WXforum.net
Weather Station Hardware => Weather Web Cams => Topic started by: webcams.travel on November 27, 2017, 10:20:28 AM
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If you currently use Weather Underground for your webcam upload, you probably know already that this service will be shut down on December 15th:
http://help.wunderground.com/knowledgebase/articles/1821811-wu-says-goodbye-to-webcams
This is why webcams.travel is openly thinking about providing its own free webcam FTP upload service. If you are interested in free webcam hosting, just fill out this survey:
https://goo.gl/qYecdc
If there will be enough responses/interest, webcams.travel will most likely launch this new service.
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Thanks - Done
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If you currently use Weather Underground for your webcam upload, you probably know already that this service will be shut down on December 15th:
http://help.wunderground.com/knowledgebase/articles/1821811-wu-says-goodbye-to-webcams
This is why webcams.travel is openly thinking about providing its own free webcam FTP upload service. If you are interested in free webcam hosting, just fill out this survey:
https://goo.gl/qYecdc
If there will be enough responses/interest, webcams.travel will most likely launch this new service.
will your webcam site link or show our weather data?
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I'm wondering also... is this just about webcam images? Even if you overlayed image with WX data who would find site unless linked with weather data/forecast as WU has. Maybe people are just interested in webcam images but for most part being weather enthusiast I'm only interested if weather related.
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will your webcam site link or show our weather data?
This is a good question! We sure will focus on the webcam, but since we would create this free upload service primarily for weather stations it makes sense to do so.
What would you prefer: a link to the weather data or the weather data itself?
We assume that you still will upload all your weather info to your current weather site, e.g. wunderground.com (which we could link to - and vice vera for the webcam)?
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Hardly any down-time. Also, I love my panoramic view of northwest Arkansas.
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will your webcam site link or show our weather data?
This is a good question! We sure will focus on the webcam, but since we would create this free upload service primarily for weather stations it makes sense to do so.
What would you prefer: a link to the weather data or the weather data itself?
We assume that you still will upload all your weather info to your current weather site, e.g. wunderground.com (which we could link to - and vice vera for the webcam)?
I would suspect from your end, it would be easier to provide a link to where ever the site is or continues to send their data to. When they visit your sight they see the webcam and if they want, they can click on the link provided to view the actual data. Please keep in mind that many of the stations here are using different types of webcams and means of transmission. For me, when you say FTP, it would need to be fully automated (timed) before I would consider using it. Also take a look at Bloomsky. Several stations have figured out a way to send their Bloomsky pic to WU. The actual pic is coming from the Bloomsky server and WU pulls it from there. I wouldn't think that to be FTP as you see it. Thanks
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I would suspect from your end, it would be easier to provide a link to where ever the site is or continues to send their data to. When they visit your sight they see the webcam and if they want, they can click on the link provided to view the actual data. Please keep in mind that many of the stations here are using different types of webcams and means of transmission. For me, when you say FTP, it would need to be fully automated (timed) before I would consider using it. Also take a look at Bloomsky. Several stations have figured out a way to send their Bloomsky pic to WU. The actual pic is coming from the Bloomsky server and WU pulls it from there. I wouldn't think that to be FTP as you see it. Thanks
Yes, we are probably going for a link, that makes sense the most at the time. We want to be an extension of your weather station, not a replacement.
We for sure will automate the FTP upload, we currently have one running as a test where the webcam uploads a new image every 10 seconds.
Interesting, how does it work with Bloomsky - does anyone now? If you buy their weather station, do you have a free webcam upload forever as well?
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I would suspect from your end, it would be easier to provide a link to where ever the site is or continues to send their data to. When they visit your sight they see the webcam and if they want, they can click on the link provided to view the actual data. Please keep in mind that many of the stations here are using different types of webcams and means of transmission. For me, when you say FTP, it would need to be fully automated (timed) before I would consider using it. Also take a look at Bloomsky. Several stations have figured out a way to send their Bloomsky pic to WU. The actual pic is coming from the Bloomsky server and WU pulls it from there. I wouldn't think that to be FTP as you see it. Thanks
Yes, we are probably going for a link, that makes sense the most at the time. We want to be an extension of your weather station, not a replacement.
We for sure will automate the FTP upload, we currently have one running as a test where the webcam uploads a new image every 10 seconds.
Interesting, how does it work with Bloomsky - does anyone now? If you buy their weather station, do you have a free webcam upload forever as well?
Yes...several stations are sending/linking their Bloomsky pic to WU. Bloomsky is basically a webcam with some weather devices/sensors on board. Since conception they added wind and rain measurement. The Bloomsky device takes a pic about every 5 mins. What you would see is an embedded pic of the Bloomsky link on their WU station site.
Here's a link to one of my Bloomsky pics:
https://map.bloomsky.com/weather-stations/eaB1rJytnZSmmKem
I would suspect that if you could use the Bloomsky pics it would be a case of linking their URL much like WU does now. The timing of the actual pic is controlled by the Bloomsky server. You'll notice on my link, it's the actual page to my Bloomsky site. WU and the users here were able to figure out a way to strip off the data/text and pull just the pic.
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Yes...several stations are sending/linking their Bloomsky pic to WU. Bloomsky is basically a webcam with some weather devices/sensors on board. Since conception they added wind and rain measurement. The Bloomsky device takes a pic about every 5 mins. What you would see is an embedded pic of the Bloomsky link on their WU station site.
Here's a link to one of my Bloomsky pics:
https://map.bloomsky.com/weather-stations/eaB1rJytnZSmmKem
I would suspect that if you could use the Bloomsky pics it would be a case of linking their URL much like WU does now. The timing of the actual pic is controlled by the Bloomsky server. You'll notice on my link, it's the actual page to my Bloomsky site. WU and the users here were able to figure out a way to strip off the data/text and pull just the pic.
Hi VaJim
Thank you for this interesting info. It really looks like Bloomsky is doing something very similar - except for the hardware, of course.
So you own this station (eaB1rJytnZSmmKem)?
You only payed for the station once and there are no recurring costs? And you have your weather station website for free?
Is there an official pricing for that somewhere?
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Yes...several stations are sending/linking their Bloomsky pic to WU. Bloomsky is basically a webcam with some weather devices/sensors on board. Since conception they added wind and rain measurement. The Bloomsky device takes a pic about every 5 mins. What you would see is an embedded pic of the Bloomsky link on their WU station site.
Here's a link to one of my Bloomsky pics:
https://map.bloomsky.com/weather-stations/eaB1rJytnZSmmKem
I would suspect that if you could use the Bloomsky pics it would be a case of linking their URL much like WU does now. The timing of the actual pic is controlled by the Bloomsky server. You'll notice on my link, it's the actual page to my Bloomsky site. WU and the users here were able to figure out a way to strip off the data/text and pull just the pic.
Hi VaJim
Thank you for this interesting info. It really looks like Bloomsky is doing something very similar - except for the hardware, of course.
So you own this station (eaB1rJytnZSmmKem)?
You only payed for the station once and there are no recurring costs? And you have your weather station website for free?
Is there an official pricing for that somewhere?
Yes, I own the station. No recurring cost except to replace the device in the event of failure after warranty. The Bloomsky web portal is owned by Bloomsky. Users provide the pics/data which is viewable to anyone who downloads/installs the Bloomsky app. You can check out all the details at Bloomsky.com
Other companies I participate in are Rainwise and Davis. They both have devices which when connected to your purchased station, feeds their portal and you and others can view. I understand Rainwise is looking into the ability for users to upload the webcam to their already webportal area. Nothing heard from Davis. I gave up on personal weather web sites years ago. After years of dealing with web hosts and keeping things running I said enough. Between Rainwise, Davis, and WU, my data is out there.
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Yes, I own the station. No recurring cost except to replace the device in the event of failure after warranty. The Bloomsky web portal is owned by Bloomsky. Users provide the pics/data which is viewable to anyone who downloads/installs the Bloomsky app. You can check out all the details at Bloomsky.com
Other companies I participate in are Rainwise and Davis. They both have devices which when connected to your purchased station, feeds their portal and you and others can view. I understand Rainwise is looking into the ability for users to upload the webcam to their already webportal area. Nothing heard from Davis. I gave up on personal weather web sites years ago. After years of dealing with web hosts and keeping things running I said enough. Between Rainwise, Davis, and WU, my data is out there.
OK, that's great to hear. It sure makes sense to use existing services, and I can imagine it being very handy if the webcam including upload comes along with the weather station itself.
However, it looks like there are still many other weather stations around without this handy webcam service - and for those we probably will launch a free FTP webcam upload.
PS: We already have some Bloomsky webcam images on Lookr.com (http://Lookr.com) - you can add yours too for additional and free 30 days, 12 month and lifetime timelapse slideshows if you want to: Lookr.com/add (http://Lookr.com/add)
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email from wu
To our webcam community members:
We heard from many of you about how much you like and rely on our webcam product. So we will not discontinue the product as we stated in November. We will continue to allow users to add webcams to the Weather Underground network and everyone can view images from connected webcams.
Thank you for your passionate support and apologies for any inconvenience we caused.
The WU Team
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now take care of the radar issue
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Well apparently WU changed their mind about eliminating the webcams. But I am having trouble re-activating the FTP :?
See their Dec 7th update to their article:
http://help.wunderground.com/knowledgebase/articles/1821811-wu-says-goodbye-to-webcams
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Well apparently WU changed their mind about eliminating the webcams. But I am having trouble re-activating the FTP :?
See their Dec 7th update to their article:
http://help.wunderground.com/knowledgebase/articles/1821811-wu-says-goodbye-to-webcams
Well, who would have thought... thank you for this info. This, of course, changes a lot now.
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Well apparently WU changed their mind about eliminating the webcams. But I am having trouble re-activating the FTP :?
See their Dec 7th update to their article:
http://help.wunderground.com/knowledgebase/articles/1821811-wu-says-goodbye-to-webcams
Well, who would have thought... thank you for this info. This, of course, changes a lot now.
It may be just more lip service because of the negative feedback from what I'm seeing because nothing has changed.
It was a crap shoot before if you could send images and when it did work was sporadic at best with only a few images getting through. The WU FTP server yesterday was full all day with only 50 users allowed and toward evening just killed accounts with login not authorized. FTP: 530 Login authentication failed
From what I can tell they are allowing a couple hundred cameras but have killed camera accounts for the rest.
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It may be just more lip service because of the negative feedback from what I'm seeing because nothing has changed.
It was a crap shoot before if you could send images and when it did work was sporadic at best with only a few images getting through. The WU FTP server yesterday was full all day with only 50 users allowed and toward evening just killed accounts with login not authorized. FTP: 530 Login authentication failed
From what I can tell they are allowing a couple hundred cameras but have killed camera accounts for the rest.
It is a very interesting situation, right now. I guess it all depends on whether the weather stations trust WU to improve their webcam service to the better in time - or not. What would you say: if we setup a free FTP webcam upload right now, would the users of WU switch - or stay at WU and give WU another chance?
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I don't see any improvement at WU. They were on the doorstep of pulling plug completely and have went years allowing sporadic image uploads and didn't seem to care while allowing more cameras making situation worse with time.
I don't know how popular just an image site only would be because members here are also into personal weather stations and sending data.
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I don't see any improvement at WU. They were on the doorstep of pulling plug completely and have went years allowing sporadic image uploads and didn't seem to care while allowing more cameras making situation worse with time.
I don't know how popular just an image site only would be because members here are also into personal weather stations and sending data.
The idea would be that current WU users still upload their weather data to WU, but would use our service for their webcam only. They (probably?) could link our site for the webcam view. Do you think this would be attractive for weather stations?
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I don't see any improvement at WU. They were on the doorstep of pulling plug completely and have went years allowing sporadic image uploads and didn't seem to care while allowing more cameras making situation worse with time.
I don't know how popular just an image site only would be because members here are also into personal weather stations and sending data.
The idea would be that current WU users still upload their weather data to WU, but would use our service for their webcam only. They (probably?) could link our site for the webcam view. Do you think this would be attractive for weather stations?
That may work, I do the same for my WU data add website link under STATUS if they look at it. https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KNEVALEN2
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That may work, I do the same for my WU data add website link under STATUS if they look at it. https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KNEVALEN2
I see, it's a bit of a hack - and people need to copy/paste the link into the browser as well. And I assume most weather stations don't have a (primary) website themselves, where they could link to both WU and the webcam page?
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I know Randy and I have discussed this before but a lot of us are not savvy enough to do all this stuff so that's what makes WU so attractive to many of us. We upload the weather and the bonus is to upload a photo. I don't mean to throw water on things but first you have acquire a website and then be able to upload all the weather data to the website. Randy and many others have beautiful websites while I don't have a clue how to get there. Oh sure you google how to but then to actually do it is a whole another thing. Once again that's what makes WU so nice.
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I know Randy and I have discussed this before but a lot of us are not savvy enough to do all this stuff so that's what makes WU so attractive to many of us. We upload the weather and the bonus is to upload a photo. I don't mean to throw water on things but first you have acquire a website and then be able to upload all the weather data to the website. Randy and many others have beautiful websites while I don't have a clue how to get there. Oh sure you google how to but then to actually do it is a whole another thing. Once again that's what makes WU so nice.
OK, so the natural way would be to not only provide the webcam page, but also to include the up-to-date weather info as well on the page for it to be complete and useful for weather stations?
Since we don't have any experience on that - would it be enough to just have a (minimal) subset of the most important weather data to start with?
And I assume just linking to WU from our (future) webcam page would not be enough, since most people would land on the WU page since it is already established well by now?
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I would think that would be a good start. But if wu continues their program as stated why would you want to offer this service? There has to be a cost associated with this service.
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I would think that would be a good start.
OK, interesting. So, taken all the different statistics and weather data currently available on WU, is there something that could be left out for the moment (to make it easier and faster to setup)?
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I guess one of things for me that makes WU nice is I'm able to tell my friends about WU and they can go check our weather compared to what is in their neck of the woods. Now I tried your webcams but there's no way I could find to find a particular webcam. You're just posting everyone's photo or stream with no way to find one. So I can't tell my friends to go to webcam.io and find my photo showing a swimming pool in South Texas when they are in 12° weather in Nebraska.
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I would think that would be a good start. But if wu continues their program as stated why would you want to offer this service? There has to be a cost associated with this service.
Sure, it all depends on whether WU can walk their talk...
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One other thing, though - in case we actually would also include all (important) weather data. Since we probably will not reuse or resell any weather data, we would need to make it profitable as it is - mainly by using advertising.
Would this be a problem for the majority of the weather station owners? Because if we would make it ad free for 10 USD per year, we most probably could not finance the service.
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I'd be glad to pay the $10. I already pay WU to be ad free.
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I'd be glad to pay the $10. I already pay WU to be ad free.
You do? I have never paid and was grandfathered in. Maybe that's why some can no longer send images. Non payers.
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I paid $10 in order to upload my data and have ad-free access when I first joined WU in 2006. Have never had to pay since then and am still ad-free. But, as Randy says, I also am unable to upload my webcams any more. I have had one webcam linked to Lookr for a number of years now, but they pull the image from my website, not FTP.
Mark
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Yes I paid until I put up a personal weather station and then I would no longer was assessed that fee.
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I started sending them data from Arizona station, Oct. 21 2003.
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My weather webcam is now re-displaying on WU via the FTP method.
I did re-edit my webcam settings yesterday, which triggered their "review the webcam" process, which may have re-activated my FTP login credentials.
Of course the other problem is dealing with Firefox 57's termination of support for Foscam's plugin. I have other means to control the camera, but it is just another irritation.
Re to Webcams.Travel ... I can push my weather webcam image to multiple sites, so if you or other sites did choose to host weather webcams it is not a WU or Webcams.Travel but not both kind of thing.
But as perhaps many have pointed out ... there are some essential features ... such as an obvious link button that would take viewers of the webcam to the weather site (be it WU or some other 3rd party weather site or even a personal site).
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I would think that would be a good start. But if wu continues their program as stated why would you want to offer this service? There has to be a cost associated with this service.
You are absolutely right about that. And from what I hear, WU magically fixed (all) their webcam issues and the cams are up and running again on WU - can anyone confirm that as well?
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FTP server is running again. Don't know if it has anything to do with it but I sent email asking for some answers for the Forum and like magic it's back up. Never got any response to email.
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FTP server is running again. Don't know if it has anything to do with it but I sent email asking for some answers for the Forum and like magic it's back up. Never got any response to email.
Is your WU cam still working? I just heard that WU has some webcam problems currently.
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Mine is not working. In fact, I don't even have a webcam listed on WU anymore.
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What about the others? Is your WU webcam working? And if not - are you still patient with WU or would you be willing to switch to another, reliable service?
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I am in the same boat as all these people. WU says I no longer have any webcams. Pretty much fed up with WU.
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=33510.0
Mark
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I am in the same boat as all these people. WU says I no longer have any webcams. Pretty much fed up with WU.
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=33510.0
Mark
We will soon start a second survey, in order to re-evaluate the current need for a free webcam FTP upload. And whether you will also need to upload your weather data with it (or not).
If you want to get an invitation to the upcoming survey, just leave your email address in the current survey:
https://goo.gl/qYecdc
Thank you.
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I've not tried the FTP option - partly because I'm FTP-ing to my own site already. (I could kluge up something of course.) The URL approach has been working with WU for years but has stopped of late. That option is still available, though the maintenance page has been very flaky for me - sometimes only the header renders in Chrome when I try to load it.
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The image I upload is unchanged from a process perspective, and still uploading reliably to http://www.dillys.org/WX/NW_05.jpg (which is 50% of the native camera image for WU's benefit). I create my own, rather large videos as gifs, so I am quite sure the images have been there. I just added some additional logging to further verify the reduced image is updated every 5 minutes. It has been.
I'm also having issues with the WX data which have gotten way worse over the past week or so. A report about the camera has gone unanswered for several days. Certainly leaves me with the strong impression that Weather Underground is running on auto-pilot at best...
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I've not tried the FTP option - partly because I'm FTP-ing to my own site already. (I could kluge up something of course.) The URL approach has been working with WU for years but has stopped of late. That option is still available, though the maintenance page has been very flaky for me - sometimes only the header renders in Chrome when I try to load it.
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The image I upload is unchanged from a process perspective, and still uploading reliably to http://www.dillys.org/WX/NW_05.jpg (which is 50% of the native camera image for WU's benefit). I create my own, rather large videos as gifs, so I am quite sure the images have been there. I just added some additional logging to further verify the reduced image is updated every 5 minutes. It has been.
I'm also having issues with the WX data which have gotten way worse over the past week or so. A report about the camera has gone unanswered for several days. Certainly leaves me with the strong impression that Weather Underground is running on auto-pilot at best...
Thanks for this interesting info. So, if you have your webcam running on an URL already, you could also use https://weathercloud.net/ instead of WU to upload your weather data and add your webcam image by URL there. Would this be an option for you? And if not, why?
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Thanks! I took a quick look around the site and I'll dig further. I note there are not many stations from my area reporting.
I'm running Cumulus MX on a Pi and it supports Weathercloud directly. I admit I have rather uncritically stuck with Weather Underground because that's where I started (when there were less options). I hadn't even thought about posting to any other site until the start of 2018 - but since Cumulus makes it easy, I may post to several sites going forward. If time allows I may try out Weathercloud later today.
Since I'm running a Pi 3 headless, with an SSD for data I could make that the home for images. There should be more than enough capacity, and that would offer a lot of flexibility.
Thanks for the suggestion,
Bob
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Thanks! I took a quick look around the site and I'll dig further. I note there are not many stations from my area reporting.
I'm running Cumulus MX on a Pi and it supports Weathercloud directly. I admit I have rather uncritically stuck with Weather Underground because that's where I started (when there were less options). I hadn't even thought about posting to any other site until the start of 2018 - but since Cumulus makes it easy, I may post to several sites going forward. If time allows I may try out Weathercloud later today.
Since I'm running a Pi 3 headless, with an SSD for data I could make that the home for images. There should be more than enough capacity, and that would offer a lot of flexibility.
Thanks for the suggestion,
Bob
Hi Bob
You are very welcome. I understand, once you have a service, you don't just switch for no reason. However, we would be really interested in what you think about https://weathercloud.net after you tried it out yourself.
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I finally got Cumulous 1 set up to upload to Weathercloud after struggling for a couple days. It worked pretty well for a while, but now it is pretty much worthless. I don't have the time or patience to figure out what is going on.
Here are two graphs for the same time frame. One is from CWOP, which was set up almost fifteen years ago and have never had to trouble shoot a thing. It is hard to see, but there are no gaps in data to CWOP. The other is from Weathercloud which was set up in December. The data gaps are all too obvious.
I realize WU is having some problems right now, which is why I did not attach a graph from them, but Weathercloud is not a replacement for me.
Mark
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Out of curiosity, how often are you uploading?
I think I read a recommendation of hourly, or every 15 minutes (not sure because I've been reading up on a number of sites). I had been uploading to WU every minute. Once I moved to a Pi, Cumulus seemed to handle it well (WU issues notwithstanding). 15X the data rate might be a factor?
Still tinkering with options... :roll:
Bob
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CWOP and Weathercloud uploads every 15 minutes, WU Rapid Fire. Last couple of days on WU have been dismal.
Mark
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I've stopped Weather Underground uploads until they pull their heads out which may be never.
Even rapid fire has turned into a joke.
I don't want hour old or even 15 minute old data out there. If not current within few minutes I see no reason to send.
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https://app.weathercloud.net/d0208473809#profile seems to be up and running, including a webcam image (from a URL)...
Thanks!
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I finally got Cumulous 1 set up to upload to Weathercloud after struggling for a couple days. It worked pretty well for a while, but now it is pretty much worthless. I don't have the time or patience to figure out what is going on.
Here are two graphs for the same time frame. One is from CWOP, which was set up almost fifteen years ago and have never had to trouble shoot a thing. It is hard to see, but there are no gaps in data to CWOP. The other is from Weathercloud which was set up in December. The data gaps are all too obvious.
I realize WU is having some problems right now, which is why I did not attach a graph from them, but Weathercloud is not a replacement for me.
Mark
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Hi Mark
Thank you very much for sharing this valuable insight!
Speaking of intervals/gaps. Do you know the interval of WU when you go further back, for example a week in 2010. Do you still have data available for every minute in 2010?
And do you need this small interval for using the data? Or is every 15min enough for the archived data to browse through?
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I've stopped Weather Underground uploads until they pull their heads out which may be never.
Even rapid fire has turned into a joke.
I don't want hour old or even 15 minute old data out there. If not current within few minutes I see no reason to send.
This is very interesting! Do you need data this frequent (for example every minute) just for the past few days, or for all your archived data way back to previous years?
And why?
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https://app.weathercloud.net/d0208473809#profile seems to be up and running, including a webcam image (from a URL)...
Thanks!
You are welcome :)
Great! So are you happy with it so far? I read in the FAQ of https://weathercloud.net/site/faq#faq-uploadfreq that the upload frequency is 10 minutes. Is that OK for you?
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I guess one of things for me that makes WU nice is I'm able to tell my friends about WU and they can go check our weather compared to what is in their neck of the woods. Now I tried your webcams but there's no way I could find to find a particular webcam. You're just posting everyone's photo or stream with no way to find one. So I can't tell my friends to go to webcam.io and find my photo showing a swimming pool in South Texas when they are in 12° weather in Nebraska.
Speaking of comparing different weather stations with each other. Is that currently an easy thing to do on WU or could this be improved? For example by having and comparing the data of different stations in the same graph?
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I guess one of things for me that makes WU nice is I'm able to tell my friends about WU and they can go check our weather compared to what is in their neck of the woods. Now I tried your webcams but there's no way I could find to find a particular webcam. You're just posting everyone's photo or stream with no way to find one. So I can't tell my friends to go to webcam.io and find my photo showing a swimming pool in South Texas when they are in 12° weather in Nebraska.
Speaking of comparing different weather stations with each other. Is that currently an easy thing to do on WU or could this be improved? For example by having and comparing the data of different stations in the same graph?
When WU is running properly I think it's pretty easy to compare weather stations. I set up my favorites and you click and go and check the weather conditions and forecast for that area. That's when it's up and running properly. There are some other options but to me not as user-friendly. There's weatherforyou.com, and weathercloud.net.
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When WU is running properly I think it's pretty easy to compare weather stations. I set up my favorites and you click and go and check the weather conditions and forecast for that area. That's when it's up and running properly. There are some other options but to me not as user-friendly. There's weatherforyou.com, and weathercloud.net.
OK, I see. So you can navigate through your favorites list. And it is enough for you to look at each station seperately, you don't need to see them all together at once to compare?
Do you look more often at your own station or at others?
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Hi Mark
Thank you very much for sharing this valuable insight!
Speaking of intervals/gaps. Do you know the interval of WU when you go further back, for example a week in 2010. Do you still have data available for every minute in 2010?
And do you need this small interval for using the data? Or is every 15min enough for the archived data to browse through?
In 2010 I was not able to use the Rapid Fire upload to WU due to the software I was using and low internet speed. In 2014 I got a VP2+ and began using Cumulous for uploading to WU with Rapid Fire. I have always archived my data on 15-minute intervals. This is a screenshot of my archived data from Oct. 3, 2015.
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Prior to sometime between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3, 2015, WU also archived my data on 15-minute intervals, even though I was uploading data via Rapid Fire. As you can see from this screenshot, they started archiving the Rapid Fire data on 5-minute intervals. This was nice, but I am okay with 15-minute intervals for historical data. The reason I like Rapid Fire from WU, when you check your weather on their app, it is usually only seconds old. I don't want to know the weather 15 minutes or an hour ago, I want to know what it is now.
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I am hopeful that WU gets their act back together. The webcams are nice, but I care more about the weather. By the way, you have one of my webcams on your site.
Mark
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When WU is running properly I think it's pretty easy to compare weather stations. I set up my favorites and you click and go and check the weather conditions and forecast for that area. That's when it's up and running properly. There are some other options but to me not as user-friendly. There's weatherforyou.com, and weathercloud.net.
OK, I see. So you can navigate through your favorites list. And it is enough for you to look at each station seperately, you don't need to see them all together at once to compare?
Do you look more often at your own station or at others?
I also periodically quickly compare the current observation of my PWS with several others nearby to make sure something isn't radically wrong. That's map-based, quick, and informal. I hadn't thought about a tool. It might be interesting to see how stations in a small area "track" over some period of time.
That said, at the moment I have temps from 2 devices about 50' apart which differ by about 4°F. Typically the difference is only 1°. In my younger days I spent a lot of time on a motorcycle. One striking thing to me while riding on back road with twists and turns and over hill and dale is how abruptly the temperature could change. So such comparisons between nearby PWSs may not, in fact, be all that illuminating?
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Prior to sometime between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3, 2015, WU also archived my data on 15-minute intervals, even though I was uploading data via Rapid Fire. As you can see from this screenshot, they started archiving the Rapid Fire data on 5-minute intervals. This was nice, but I am okay with 15-minute intervals for historical data. The reason I like Rapid Fire from WU, when you check your weather on their app, it is usually only seconds old. I don't want to know the weather 15 minutes or an hour ago, I want to know what it is now.
Thank you very much, Mark. It is interesting that a 15min archive would be OK for you, but that you like the rapid fire update for the current conditions. I wonder if others see it the same way.
Yes, maybe WU will solve all their problems, who knows. However, we will soon launch a survey about a WU alternative. If enough people are on board, we will launch a (properly working) WU alternative, tailored for all the weather enthusiasts out here ;)
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https://app.weathercloud.net/d0208473809#profile seems to be up and running, including a webcam image (from a URL)...
Thanks!
You are welcome :)
Great! So are you happy with it so far? I read in the FAQ of https://weathercloud.net/site/faq#faq-uploadfreq that the upload frequency is 10 minutes. Is that OK for you?
I'm fine with 10 minutes. I have my own site which I can update more often. I did notice a few small gaps in the data, several where only some parameters appear to have been skipped. In one case my log says "The Task was canceled" when an entire record seemed missing. 3 other cases of partial data over about 18 hours are evident.
Note: There have been a few occasions when pressure or temperature have changed abruptly since I've been monitoring. Those are interesting phenomena - but are rare. I do have more granular local data I can refer to if I wish.
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I'm fine with 10 minutes. I have my own site which I can update more often. I did notice a few small gaps in the data, several where only some parameters appear to have been skipped. In one case my log says "The Task was canceled" when an entire record seemed missing. 3 other cases of partial data over about 18 hours are evident.
Note: There have been a few occasions when pressure or temperature have changed abruptly since I've been monitoring. Those are interesting phenomena - but are rare. I do have more granular local data I can refer to if I wish.
Thank you for your feedback.
So, for the archive, an update frequency of 10 minutes is perfectly OK, while for the current weather data, rapid fire (live) weather data would be appreciated - does this sound like a good product fit?
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Thank you for your feedback.
So, for the archive, an update frequency of 10 minutes is perfectly OK, while for the current weather data, rapid fire (live) weather data would be appreciated - does this sound like a good product fit?
Sure. For my part, I have been uploading to WU once / minute. My inexpensive PWS only gets a transmission from the sensor array every 48 sec (according to the specs). The barometer doesn't rely on RF so it could update more frequently, but once per minute for outdoor data is around the same order of magnitude as the RF transmissions. (Rapid fire doesn't add much over that in my case.)
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As promised, here is the survey about a WU alternative. Please let us know here whether you are currently satisfied with WU and if you would like us to build an improved alternative - or not:
https://goo.gl/cZ5DNs
Here are some screenshots of how the new service might look like:
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