Support for Openweathermap will presumably be discontinued end 2018

[admin]

This is to give you a heads-up that we are planing to drop support for openweathermap.

Reason is that they introduced an new 3.0 API that makes it very complicated to upload data. They invented a multi-step approach where the weather program first has to register a weather station for a given user account. When this registration went fine they provide a station API-key which needs to be used for uploading. Data to upload is just the boring standard main sensor set. All the complicated station management for a user account needs to be done by the feeding weather program, which is a joke. They provide no web interface for the user to do that but believe that feeding programs will invent a station management solution just because openweathermap decided that this might be a cool thing.

As I cannot see that they provide anything useful in return for receiving your data, we decided to no longer invest into this and to end support for it. I still try to get the simple old "fire and forget" API continuously working for Meteobridge users, but currently they seem to no longer provide the needed credentials for this kind of upload to new users. As my previous request didn't get an answer I am not optimistic that they even care.

We love to support as many weather networks as possible, but please forget about this one. IMHO much hassle, no obvious benefit.

[SANdood]

I will note that OpenWeatherMap does give users who supply weather station info access to their own data, for free so long as they make less than 60 requests per minute. This is in contrast to WeatherUnderground who have made it pretty clear they are locking down the data they collect unless you pay for access - they have been saying for months that PWS submitters will get access to their own data, but to date have not documented how.

It also does appear that you can register your weather station once, and from thence on you only need the unique identifier they provide to submit data. I'm playing with that now (using postman) to see if it really works...

[admin]

I did not discover any way to receive the API key needed for uploading data according their new Version 3 API directly from within the user account. All I could find was doing some JSON ping pong and as a result of that such API key might be part of their API reply.

When you discovered a way to avoid this station setup via API calls but doing it directly on the Web interface (as any thinking individual would expect), please share how you do that.

Needless to say that they did not answer to my support request, as that is in line with my past experience with this network.

[SANdood]

While not directly possible to do via *every* web browser, the station registration request is a simple POST command - I used postman to create the request as follows:

https://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0 ... APPID-HERE>

Code: Select all

POST /data/3.0/stations?appid=<USER-APPID-HERE> HTTP/1.1
Host: api.openweathermap.org
Content-Type: application/json
cache-control: no-cache
{
    "external_id": "KMATYNGS2",
    "name": "Jacques Ridge Station, Tyngsboro, MA",
    "latitude": 42.64441681,
    "longitude": -71.46686554,
    "altitude": 290
}

The response given by this request is:

Code: Select all

{
    "ID": "<RETURNED-STATION-ID>",
    "updated_at": "2018-12-17T15:12:01.183519998Z",
    "created_at": "2018-12-17T15:12:01.183519968Z",
    "user_id": "<RETURNED_USER_ID>",
    "external_id": "KMATYNGS2",
    "name": "Jacques Ridge Station, Tyngsboro, MA",
    "latitude": 42.64441681,
    "longitude": -71.46686554,
    "altitude": 290,
    "rank": 10,
    "source_type": 5
}

From this, the format of a request to send an update for this station is a POST to

https://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0 ... APPID-HERE>

with a body of Content-Type: application/json, containing:

Code: Select all

{
    "station_id": "<RETURNED-STATION-ID>",
    "dt": <UNIX-EPOCH-TIME-(ZULU)-FOR-OBSERVATION>,
    <json data - all in Metric :(>

So, while they don't provide a template or portal, once you get your APPID registered, it is very easy to get the <STATION_ID> that is required to send updates. You could even create a small (simple) utility on your website/wiki that collects the requisite info (once) and returns back the Station ID that users need to put into the MeteoBridge Weather Station config page (along with their APPID).

[admin]

Today I received an answer from OpenWeatherMap on this topic.

They wrote that they will enable the old API again within the next couple of months. Therefore, support for this network will remain in Meteobridge, although new users will not be able to use it until OpenWeatherMap realizes the announced change.

They also wrote that they will add a function to their web interface that allows the user to register weather stations and to receive an API key for that. When this function is realized, I will change the way Meteobridge reports to this network by only making use of this new API key.

When they do as told, OpenWeatherMap will stay on the list of supported networks. Old users can proceed as before, new user will have to wait for one of the two promises from OpenWeatherMap to come true.