[App][Pro] OpenWeather

You know there is a alternative app with better weather warnings for Germany :wink:

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Homey reads out the warnings of Ronnys app in perfect German. Alternatively, it displays LaMetric and an HA dashboard for me.

Actually I have both apps installed, the OW and the DWD app.
Every morning I get the weather forecast and possible weather warning (actually via DWD) via TTS.
I don’t know why, but the weather warnings are not 100% identical in both apps, but the weather warnings of the OW app are ok for me. That’s the reason why I want to delete the DWD app. But if I don’t manage to get the weather warnings in German, I’ll have to keep both apps.

Yes, the DWD app, but not the OW app.

The DWD weather alerts are more detailled, accurate and in time.
Currently, DWD has a frost warning (level 1), OWM has nothing. So I don’t really trust the OWM warning (or absence of warnings). It seems that only warning with higher leven (>=2) are present in OWM.

Yesterday it was vise versa in my region. The OW app showed a warning, the DWD app not. :man_shrugging:t3:
That’s the reason why I tried to manage it yesterday.

@Nitramevo (alias Martin, founder of Martins Tech Garage and seller of the smpl display) sent some smlp displays (preproduction samples) to some developers to check the usability and possibilities.

After posting a review in the german “hot or not” thread, I want to provide some use cases in this thread to display some weather data in an easy and nice way.

First I set up three display layouts.

  • weather data
  • weather and 1 alert
  • weather and 2 alerts

I used a combination of OpenWeather app for weather data and the german DWD weather alerts app for alerts. But you can use the OWN alerts instead. The usage is similar.


Layout 1:

Used data:

  • Current temperature (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Current weather desctiprion (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Current wind speed (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Precipitation(daily forecast device with OneCall API, +0 days forecast - means forecast data for this day)

Layout 2:


Used data:

  • Current temperature (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Current weather desctiprion (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Precipitation(daily forecast device with OneCall API, +0 days forecast - means forecast data for this day)
  • Alert description of DWD weather alerts app (1st alert)

Layout 3:

  • Current temperature (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Current weather desctiprion (current weather device with OneCall API)
  • Alert description of DWD weather alerts app (1st alert)
  • Alert description of DWD weather alerts app (2nd alert)

I use these 3 layouts to display the weather data depending on the current weather alert situation.
You can define a flow like this (or more complex if you want to react on more constellation).

The field content of the set layout will change independent based on capability changes (temperature etc.). So it only needs a trigger to change the layout.
In my case, the change of the number of alerts is used as trigger.
Dependent of the amount of alerts (none, one or more that one), the layout is set.
This will update the smpl display after some seconds.

This way you are informed about upcoming or current alerts.

Examples:

Default layout without warnings:

Layout with warnings:
Dark background:

Light background:

And you are free to design your own layouts like current, min, max temperature…

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New Live version 1.3.3:

Improved pair view:

  • Using new Homey style
  • Autocomplete search for city name:
    Needs an added API key in the first field to read the geolocation API.
    OWN only returns 5 result entires, so insert a more detailed city name to get better results.

7 Likes

Hello,
Can you add the Wind Gust to this app??
I noticed that it is available in OpenWeather.
I need for my sunshade. I need Wind speed (already in your app) but also Wind Gust.
Would be appriciated with a donation if you made this.
Thank you
Henk

This is a fantastic app. Thank you very much.

I have been struggling with getting the API key to work. (API key invalid)

It started to work after copying
this URL in my browser (Use your own API key!)

https://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0/onecall?lat=51.2207321&lon=4.4007212&appid=YOURAPIKEYHERE

Hope this helps.
Kris

After creating a new ApiKey it takes some time until the key is valid.

But it’s working now for you?
So you have a OneCall 3.0 key. And you added the CurrentWeather (location) device with device settings “API 3.0”? Then all should work.

Yes. It works.
(it looked like that in-browser API call was needed to get it to work.)

Thank you.

New test version 1.3.4

  • added gusts of wind to OneCall devices

The values are in km/h as default. You can change the wind speed to m/s in device settings (for wind speed and gusts).
The capability is added at the end of device attributes. If you re-add the device, the wind gust value will be placed directly behind the currently addes wind attributes.

FYI:
@Henk_Bartels and thanks for the hint of missing value.

3 Likes

New test version 1.3.5

  • Fixes crashes for daily/hourly forecast devices. Sorry, copy&paste issue :smile:
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I recently switched from Darksky to OpenWeather and everything seems to work, but I have a few questions.

I had to ‘pay’ / subscribe due to the limitations of the free api. At the moment there’s a free limit of 1000 api calls a day, so I’m safe for now. But … should the limit change, is there a way to disable the app between certain times? Or stop it from doing API calls? To clarify: I only use weather to determine weather to automate my screens, so at night I couldn’t care less what the weather is doing.

Secondly, can I use ‘sunset’ this way: I’d like my screens to open let 's say thee hours before the sun sets. I now use Sun events only for this, and my Homey is running very low on available memory, so if I can uninstall that app, that’d be great!

Hi,

1st question:

  • You can set a limit in your OpenWeather account to prevent charge for calls above the free limit.
  • You can deactivate the polling in device settings. Then create a flow with a trigger (time, every x hours…). Use the action card for polling of your device (the location/current weather device). This way you can poll the data individually.

2nd question:
That’s not possible. The device only reports the data from OWM. Triggers are only based on state changes. not on state value (with or without offset). So it’s better to use sun events app for this.

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Smart, hadn’t thought of that. Thanks!

Too bad about the sunset, I thought maybe it would be possible to do some kind of logic on the value of sunset. But I just noticed the standard date/time app has trigger for it. Max offset of 120 minutes, but I can live with that :wink:

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When you’ll need higher offsets, check these possibilities. You can use the Homey sunset/-rise tags as well in these flows;

You’ll need Advanced Scheduler app (uses 12MB memory) for this one:

You’ll need BLL app (uses 28MB memory) for this one:

Then I’d also could just keep the sun events app. My 2018 Homey is using 503MB of it’s 512MB of memory, so I’m trying to cut down on apps where possible. Should I ever get a Homey Pro, I’ll revisit this thread. Maybe if the next one has an internal speaker I’ll buy it.

I know the problem very well :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
I’ve 1024MB memory model now, and still run 8 apps more than Homey can handle.
Problem is, some apps use 4MB, others use 45MB…
I enable apps only when I need them;
Quite a few apps I use, only have to do some checks at the start and end of the day. So why keep 'em running 24/7

How do you disable apps via flows? I could definitely use that, could some memory. I’ve delete about 5 apps just now, but it looks like the other apps just consume the recovered memory :rofl: