Weather Stations And Indigo

Weather Display, BTW, is a $70 program that has perhaps the most arcane installation process since installing drivers onto Windows 3.1, and a display that looks - well - shall I put it gently - a tad over-crowded. I still don't think i've gotten it working right after investing about 4 hours into the install process.

Weather Display should be used as a casestudy in all college programming courses, exemplifying how NOT to write a UI.

You might want to check out Weathersnoop software......$10

http://www.tee-boy.com/WeatherSnoop.html.

support for 968 apparently coming soon.

I use it and it works well with my WMR200.

Tech support is excellent

WeatherSnoop just came out with a new version which has AppleScript support! While I have already posted an extraction script for the previous version, using telnet, I'm now testing a script that makes use of the AppleScript dictionary, instead. I'll post it once I'm satisfied with its stability.

If you get a chance and are so inclined, could you shed a little more light on why you chose the way you did? I'm just wondering what features weather display has that the others don't. I'm also interested in what you mean by "lwc is not the mac program i was expecting". How are you getting your weather display data into Indigo?

Getting weather data into Indigo seems to be growing in popularity - I'd really like to see a good comparison of the various solutions out there. I'd be glad to either make it sticky here, or better yet put it in the Wiki and let you and others maintain it. I've found a couple of sites, but they look like they haven't been updated since the 90s or so... Also, I think Indigo users have a slightly different take on it so a comparison from that POV would be nice.

Been in europe sorry for the delay.

1. i use weather display as it was easy to get the variables into indigo.

in weather display just create a customtext.txt file with the WD tags.

here is mine.

Code: Select all

%indoortemp%
%indoorhum%
%maxindoortemp%
%minindoortemp%
%raincurrentweek%
%wmr918/68extratemp%

this get updated every minute converts the file to customtextout.txt with the tags here is the output.

Code: Select all

75.
57
75.9
71.2
4.559
65.8


and uploads it to the server.

i then run a script in indigo every 4 minutes.

Code: Select all



tell application "URL Access Scripting"
   set temp_file to download "http://artpictures.tv/weather/customtextout.txt" to file "/Users/Orit/Desktop/customtextout.txt"
end tell
set newline to ASCII character 10
set myWeatherFile to "/Users/Orit/Desktop/customtextout.txt"
open for access myWeatherFile
set weatherContents to (read myWeatherFile as list using delimiter newline)

close access myWeatherFile
set temperature to item 1 of weatherContents
set Humidity to item 2 of weatherContents
set Maxtemp to item 3 of weatherContents
set mintemp to item 4 of weatherContents
set rainlastweek to item 5 of weatherContents
set EXTtemp1 to item 6 of weatherContents


tell application "IndigoServer"
   set the value of variable "SnakeTempmin" to mintemp
   set the value of variable "SnakeTempmax" to Maxtemp
   set the value of variable "SnakeTemp" to temperature
   set the value of variable "SnakeHumidity" to Humidity
   set the value of variable "RainLastWeek" to rainlastweek
   set the value of variable "SeansRoom" to EXTtemp1
   
   
end tell
delay 10
tell application "Finder"
   activate
   if file "HD:Users:Orit:Desktop:customtextout.txt" exists then
      delete file "HD:Users:Orit:Desktop:customtextout.txt"
   end if
end tell

it basically gets the file on the server and sets the variables in indigo.

we have a choice of 2000 tags. see here

http://wiki.weather-watch.com/index.php ... _Reference

even though WD is a bit funky once set it behaves it self i have had seven updates for the MAC in 6 weeks so they are working hard and have just released an installer for the program.

as said the UI is quite bad but but on the windoze version you can set up custom screens and resize everything.

i mainly use my website for the data see here.
http://artpictures.tv/weather/wx.html i just made a html page called local.wx.html with my tags and this gets updated every 60 seconds

some great gauges are created for the software here.
http://artpictures.tv/weather/calabasas/calabasas.php

we also have an iphone site here.
http://artpictures.tv/weather/iphone/#home

all created for free by the members of the forum.

it can also read weathersnoop data if you would prefer to use that.

So far i have the sprinklers being controlled i told indigo only run the sprinklers if the rain last week is <0.02 so far it works great.

also my snake cage, as the external sensors are only $29 i have a trigger

if snaketemp >75 turn off snakelight
if snaketemp <74 turn on snakelight

if snaketemp <72 send me an email just incase the bulb blows which happened today as you can see by the graphs as our cleaner knocked the insulation off the front of the tank. but indigo warned me.

the graphs and current data can be seen on the web links above.

i have another temp sensor in a room that i will try to get working to set the T1900 to a temp from any room i move the sensor to. which will be very kool.

also $70 for lifetime membership is very good for WD and the support is fantastic.

RT

also there is a setting for home control systems in WD, i am going to repeat this post in the WD forum to show some people what a weather station and indigo can do.

Artpics,

could i be a huge bother and ask you to explain the first step of this to me in more detail? What i seem to understand is that WD can create a customtext.txt file on an external server (but, I guess, not directly to the local drive), that has all the variables you mention, 1 per line.

I simply cannot figure out which of the 1,000 options one uses to get that piece done. Could you take me through it step by step?

this is horrible - I feel like I'm a total dunce, and I used to write books on software for a living!!!

Artpics,

could i be a huge bother and ask you to explain the first step of this to me in more detail? What i seem to understand is that WD can create a customtext.txt file on an external server (but, I guess, not directly to the local drive), that has all the variables you mention, 1 per line.

I simply cannot figure out which of the 1,000 options one uses to get that piece done. Could you take me through it step by step?

this is horrible - I feel like I'm a total dunce, and I used to write books on software for a living!!!

the customtextout.txt will get created locally in the webfiles folder i prefer to get the file from the server. WD will ftp them to the server.

1. go to library/application support/wdisplay/webfiles

this is where all the files go to get uploaded to the server

2. in text edit create a .txt file called customtext.txt with your tags

3. in weather display go to the tab at the top set up / log files and create every minute.

the file customtext.txt will get converted by WD to customtextout.txt and ftp to the server.

for the flash gauges you need to upload the clientraw.txt file


if you have any trouble let know.

Hi,

I bought Weather Display about 20 months ago for my Mac, hoping someday to integrate the data with my Indigo, and I must say at least at first I would agree with a lot that was said here about the UI, and the install process. But I stuck with it, and helped last January with the first Mac installer, that made things a lot easier. It was only a couple weeks when I found out how to integrate with Indigo using Applescript found here in the forum so that was never an issue.

In the year and a half since, a lot has changed, but the UI still remains much like the Windows version. To a degree I almost prefer it that way, since I never bought the program other than to feed my website and provide the data to Indigo, which it has done well. While the UI is much better than when I first used it in 2008, I could not then and cannot now find anything out there that provides the sheer amount of data, and flexibility this app does within the category on the Mac, so I am happy with it. Now it provides data to many sources including iphone apps, it emails me, and some of my family members with weather condition reports much like I can do with Indigo and device changes, feeds conditions to virtually all weather collection sites and databases around the world that I am aware of.

My website has been up and running since the app was installed, and as time has gone by the install process has become much easier. I have been contributing what I can to the forums in helping the app to become more Mac user and install friendly, so have probably become biased, but I will say that Weather Display shares one thing with Indigo, and that is the high level of support for the users. And as artpic says everyone pitches in there to help everyone much like here on the Indigo forums and there are some fantastic website graphics and products just given away there for all the users by the users.
As far as support, this month - Feb to date on the 8th - there have been 6 updates to the app.... and finally, as of Feb 1, the install process is as easy as any on the Mac. bbruck, you missed the new install process by 9 days. In fact the installer is now only used for first time installs combined with the new drag and drop self contained app, and the app is now also drag and drop to install updates. So it has come a long way.

If I were to buy a weather app to look at on my desktop, I might not have gone the way I did, but for something to run for me 24/7 over the past couple years, combined with reporting to many other websites (WeatherUnderground, Awekas/Twitter/yowindow,Weather4U,CWOP, anything Weather and support for myriad of stations and something that provides me with virtually any style report I can imagine,and what it doesn't provide, can be set up to fetch that data from other sources.... as well as reliably output to Indigo as well as provide the data for my website , I'm pretty happy with it. I never really use it as a desktop app per se except to tweak the configuration and the data output I need, just use it as a data server so it runs hidden almost all the time anyway so once set up, the UI is really of no consequence to me.

My website keeps getting better, and has been 100% Mac from day one, powered by Weather Display Mac, and really once I got used to the settings, much like I had to get use to all the time/date and device setups and groups etc in Indigo, which I was also slow at lol... I never looked back. Very happy with both choices.

Jim
http://www.hrmweather.com

Well put JimM, as soon as we can design and resize custom screens i think everyone will be happy

Bobeast, I would be interested in the applescript version of the script. Have you a beta to share ?
Thanks
Antonio

I am looking for a good weather station recommendation based on one strong criteria. I do not want to have to dock / plug in / manually connect my weather display to my mac to update weather software to my website. There are some great app suggestions in this thread and I have demoed several of them. I am less picky about the software. Indigo runs on a headless Mac Mini and I would like to be able to somehow get a weather feed to the same server. I would even consider [gag] a windows PC that pushes the data to a website. La Crosse has a 2812 out that comes with a wireless USB receiver. That's the direction I want to go, although I know the La Crosse doesn't play nice with OS X.

Anybody have a suggestion?

If you don't want to connect your weather station (and my that I mean the display console, not the station itself that sites outside) to your Mac, your choices are limited. Some do offer a feed up to a website with a small device that captures the weather data feeds it to a web site, but where it feeds it and how it feeds it are usually restrictive, and you have to pay for that device - usually it's a few hundred dollars.

If you can get past that, and run a USB from the display console to your Mac, there are many options. I'd recommend Weather Snoop for cheap, reliable, and feeds data up to weather underground and CWOP (maybe more). The display is simple, but effective, and since it's on a headless MacMini, that's a good choice.

I use LWC, but I wanted a fancy display with all the bells and whistles. It also was about $180.

[jay (support)]

I use LWC (~$70) with my LaCrosse 2308 (~$200) - but the display part has a serial connection to my Mac. The outside sensors are wireless.

I use LWC (~$70)

{Doh!} Thanks Jay - I remembered it as much more expensive.

Most of the sensors I've looked at nowadays are wireless. What would be really nice is a wireless console that didn't have to be plugged in to my Mac by a serial cable designed in 1994. That's my goal. Putting a console next to my Mac means it's not really useable to the family in the rest of the house.

Most of the sensors I've looked at nowadays are wireless. What would be really nice is a wireless console that didn't have to be plugged in to my Mac by a serial cable designed in 1994. That's my goal. Putting a console next to my Mac means it's not really useable to the family in the rest of the house.

There are some wireless consoles that use a USB dongle to communicate with the computer but I don't know of any of them being Mac compatible.

I use a Davis Vantage Vue with the WeatherlinkIP "dongle". This connects the console to an Ethernet connection. LWC then can read the station data from the Ethernet... avoiding the dreaded "serial cable made in 1984". Works well for me.