The Weather Channel API - Now requires a subscription.

123

Senior Member
Please feel free to correct any factual errors or omissions I may have made!


If your Home Automation (HA) software has a driver to read weather data from The Weather Channel (TWC), it probably uses TWC's free 'XML Data Feed' service. I received a notice from TWC announcing that this free service will end on October 31st.

I suspect that, on November 1st, your HA software's TWC driver will probably display erroneous data if anything at all. Your TWC driver will require alterations in order to support TWC's new data feed service, called The Weather Channel API. Moreover, this new data feed is not free and requires a subscription; the least expensive plan is about $20/month. You may want to contact the manufacturer of your HA software, or the TWC driver's developer, to determine what plans they may have to accommodate the new TWC API.

TWC does offer free alternatives in the form of a Weather Widget (see bottom of the API page) however it is not a true replacement for the XML Data Feed.
 
Yeah, this sucks. I also go one of those emails. I use BL Weather in Homeseer and it gets its info from TWC's XML feed. No more weather info for me. No way in hell I'm paying $20/month for this. It should be $10/year.

What are the alternatives? Weather underground?
 
I just put a current conditions driver for the National Weather Service's XML feed yesterday. I'm working on a Weather Underground driver which I should have ready probably tomorrow.
 
I discovered the WUnderground API last week (which is awesome, btw) and have been coding a free-as-in-beer HS plugin in my spare time... should be done by next weekend if I can get work to stop breaking things.

Even if nobody else uses it, I will. :)
 
WeatherBug service is available for free for personal use (limited number of lookups per hour) for non-mobile use. At least it's free for now. Fairly easy to use with WSDL too.
 
I've registered with Wunderground and received my API key. Eventually I will update Premise's Wunderground PWS driver which uses Wunderground's old, keyless, XML-based API.

FWIW, I contacted them and they've confirmed that, in addition to JSON, the new API will eventually support XML.

Premise does not natively support parsing data in JSON format so I'd need to resort to parsing it as a string (hello regex). It's not as straighforward as using the "Microsoft.XMLDOM" ActiveX object to quickly extract XML data.

They also indicated the existing (i.e. deprecated) XML API will not be shut down and has been left to die on the vine. If something they change on their servers causes the old API to fail, there'll be no support or any attempt to correct it. So, for now, the old API works but the end is near.
 
For those in the US, here's a nice open-source implementation in an easy to read vbscript-like language that's built for Premise. It uses the weather.gov SOAP server to gather data, but references the weather channel since it uses the TWCi transparent icons.

I've been using this module for a while and it works great. The only catch is I think the weahter.gov server only updates every 20 minutes or so.

http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=15
 
I have finished a pretty full featured driver for the Weather Underground now. I'll put up a 4.0.6 beta tomorrow that includes this driver. I was able to implement pretty much the same set of features as the Weather Channel driver. Only a couple things were missing, so it should be a fairly reasonable drop in replacement.
 
FYI
Wunderground's API now supports XML as a Query Format. So now you can choose what works best for you, JSON or XML.
 
When did that happen? The docs still were showing JSON only up until a couple days ago or so when I was finishing up the driver docs, and it would have saved me from writing a JSON parser.
 
They're fast! I posted on the 25th that they had confirmed that XML would become available and by the 28th they sent me an email indicating it was ready.
 
So I'm curious what HomeSeer people have done to replace BL Weather. Summer is coming and I need my weather forecasts to drive my irrigation efficiently. As a minimum I need a 3 day forecast for min/max temp, min humidity, and max rain % that I can easily get from device values. I'd also like another web page forecast, but can live without it.

Thanks
 
Back
Top