LWC Indigo Web Server (IWS) Plug-in

[jay (support)]

NOTE: LWC is no longer actively developed or supported. We recommend WeatherSnoop - which is actively being developed and supported and Indigo 5 ships with a plugin for it. We'll leave this post up for legacy purposes but I'm no longer supporting this plugin.

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All,

I just uploaded a new plug-in to the file library that will accept the Custom CGI post from Lightsoft Weather Center (LWC) and put that data into Indigo variables. I chose LWC because it was the only commercial Mac product (that I could find) that supports my LaCrosse 2308.

Here's the full readme:

LWC Indigo Web Server (IWS) Plug-in (requires 4.0.2 or later)

This plug-in is a little different than most IWS plug-ins - it doesn't generate a viewable page. Rather, it's a way to get data IN to Indigo. The Lightsoft Weather Center (LWC) is software that connects your Mac to hardware weather stations (Davis Vantage & Envoy, Monitor, Wizard and La Crosse WS23xx currently) as well as Internet based weather sources. Read more about it here:

http://www.lightsoft.co.uk/LWC/index.html

As far as I know, it's the only commercial Mac-based solution that supports the LaCrosse station, which happens to be the one I have. I wanted to get data into Indigo similar to the NOAA scripts so I could use it primarily to determine if/when to run the sprinklers, but also because, well, it's COOL.

Installation

To install this plugin drag the "lwc" folder to the following location:

/Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 4/IndigoWebServer/plugins/

Usage

To use this plugin, just configure LWC's On-Line->Custom CGI with the following URL:

http://host:port/lwc/importData?

I also think it's useful to check the "Send Time As Local" checkbox so you can see the date/timestamp in local time. The plug-in will do the rest. Because there's quite a few variables in LWC that aren't sent to this custom cgi yet, I wanted to take an approach that would not require me to update the plug-in whenever LWC was revised to send more data. So, I decided to just automagically create variables for ALL passed in data. The plugin will update/create the following variables as of 5/13/09 (will create if they don't exist, or just update them if they do):

LWC_windgustmph
LWC_tempf
LWC_raininch
LWC_windgustmph_10m
LWC_windspeedmph
LWC_windgustdir_10m
LWC_humidity
LWC_winddir
LWC_date
LWC_windspeedmphav_10m
LWC_baroinch
LWC_dewptf
LWC_rain24hinch
LWC_windgustdir

When you first tell LWC to start sending the data, you may notice a slight delay between when you click the "Start" button in LWC and an update in Indigo - I think it's just taking a little time for the server to process the multiple requests for each new variable. You'll also notice an Error line in the log when it first creates the variables - that's normal so don't worry about it. As Lightsoft adds more data to the GET url line, you may occasionally see that error for each new element.

Known Issues

None


EDIT - Matt figured out a little hacklet that removed the unsightly entries in the Event Log for each var update - I need to learn more Python. YAY!

Hi, thanks for posting this. Am I not doing something right? I have the URL listed as http://host:port/lwc/importData and the Current Status says: Server not found. Check your URL above.

Is the Host/post supposed to be something else? How do I know what host / port I'm using if that's the case.

Thanks.

[jay (support)]

Yes - the "host" part is the hostname or IP address of the Mac that's running the Indigo Server, and the "port" part is the port number that you have Indigo configured to use for the Indigo Web Server.

I highly recommend using WeatherSnoop rather than LWC though - it's still being developed/supported and there's an Indigo 5 plugin for it.

Thanks Jay. I'm running indigo on the same computer. I type in the IP address of the same computer 192.169.etc. and it gives me a Malformed URL error.

http://192.168.0.8/lwc/importData

also I tried:

192.168.0.8/lwc/importData

Will take a look at WeatherSnoop. LWC seems to work the way I have it currently, so I am loathe to experiment since it took me a while to figure it all out.

[jay (support)]

You need to specify the Indigo Web Server port you have specified in the Start Local Server dialog. The default port is 8176 but it can be changed in the "Override Web server (HTTP) port number" setting. So, if you haven't changed the port, then this may work.

Code: Select all

http://192.168.0.8:8176/lwc/importData?

That said, I don't even have LWC installed anymore so I can't really help you troubleshoot further.