Weather Triggers: Warning Rain Soon


#1

Hello,

I’ve done a lot of reading on this topic and most of what I read appears to be out of date. Not trying to recreate the wheel here, I think I should pause and make sure what I’m doing is going to do what I want before I go down this rabit hole.

Almost all the threads I read on weather tell me dark sky is no longer available for new users (ok i get that) but all the threads say to use TWC instead (which doesn’t appear to be available.

Ok, im flexible enough to get around that and I used openweather. Mind you, I’ve watched, read 100 videos/threads on this. I paused one of the videos that said go into the webcore storage and do the weather structure dump. I stopped there because I was having trouble getting anything out of it. Fast forward a week later, and the API is working and I can successfully do the weather structure dump.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one: I looked at so many sites and videos I spent 2 hours trying to trace where I saw these instructions and I dont know what the next steps are​:rofl::rofl:

It was at this moment that I took a deep breath, take a pause, and ask if all what I’m doing is going to do what I want in the end (because I have no idea).

This is all I want:

Apple weather sends out a notification "rain starting in “X” mins. Its astonishingly accurate most of the time. I just want a warning that will give me a 10-15 minute head start to walk the dog if its about to rain.

I realize the notification coming from apple is very specific to that device (and I don’t use apple products), I don’t know if “predictive” precipitation is even a typical field available in weather APIs . Sure, I saw lots of forcast data but nothing that jumped out at me as “rain starting soon”.

If I continue to go down this road of accessing a weather API in webcore, am I going to be able to even do this? Is there another solution that’s simpler/more appropriate?

If I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO run it off of receiving the apple notification, I can make it work through devices that aren’t mine but that’s not ideal.


#2

So on HE, the weather apps using the cloud for the most part poll data, so the accuracy is limited by both how often the provider updates the data, and when the next poll happens.

You typically cannot just try to poll faster, as the vendor typically has call limits, especially if you are using their free version.

So Apple bought dark sky, and discontinuing any api access.

So your options become limited if you need local, near real-time forecast…

I have not looked at it, but if apple home provided a way to automate on the weather forecast, you might be able to connect this to a virtual switch on HE to do something, but this is a wag on my part…


#3

Phew, you just saved me a ton of work and disappointment. I’ll put the code down for now and do more research until I think I have a solution that will do what I need. Thanks