New Tempest owner, how to show Lightning output in weewx ?

[Julius Thijssen]

Have weewx running showing most data from the tempest, except for

- Illuminance/Brightness (in lux, which I would like to include as a plaintext and graph, just like UV)

- Lightning, for which it seems they do it as follows in the UDP load (example nrs):

Lightning Strike Event [type = evt_strike]

{ "serial_number": "AR-00004049",

type":"evt_strike",

"hub_sn": "HB-00000001",

"evt":[1493322445,27,3848] }

Index Field Units

0 | Time Epoch | Seconds
1 | Distance | km
2 | Energy |

What is the Energy unit here? Anyone from Weatherflow who can chime in ?

And, most importantly, anyone has these values properly showing in weewx yet?

If so, what does it look like in your weewx.conf ? Could anyone be so kind as to copy paste their weewx.conf sensor data, without the hub and station nrs if needed).

https://weatherflow.github.io/Tempest/api/udp/v170/

Thanks in advance for any and all help here.

[vince]

There are many threads here and in the WeatherFlow forums for how to do this.  Please do a little searching there.

WF has never published any units for energy that I've ever seen in their API documentation for UDP (link) and their example REST query doesn't even report an energy value for lightning.

[Julius Thijssen]

Actually no, I had done extensive searching beforehand, but none of the "many threads" show any actual progress in this area. And furthermore, none show an example working weewx.conf for the tempest. The only example one can find out there is the one I have in use, and as I stated in my question: It disregards a bunch of values the tempest hub broadcasts over UDP.

[vince]

Please post your weewx.conf sensor map section so we can take a look at what you have.

Also, what driver are you using ?  There are at least two out there for WeatherFlow that I'm aware of.

[Benedict]

Just an FYI for you all looking for Lightning output from WeatherFlow as it's shown on the tempestwx site. I checked both https://pwsdashboard.com/ and https://github.com/steepleian/weewx-Weather34/

and from there succeeded in creating a 'live' jsondata/wf.txt file (using API Data token from the tempestwx site), and its content looks like this;

{"station_id":XXXXX,"station_name":"XXXXXX","public_name":"XXXXXXX","latitude":XXX,"longitude":XXX,"timezone":"Europe/","elevation":18,"is_public":true,"status":{"status_code":0,"status_message":"SUCCESS"},"station_units":{"units_temp":"c","units_wind":"kph","units_precip":"mm","units_pressure":"hpa","units_distance":"km","units_direction":"cardinal","units_other":"metric"},"outdoor_keys":["timestamp","air_temperature","barometric_pressure","station_pressure","pressure_trend","sea_level_pressure","relative_humidity","precip","precip_accum_last_1hr","precip_accum_local_day","precip_accum_local_yesterday","precip_minutes_local_day","precip_minutes_local_yesterday","wind_avg","wind_direction","wind_gust","wind_lull","solar_radiation","uv","brightness","lightning_strike_last_epoch","lightning_strike_last_distance","lightning_strike_count","lightning_strike_count_last_1hr","lightning_strike_count_last_3hr","feels_like","heat_index","wind_chill","dew_point","wet_bulb_temperature","delta_t","air_density"],"obs":[{"timestamp":1629929484,"air_temperature":15.7,"barometric_pressure":1017.1,"station_pressure":1017.1,"sea_level_pressure":1018.0,"relative_humidity":95,"precip":0.0,"precip_accum_last_1hr":0.0,"precip_accum_local_day":0.0,"precip_accum_local_yesterday":0.0,"precip_minutes_local_day":0,"precip_minutes_local_yesterday":0,"wind_avg":2.7,"wind_direction":335,"wind_gust":4.0,"wind_lull":0.9,"solar_radiation":0,"uv":0.0,"brightness":0,"lightning_strike_last_epoch":1629633834,"lightning_strike_last_distance":41,"lightning_strike_count":0,"lightning_strike_count_last_1hr":0,"lightning_strike_count_last_3hr":0,"feels_like":15.7,"heat_index":15.7,"wind_chill":15.7,"dew_point":14.9,"wet_bulb_temperature":15.2,"delta_t":0.5,"air_density":1.22665,"pressure_trend":"falling"}]}

Now all we need to do is have WeeWX grab its lightning data from this wf.txt file, which then will be identical to what you'd see in the tempest app/site.

Anyone here that has done this before that could show us the way?

[Julius Thijssen]

Thanks Benedict! Lots of valuable info there. Looks to me like these are then output from the Tempest, or at least as they come from WeatherFlow's api directly from their servers:

brightness":60272,"

lightning_strike_last_epoch":1629633834,"

lightning_strike_last_distance":41,"

lightning_strike_count":0,"

lightning_strike_count_last_1hr":0,"

lightning_strike_count_last_3hr":0,"

and even more values that normally do not appear from the UDP broadcast from the Tempest on my LAN, so that's interesting stuff.

If the "illuminance" value is actually called "brightness", this explains why I only got errors from it thus far. Means the weatherflowudp.py driver-file is incorrect.

I'll have to check what the tempest transmits on the LAN locally to be sure.

Is there someone that has already done that work for us?

Thanks in advance!

Julius

[vince]

On Friday, August 27, 2021 at 5:57:06 AM UTC-7 pa...@luxthijssen.nl wrote:

If the "illuminance" value is actually called "brightness", this explains why I only got errors from it thus far. Means the weatherflowudp.py driver-file is incorrect.

I'll have to check what the tempest transmits on the LAN locally to be sure.

Is there someone that has already done that work for us?

I'd suggest the driver is probably ok.

A quick look at the WeatherFlow REST API  (link), UDP API (link) seem consistent and they do not use the term 'brightness' so I'm guessing that whatever code you are using to generate your .txt file is likely at fault in this case.

[Benedict]

The wf.txt is generated by the weather34 skin/extension, and apparently *that* uses "brightness" instead of "illuminance", but that seems to just be their preference for the obs_st value output though the online api.

[vince]

On Friday, August 27, 2021 at 2:26:12 PM UTC-7 Benedict wrote:

The wf.txt is generated by the weather34 skin/extension, and apparently *that* uses "brightness" instead of "illuminance", but that seems to just be their preference for the obs_st value output though the online api.

ok that explains, thanks.

Without seeing what errors the original poster is seeing and the .conf file they're using, it's impossible to help more than say that he needs to align the weewx schema with the data he's trying to import.

Unfortunately we can't read minds.

[steeple ian]

Benedict,

Just to add a bit of clarity to the debate. The handling of WF API in weather34 skin is part of the legacy code that I inherited from the original author. It is currently handled by PHP. In the next update which is nearing completion, this will be moved into the Python code using the main module weather34.py which already has a web services function built in to handle APIs. Configuration will be via weewx.conf rather than the PHP settings page.

There also has been a recent PR from a user suggesting that there have been changes to the WF API which needs addressing. I am not a WF user so I have to rely on shared information. Is this your view also?

Ian

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to weewx-user+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-user/39b7c1b6-83a9-4131-a26e-e562181ad814n%40googlegroups.com.

[Julius Thijssen]

Hi Vince,

I was trying to work with the weatherflowudp driver I'd seen posted almost everywhere, but it seems that this one: https://github.com/jjvdgeer/weatherflow-udp actually works better for what I wanted to try with the tempest.

The errors I get are mostly related to the lightning values not showing up in the output, and I'm fairly new to weewx, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. Just found out weewx is very strict about case, UV is not uv, and Lux is not lux, and as soon as you make a mistake there, weewx stops outputting data, and the logs aren't very descriptive for such errors.

Anyhow, when I have accomplished a decent output, I'll post a short howto, because I reckon many Tempest owners will be happy to see one.

My test-site currently resides here: https://weer.stro.men