Overcast lighting levels

[sdanks]

Is anyone using one of the parameters from weather XML to determine what the light overcast is so that you can turn lights on or off? Would visibility maybe be the parameter I would use for this?

[prsmith777]

I am doing something similar.

I use NOAA weather condition from weather xml to determine whether to close the shades in the living room. We get direct sunlight beaming into the living room during certain weeks of the year. I close the shades if the weather condition is Clear or Fair or A Few Clouds or Partly Cloudy using Easy Trigger plugin and regular expressions.

NOAA has a standard set of conditions they use. https://w1.weather.gov/xml/current_obs/weather.php You could probably do something similar using Overcast from the list and maybe add others such as Rain and Snow.

[jgreenberg01]

I tried, but the closest NOAA station's reporting became flaky a while back. I mean like up to 2 days old reporting flaky.

Then I realized it's 2.5 miles away and doesn't necessarily reflect the conditions at my house - even when it's not acting flaky.

I ended up going with an Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station. It reports the solar radiation every 30 seconds and I use that to turn on outdoor lights when the solar radiation goes below a certain number during daylight hours.

I would imagine that you could use a light sensor for flood lights and it would be a lot more budget-friendly, but I like having accurate weather reporting to make indoor climate decisions.

[misraels]

I went a little different route, I have an outdoor floodlight with the homeseer floodlight sensor and use the light sensor on it to determine actual lux levels at my home.

[sdanks]

I decided to use the weatherXML plugin, but I don't seem to be able to get all the values the current conditions could be from weather.com. So I coded it to turn on the living room light earlier if the current condition is NOT Sunny. I wish I could see them all as there might be others that I might want to trigger on as well. But it is working.

[prsmith777]

You could add NOAA as a weather source and use the ones I referenced in the link.

[sdanks]

You could add NOAA as a weather source and use the ones I referenced in the link.

Ok, My fault. I used your suggestion but did not really look at the event you posted. This really helps. Also the link to the condition possibilities helps as well. I really appreciate it.