Recent Posts

1

LawnCheck Introductory FAQ / Does LawnCheck use Local Weather forecasts to alter irrigation?

« Last post by Jim on May 29, 2021, 01:40:38 pm »

Yes.  LawnCheck uses localized weather forecasts to alter or block your irrigation programs.  You can control the effect of the weather forecasts on your irrigation programs by setting thresholds for temperatures and precipitation probability.

LawnCheck supports OpenWeather and Weather Underground's Contributor feed to receive local weather information and forecasts.

See our weather help page for more information.

2

Weather Setup and Weather Dependent Cycles / OpenWeather weather feed

« Last post by Jim on May 29, 2021, 01:20:17 pm »

We have recently updated LawnCheck to support the OpenWeather weather feed.  OpenWeather provides accurate weather forecasts worldwide.   

To use OpenWeather you need to obtain an access key and supply a Latitude and Longitude coordinate for your location.   

Please see our weather setup page for information on obtaining a free access key.

A Latitude and Longitude coordinate can be easily obtained from Google Maps.    Open Google maps and click on a location until you see a small panel at the bottom of the page that contains coordinates.  Then click on the coordinates (they are linked).  A panel will open on  the left of the screen.  Select the coordinates and copy them (Cntl-C for windows) and then paste the coordinates into the OpenWeather Location field in LawnCheck.   Select the "Use OpenWeather" check box, then click save.    If you enter coordinates manually make sure to separate the values with a comma.

An example coordinate for San Jose CA is:  37.313372, -121.984729

OpenWeather offers a weather forecast including current conditions, temperatures, and PoP (probability of precipitation) so it is very useful for controlling near term irrigation cycles.  Like most weather forecasts, it does not provide rain gauge information.

3

Weather Setup and Weather Dependent Cycles / Yahoo! Weather API is being terminated

« Last post by Jim on May 29, 2021, 01:09:11 pm »

Yahoo! is terminating the Y! Weather API  which is sad because it provided great information for a long long time.  If you have selected Yahoo Weather please choose a different weather provider. 

OpenWeather is recommended if you don't have a weather station.   

If you have a weather station that can upstream data to Weather Underground then get a PWS contributors key and use Weather Underground!

4

LawnCheck Introductory FAQ / Public Registration Disabled

« Last post by Jim on May 29, 2021, 01:02:38 pm »

Public registration to this forum is disabled.  If there is a topic that you would like to address or a question that you wish to have answered please send it to us via email.  We will answer your email and post the answer in the forum.   

If you wish to register for the forum please contact us via email and we can register you manually.

 

Thanks

5

New Questions, Ask Your Questions Here / Re: Weather Setup with Location

« Last post by Jim on August 02, 2019, 06:45:24 am »

Hello jaytayformn,
Thanks for your questions.
1.  WOEID -  Yahoo! Weather and WOEID  continue to work through LawnCheck.   Here's how to get a WOEID if you don't already have one:

Go to the Yahoo! Weather Page.  Once there, click "Change Location," and enter your city and state.  Select from the list provided.   

Your WOEID will be found at the end of the URL in your browser URL bar.  For example, for San Jose, CA, the URL will show:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather/united-states/california/san-jose-2488042

and the WOEID is  2488042

Copy and paste only the WOEID portion of the URL into the WOEID field provided in the LawnCheck weather setup page.


2.  WeatherUnderground -  If you have a weather station and if you have an account to send data to WeatherUnderground through your personal weather station then you can request a PWS key from WeatherUnderground.  Enter this key in the field provided in LawnCheck weather setup to allow LawnCheck to retrieve weather for your account.

3.  We currently support DarkSky as it provides weather internationally and may look at others in the future if needed.


Hope this answers your question.

6

New Questions, Ask Your Questions Here / Weather Setup with Location

« Last post by jaytaylormn on June 21, 2019, 03:18:42 am »

So I'm looking for some help with setting up weather.  I tried looking for my Yahoo! WOEID and that appears to now be deprecated.  The various sites that I visited to find my location returned nothing for any valid inputs.  I was using weather underground with a personal key because I have a weather station, but it looks like there are no more free api keys.  I've setup Dark Sky with my lat/long so we'll see how that works out.  After a quick search about api keys on weather underground, it looks like the new place to go is https://www.pwsweather.com/ No point in giving wunderground/IBM your weather data if they won't return the favor.

Does Yahoo Weather still work?  How do I get my id?

Has IBM pretty much killed off the wunderground api access without payment?

Thanks,
Jay

7

Weather Setup and Weather Dependent Cycles / Which weather feed should you use? (2021)

« Last post by Jim on March 07, 2019, 02:45:54 pm »

LawnCheck supports OpenWeather, Weather Underground Contributor's Feed, and DarkSky weather.   All feeds provide accurate, to-the-hour, local weather conditions and forecasts on a worldwide basis.  So which one should you use?

If you can get a low cost weather station that can stream to Weather Underground then you can get a Contributors Key from Weather Underground.  You can then access weather data from Weather Underground using either your weather station or any other.  Weather Underground uses data from your selected station along with a professional forecast overlay to provide an excellent local weather data source.

OpenWeather and DarkSky provide similar high quality weather data.  Both services use base data drawn from national weather services, and they enhance based on their own meteorological knowledge.   Both provide PoP (Probability of Precipitation) forcasts for today and tomorrow.

DarkSky has been purchased by Apple Computer and so while it remains on-line, it is possible that they terminate their existing API.   If you don't use Weather Underground then OpenWeather is recommended.

Please see our weather setup page for more info.

8

Weather Setup and Weather Dependent Cycles / Yahoo Weather Forecast Usage Enchancement

« Last post by Jim on March 07, 2019, 02:21:36 pm »

Yahoo has recently notified us (May 2021) that they will be terminating the Y! Weather API.   

Yahoo recently updated their weather API  (February 2019)  so we updated our weather requesting code to use their new feed.    In addition to using their new feed, we also enhanced the use of the weather forecasts provided by Yahoo for better control of irrigation.

The old Weather Underground (WU) feed was very powerful because it provided a forecast for PoP (Probability of Precipitation) and also provided local rain gauge information - if you subscribed to a station that had a rain gauge.  This allowed us to easily provide an option to block irrigation based on a PoP threshold that you set.   And it also allowed us to block irrigation if the rain gauge met a settable threshold, for both today and yesterday - because we saved the rain gauge data for one day.   So WU provided good data to block based on forecast and actual precipitation but this feed is no longer available.

We have noticed throughout the years a strong correlation between certain Yahoo forecast daily condition codes and high PoP values in the WU and other forecasts.   When the Yahoo daily condition code shows precipitation that corresponds to high PoP forecasts from other services, generally 50% or above.   So we have recently enhanced the Yahoo feed to use their daily condition codes to be able to block cycles if the codes for today and tomorrow contain precipitation.    This greatly enhances the use of Yahoo weather to reduce irrigation if rain is on the horizon.   

Please see our weather setup page for more info.

The Yahoo daily condition codes have worked extremely well in blocking cycles during this year's (2019) very wet winter and spring in northern California.
   

9

New Questions, Ask Your Questions Here / How Can I Post a Question to the Forum?

« Last post by Jim on February 23, 2019, 05:30:52 pm »

The forum is subject to a huge amount of robot traffic that attempts to gain access to post spam.   So we require authorization prior to allowing a new account to be registered.

If you wish to post a question and want to register for an account on the forum please contact us via email before registering.  We will then clear out all of the spam requests and will notify you.  You can then register and we'll be able to find your registration to approve it.

Sorry for this inconvenience.

Thanks

10

Feature Requests / Re: Increased polling frequency during manual mode

« Last post by Jim on February 23, 2019, 05:09:09 pm »

The ZonePopper apps are now available for both iPhone and Android.  These provide immediate local control of your EtherRain for both valve testing and running manual cycles.  This is the best solution in this era of the smart phone (or tablet).

ZonePopper for iPhone
ZonePopper for Android