All they had to do was implement API call limits. The fact that IBM/WU hasn't done that and didn't make any plans to migrate despite the major backlash they got on their own forums is flat out incredible. What this really means is there's room for someone to take the spot. DarkSky is my pick, but they need to create a few more features to compete directly with WU's old model. 

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WU provides free API keys for those like myself that are providing them with data from our own PWSs. I really do not see a problem with that.

I dont understand why Control4 cant pay one of their programming guys to rewrite the driver (prob take them less the a day I bet). 

 

 

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But the only ones that can get API keys are those with Weather Stations and I think that may have been grandfathered as well.  Most people, unlike those of us in this thread, don't have a PWS so there is very little demand for such a driver.

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