Weather block (from openweathermap)

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

Hi,

I'm trying to use it, but "rain" information always comes null.
Is that a problem? I mean, I just checked directly in the website, and it has rain information for the next hour. Using the block, it's null.
Thanks.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Seems to work as expected for me, with both hourly and daily forecasts.
Try logging the temp also, it should always be available.

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

I am logging temp, cloudiness, humidity..they all work. Only one empty/null is rain for me.
I'll keep checking it.

If no rain is expected, does it come null or 0?

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Likely null, i.e no value.

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

Just confirmed it. Also confirmed that it's working, it's jut not accurate.
I mean, it's raining right now, other websites say it'll rain on the next 4 hours.
By using "hourly", I managed to get rain only after 4 hours in the forecast.

Anyway, I'll see whether I'll keep using it, or try another with http block.
Question: forecast timestamp shouldn't reflect the current time + hours in forecast?
When testing it, it's always set to current time.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

"Time of data forecasted, unix, UTC"
http://openweathermap.org/forecast5

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

I performed some tests, starting to understand few things. My log (please, ignore rain as 0. It actually comes null, this is number formatting):

2016-06-02 01:37:38.422 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 01:30 : Forecast 0 Temp 23 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:39.244 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 01:30 : Forecast 3600 Temp 23 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:39.935 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 01:30 : Forecast 7200 Temp 23 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:40.632 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 01:30 : Forecast 10800 Temp 23 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:41.274 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 03:00 : Forecast 14400 Temp 23 and rain 3.91
2016-06-02 01:37:42.222 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 06:00 : Forecast 18000 Temp 22 and rain 1.38
2016-06-02 01:37:43.023 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 06:00 : Forecast 21600 Temp 22 and rain 1.38
2016-06-02 01:37:43.751 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 06:00 : Forecast 25200 Temp 22 and rain 1.38
2016-06-02 01:37:44.480 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 09:00 : Forecast 28800 Temp 24 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:45.297 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 09:00 : Forecast 32400 Temp 24 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:46.014 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 09:00 : Forecast 36000 Temp 24 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:46.738 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 12:00 : Forecast 39600 Temp 26 and rain 0
2016-06-02 01:37:47.564 USER 1395@49: Forecast Time 02/06/2016 12:00 : Forecast 43200 Temp 26 and rain 0

So, forecast time is always changed by 3 hours, even when I set 2 hours only.

Another thing is that reading the documentation you sent, I found this:

list.rain.3h Rain volume for last 3 hours, mm

Attention to the "LAST 3 HOURS".

So, if I'm checking with forecast 6:00am, does it mean that rain output will be valid for period 03:00-06:00am? Am I right on this?

Sorry if it sounds stupid, but documentation on the block or openweb's site isn't very clear to me.

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

One last thing: from the block we have rain (mm) available, but no precipitation probability.
Would it be possible to add it?
As far as I understood from websites I read, it's possible to have high mm, but low probability or vice-versa.

Am I crazy on that?

[Grigory Kruglov]

I have the same problem with missing rain value.

It seems that the docs (http://openweathermap.org/forecast5 ?) list rain and rain.3h as json outputs, but when displaying rain in a notification it's always an empty string. Other values work fine.

Thanks,
Grisha.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

The openweathermap API only providers the current forecast, 3 hourly for 15 days and daily forecast for 16 days.
The Weather block tries to pick the most appropriate forecast requested.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

It looks like some calls are missing rain (current weather forecast):

{"coord":{"lon":-0.13,"lat":51.51},"weather":[{"id":300,"main":"Drizzle","description":"light intensity drizzle","icon":"09d"}],"base":"cmc stations","main":{"temp":284.52,"pressure":1019,"humidity":76,"temp_min":283.15,"temp_max":285.45},"wind":{"speed":4.6,"deg":10},"clouds":{"all":90},"dt":1464891857,"sys":{"type":1,"id":5091,"message":0.0043,"country":"GB","sunrise":1464839247,"sunset":1464898234},"id":2643743,"name":"London","cod":200}

For list/rain/3h property is used for current/hourly forecasts, for daily it's list/rain

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

What about precipitation?
And will u change the block?
I understood that null rain = no rain at all.
I just found openweather not as accurate as other providers :(

Thanks.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

The <precipitation/> tag is only used in the XML format, in JSON the "rain" property is used.

What i can see there's no need for change, Automate is reading the response as expected.

Sadly openweathermap is the only free service i could find.

[Adriano Marzano de Carvalho]

OK, thanks for the quick reply. I'll continue evaluating it.

[Alan Summerfield]

Hi, 

I'm rekindling this old thread as I'm having the same trouble with the rainfall amount where the weather block returns a valid result  only if I set the forecast to more than 3 hours, even when it's raining at my location.

<Sadly openweathermap is the only free service i could find>

Have you seen https://open-meteo.com/ ?

Kind regards,

Alan

Have you tried

[andreas.s...@web.de]

I am using open-meteo.com for general weather data and weatherbit.io
 just for minutely rain forecasts (very precise!). Both are free for non-commercial use.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

https://open-meteo.com isn't free either it seems: https://open-meteo.com/en/pricing

[andreas.s...@web.de]

scroll a bit down and there is the section "Free for non-commercial". I am using this API (for myself, of course) for quite some time now. Data can be retrieved as csv, so it is easy to parse through.

[Henrik "The Developer" Lindqvist]

Using it in Automate would considered "commercial use".

[andreas.s...@web.de]

that's correct. But the APIs can easily be used inside of automate flows - not so convenient like the weather block but way more feature rich :)