Author Topic: Need help undertstanding and obtaining a WU API  (Read 1695 times)

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Offline SlowModem

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Need help undertstanding and obtaining a WU API
« on: February 24, 2019, 10:04:14 PM »
I want to get my Davis Vue weather station on the Alexas and Echoes I have around the house.  The Amazon Skill says I need to get an API from WU.  WU says they're ending APIs.

What are APIs?   What do they look like?  Are they station specific or can someone post one here and I can use it by adding my station number?

Any help is appreciated.
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

Offline galfert

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Re: Need help undertstanding and obtaining a WU API
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2019, 10:25:55 PM »
API's stands for Application Programming Interface. It is basically a method to have one application communicate with another application. So for example the Alexa application would talk to the Weather Underground cloud service application to do what ever is supported with that API. From a user perspective it could be as simple as just installing the right program that someone else wrote for the purpose needed without having to worry about API technical details.

In the case of Weather Underground when they talk about getting an API what they are actually referring to is getting an API key. That API key is like a password that authenticates a user to allow them to interface with the system. So in this case the API key is unique to an account. So everyone needs their own API key.

But as you mentioned WU has ended the old API key process. They have a new API. But the new API has not yet been made available to regular users. They have an existing API that is for paid business accounts. They make money on making the data available through their business API access. For personal use they said they will at some point hopefully soon, have something for us.

As for your quest to have Amazon Alexa connect to Weather Underground for data it doesn't seem like that will be possible for now. But there is another way...

I can suggest though if you have a Meteobridge that you can add the AmbientWeather.net license. I believe it is $150 one time. Then your Meteobridge gains the ability to publish data to AmbientWeather.net. This then allows your weather station to interface with Amazon Alexa. Because Ambient has a Alexa skill developed for this purpose. So Alexa can then get your station data from AmbientWeather.net. You just say "Alexa ask Ambient Weather for the weather report" (after you have configured the skill) and then you get every detail of your weather station data spoken by Alexa. You can even ask Alexa for yesterdays report or any date you want (although that was not working last I tested yet). For now I'm only able to get the current latest actual data report.

* UPDATE - March 2020 - Ambientweather.net license for Meteobridge has new lower price, now just $100

If you have a WeatherBridge, which is actually the same thing as a Meteobridge but one that was purchased from Ambient Weather then that device already has the AmbientWeather.net required license.

The new Meteobridge Nano is also sold by Ambient and they call it a WeatherBridge Nano. That is all set too with the proper license.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2020, 09:45:49 AM by galfert »
Ecowitt GW1000 | Meteobridge on Raspberry Pi
WU: KFLWINTE111  |  PWSweather: KFLWINTE111
CWOP: FW3708  |  AWEKAS: 14814
Windy: pws-f075acbe
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Offline galfert

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Re: Need help undertstanding and obtaining a WU API
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2019, 10:38:20 PM »
By the way for anyone with a Google Home (Google Assistant), AmbientWeather.net also works with that, so you can ask Google for your station weather data report.
Ecowitt GW1000 | Meteobridge on Raspberry Pi
WU: KFLWINTE111  |  PWSweather: KFLWINTE111
CWOP: FW3708  |  AWEKAS: 14814
Windy: pws-f075acbe
Weather Underground Issue Tracking
Tele-Pole

Offline SlowModem

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Re: Need help undertstanding and obtaining a WU API
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2019, 10:43:49 PM »
I have some old Davis software when I got my data logger.  I may consider playing around with that to see if it still works.  Alexa asked me about it several times.  She didn't understand that it wasn't up to date. and may not be modern enough to update.  Thanks for pitchin in with the background.  :)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
Greg Whitehead
Ten Mile, TN USA

 

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