weather.com changes...

[caustin]

Michael,
You probably haven't had time to think about it, but I just received an email from weather.com that they are going to a subscription service for their XML feed. The fee is outrageous... $63 dollars a month or more! What options are available and are you anticipating making any changes to the program in response to this change?

[Pete]

I quit using it when the "manditory" advertisement was part of the link.

I use NOAA and WUN instead. Another nice feed is Unisys Weather.

[caustin]

How can I use these sources within standalone mcssprinklers?

[spknapp]

... Another nice feed is Unisys Weather.

Pete, how is it you are using Unisys weather feeds? I inquired with them earlier this year and they said they only do commercial subscriptions that start at $5000(!) per month?

[Pete]

I do the radar pics and web page snapshots. I use them for weather but not for MCSSPrinkler stuff. Just NOAA and WUN.

[pbibm]

I'm not sure if its equivalent for you or not. I use Ultraweatherbug as my weather station. There are a couple report outs within a few miles of me. That can be validated on their web site.

Have been really happy with it.

[Michael McSharry]

The other forecast site supported by mcsSprinklers now is NWS. It has the disadvantage of not providing the UV that is the typcial sensor used to assess solar intensity for ET calculation. EPA does provide this sensor, but only as a forecast for the following day rather than the hourly one from Weather.com.

I know weatherunderground, which is now an option for current weather conditions in mcsSprinklers also has forecast data on their web sites so if the data feed for that can be identified then I will replace Weather.com with it.

[jlrichar]

Update? UV devices?

Hi Michael,

Any update on wunderground.com?

I also have Ultraweatherbug, can you provide directions on how to use this with MCSprinklers? It seems straightforward to create HS devices with the weatherbug plugin, then select those in sprinklers; however, I do not know if the output from weatherbug devices are correct for sprinklers.

For UV, is there a hardware meter that can be used with HS? Some type of Oregon Scientific thing that works with ACRF2?

I would love to have one UV sensor/zone, although It seems the software is not written to take advantage of that at the moment.

[Michael McSharry]

The update function build into mcsSprinklers will allow you to install the weather.com replacement. There are two new ones added. You can can also do it manually from the sticky at the top of this subforum. The manual has been updated as well and can be downloaded independently.

A built-in capability to estimate solar intensity is with use of "in the sun" and "in the shade" temperature sensors. Pete has some posts in the last few months about his construction of the sensor in a jar. The "in the sun" sensor is Solar device in mcsSprinklers.

You can also roll your own UV sensor as long as you provide an input with a scale of 0 to 10. I think it expects integer increments, but no certain.

You are correct that per-Area sensors are not supported other than a moisture sensor. Again you can roll your own moisture sensor using whatever criteria you want.

Never worked with UltraWeatherBug, but the AWS sites provided by mcsSprinklers are the same reporting stations. Common interface techniques are with .csv files or hs virtual devices. With virtual devices mcsSprinklers takes the numeric portion of the DeviceString after stripping the HTML formatting.