Indigo Domotics

Thanks for the pointers. I really do wish Stu the best and hope he gets through whatever he's going through. Given how my LWC plugin works, assuming the GET posting function of LWC didn't change it should work fine. I'm not so much into running unsupported betas (needed for Lion compatibility) but I'm not yet ready to upgrade my production system to Lion anyway so I'm good for a while. I'd love to see him (at some point) add more data to the custom CGI as I think that's a very reliable way to get data into Indigo.

Having said that, weather data is pretty critical for my HA installation - so once we've got Indigo 5 out I'm still going to investigate alternatives. Something that is either officially supported or has source so that I can work on whatever issues pop up. Don't get me wrong, I really like LWC, but in the medium-long term I need something I can count on.

Hmm, well WeatherTracker, a.k.a. Dean, seems to have disappeared. No response
to email and the support forum has been down for months.
WeatherTracker has been locking up every night at midnight when it tries to do
an FTP upload, which I have no use for and can't find a way to disable.

Anyone have a better solution to populate Indigo variables from a WMR200 station?

Thanks,

Carl

I've found Boisy Pitre of WeatherSnoop to be very responsive and he has shown a genuine interest in interfacing with Indigo. You might want to get in touch with him, if WeatherSnoop does not meet your current needs.

boisy AT tee-boy DOT com

jay wrote:

Having said that, weather data is pretty critical for my HA installation - so once we've got Indigo 5 out I'm still going to investigate alternatives. Something that is either officially supported or has source so that I can work on whatever issues pop up. Don't get me wrong, I really like LWC, but in the medium-long term I need something I can count on.

Understand perfectly; Given that my heat index doesn't match LWCs and not knowing what method LWC uses (and given that when I matched it to the NWS "gospel" table, I found the Wikipedia equation to be off more that 5 degrees over about a third of the range we see here in Texas), I'd have loved to ask him where his numbers come from. I was just letting the forum know that the program isn't gone completely, and for simple non vital applications, it's a MUCH better alternative than the one that Davis supplies with their USB dongle for the Vantage due, beta or not. I can't answer for other station types, but anybody interested can query the weather forum to see what folks there know.

I've had great success with WeatherTracker. Haven't seen much updates to the software but the developer has been responsive to the few emails I initially sent when setting up. I've used the Oregon Scientific units just for interior temp/humidity and have never had issues getting variables into Indigo.

Jay,

I've been running the LWC Indigo Web Server (IWS) Plug-in on Indigo for some time. Stu has now come out with a LWC follow-on, WeatherCat, which has just been released. If you are not familiar with it, it looks like the next version of LWC, but under a new name. http://www.trixology.com

The LWC Indigo Web Server (IWS) Plug-in runs, and updates the variables created previously under LWC. WeatherCat has added several new variables, and these don't automatically get created. The log looks like this:


Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lobarot"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hitemp"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lohum"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hihum"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_baro3hrinch"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lotempt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hiwindspeedt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hibarot"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hidewptf"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hiuvt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hiuv"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hitempt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lohumt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lobaroinch"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hihumt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hisolar"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lodewptt"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lodewptf"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hibaroinch"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hisolart"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hiwindspeedmph"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_lotemp"
Error ElementNotFoundError -- could not find variable "LWC_hidewptt"
WebServer LWC Weather Data Updated

Are you the author of the LWC IWS plug-in? Do you have any suggestions for modifying to get it to create these new variables? (It looks like I could just create these manually and everything would work OK, but would rather have a solution that would work the next time more variables are added).

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I don't maintain that plugin any more since I switched from LWC to WeatherSnoop. I also have no plans to upgrade the plugin for a variety of reasons. Just manually creating the variables when you see that error is probably the easiest solution.

AlaskaDave wrote:

I've had great success with WeatherTracker. Haven't seen much updates to the software but the developer has been responsive to the few emails I initially sent when setting up. I've used the Oregon Scientific units just for interior temp/humidity and have never had issues getting variables into Indigo.

Although obvious I feel the need to update this post. WeatherTracker seems to have been abandoned by the developer. I quit working for me and although the site was still up with access to download the program the discussion boards had been removed and no email returned by the developer... bad. I am now using WeatherSnoop which has been quite reliable. I am anxiously awaiting for the ability to run two instances of WeatherSnoop so I can track both inside conditions (temp/humid) and outdoor weather conditions. Sounds like that might be on the horizon.

AlaskaDave wrote:

AlaskaDave wrote:

I've had great success with WeatherTracker. Haven't seen much updates to the software but the developer has been responsive to the few emails I initially sent when setting up. I've used the Oregon Scientific units just for interior temp/humidity and have never had issues getting variables into Indigo.

Although obvious I feel the need to update this post. WeatherTracker seems to have been abandoned by the developer. I quit working for me and although the site was still up with access to download the program the discussion boards had been removed and no email returned by the developer... bad. I am now using WeatherSnoop which has been quite reliable. I am anxiously awaiting for the ability to run two instances of WeatherSnoop so I can track both inside conditions (temp/humid) and outdoor weather conditions. Sounds like that might be on the horizon.

I think you could solve that issue with a different weather station. I have a Davis that provides both of those, and I only have one instance of WeatherSnoop running.

AlaskaDave wrote:

I am now using WeatherSnoop which has been quite reliable.

I also switched over to WS from WT last spring... The only issue that I have had with WeatherSnoop is that twice in the past 9 months something corrupted the SQL database to the point where none of the SQL utilities can recover it. The first time, I lost 4 months of rain history (by chance not a big loss, since it was during one of the worst droughts in recent history). The second hit only cost me 15 days because I've started copying the DB on the first of every month, but that one hurt worse because we had actually HAD some rain during the period. But I sure wish Snoop would start doing the monthly cuts all by itself (or fix whatever glitch it is that's writing those malformed records every 6 months or so)... And if you aren't into keeping a detailed history, you might look into the RFXCom and Oregon Scienfic stuff. For less than half of what I paid for my DavisVue and usb connector, I just got an RFX and an OSI "backup" wind/rain/temp/Humidity system tied into Indigo, and I can get more temp/humidity sensors for about $35 a pop, which is why I am considering 2; one in the ductwork for the A/C and one in the freezer with warning triggers to let me know if the AC is losing it's cool or the freezer dies(that happened to a friend of mine a couple of years back with over 100 lbs of meat in the freezer; not a good thing with the cost of beef where it is today).

I wasn't going to jump in with the RFXrec & sensor combo until the plugin had gotten to "release" quality - but it's shaping up to be a very usable solution in it's current form. The RFXCOMM plugin is still being worked on, but I'm currently using both the WeatherSnoop plugin and the RFX plugin to get data from the Oregon Scientific sensors. WeatherSnoop is getting it from my OS WMR100 and the RFXtrx433/RFXrec433 is getting the data directly from the sensors that came with it. I've also added a couple more and placed them throughout the house trying to get a feel for range. So far there are only a very few places in the house where I don't get signal.

The RFX plugin, in terms of receiving data, seems rock solid already. So, for those who don't care about history and weather graphs may want to consider going with the RFXtrx433/RFXrec433 transceiver and the OS sensors. Since the RFX device supports all versions of the OS sensor protocols, you can use more sensors than the OS base stations can (which are generally limited to one specific protocol version).

Note also that the last time I had conversations with the WeatherSnoop guys they were going to drop support for the Oregon Scientific weather stations in the next major release so if you've already invested in OS systems this is an alternative.

Also a side note here that I talked to Norm from MacHomeStore the other day, and he has both the RFXrec433 and some Oregon Scientific temperature sensors on order. I'm not sure when they'll be in stock, but I imagine getting the RFXrec433 from him will be easier (and probably less expensive) than having it shipped from the Netherlands.

I also have the RFXrec433 and some sensors, and it seems to be working very well. It is a great solution if you need multiple temperature sensors, rain data, etc.

matt (support) wrote:

Also a side note here that I talked to Norm from MacHomeStore the other day, and he has both the RFXrec433 and some Oregon Scientific temperature sensors on order.

I went with homeseer.com out of New Hampshire; they already have both the RFXrec433 and WMR80A in stock and shipped UPS ground for 10 bucks (4 days), and although I agree with Jay that the plugin needs polish in terms of better identifying the sensor types and maybe providing a dialog to create the devices, I was amazed at how easy everything set itself up as soon as I followed the rules and speced the sensor types that it suggested. The only thing that might be a gotcha (for the WMR80A console; Indigo handled it flawlessly) was that when I started the RFX, it found TWO rain sensors; one with full battery and a history of 0, the other with a battery at 90% and a history of 0.47 inch, which leads me to believe that one of my neighbors has had a stand alone raingage running for about a month... and now I guess I need to start working on a script to start generating a tab separated text file for specific variables so I can start pushing the stuff out to Excel and/or Wunderground.

Yep - - - we have an initial order of the RFXrec433 already in with the RFXCOM folks in the Netherlands. They said shipment date will be next Monday (5/14/12). It will probably take about a week after that before we actually have them in hand. We'll go ahead and put the item on our site within the next 24 hours in case anyone wants to put in an advance order for it.

norm wrote:

Yep - - - we have an initial order of the RFXrec433 already in with the RFXCOM folks in the Netherlands. They said shipment date will be next Monday (5/14/12). It will probably take about a week after that before we actually have them in hand. We'll go ahead and put the item on our site within the next 24 hours in case anyone wants to put in an advance order for it.

Do you stock (or are you thinking about stocking) any of the 433MHz security modules that the plugin supposidly supports? I was initially interested mostly in using it for the weather sensors, but I'm starting to think about costing out at least some door open detection security warnings (over and above the current garage door switch I've already got).