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Talking NWS Weather Forecast

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eclectic-tech
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Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by eclectic-tech »

Talking NWS Weather Forecast (U.S.A. Only)
NWS1.png

With the apparent lose of WUnderground's feed, I looked for alternate sources and decided to develop a version based on the National Weather Service's data. They make text only forecasts available for the U.S.A., but unfortunately not for other countries. This package will show temperature graphs for any weather.com location, but no forecast for locations outside the U.S.A.

A Locator (based on JSMorley's WXDataWeatherLocator) is included to set your location and obtain the forecast, if available for your region, and temperatures and conditions for the coming week.

Comments Welcomed!

V 2.2019.01.26.2
Modified to use 'Updated' Speech plugin V 1.1.0.0 by JSMorley
Removed 'MSSpeak Addon ... This reduced the package by over 95%! Thanks Jeff :thumbup:
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MikeG621
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Joined: March 18th, 2013, 1:59 pm

Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by MikeG621 »

Yeah, the WU feed sometimes just borks itself, or they change the format for a day or two. It's pretty annoying, as that means I maintain 2 or 3 sets of WebParser measures, depending the current feed format. The outage is normally temporary; mine is working right now but I also use the normal RSS, not the API feed.
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eclectic-tech
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Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by eclectic-tech »

MikeG621 wrote: January 28th, 2019, 6:09 pm Yeah, the WU feed sometimes just borks itself, or they change the format for a day or two. It's pretty annoying, as that means I maintain 2 or 3 sets of WebParser measures, depending the current feed format. The outage is normally temporary; mine is working right now but I also use the normal RSS, not the API feed.
From what I can see the RSS feed is going to be stopped Feb 15, 2019.
So I went a totally different direction and scrape a text-only page from the National Weather Service. Sadly this means forecast are only available for US territories. I don't like to "scrape webpages" for the reason you mention; any slight change to the site code will cripple the skin.

But with the WU feed apparently disappearing, I figured some forecast is better than none. :D
SCR
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Joined: April 15th, 2015, 11:13 pm

Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by SCR »

I agree with your assessment of Forecasts "some better then none."

Thank you for making this available.
MikeG621
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Joined: March 18th, 2013, 1:59 pm

Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by MikeG621 »

Just popping back here to point out that so far the last Wunderground version you posted is still working, as is my other Wunderground RSS skin. So I'm not sure if they just didn't pull the plug, or if they were shutting down something else the skins aren't using.

That said, with the current version did you fix the refresh issue where I don't know if it's a timeout that's causing it but the chart and temps can disappear, then when the temps do come back the chart doesn't requiring you to use the arrows to force the refresh?
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eclectic-tech
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Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by eclectic-tech »

MikeG621 wrote: March 4th, 2019, 3:18 pm Just popping back here to point out that so far the last Wunderground version you posted is still working, as is my other Wunderground RSS skin. So I'm not sure if they just didn't pull the plug, or if they were shutting down something else the skins aren't using.

That said, with the current version did you fix the refresh issue where I don't know if it's a timeout that's causing it but the chart and temps can disappear, then when the temps do come back the chart doesn't requiring you to use the arrows to force the refresh?
Are you talking about the WU skin or this NWS version? :confused:
I am not able to duplicate your scenario here, so I haven't looked into making any changes.

I do not see a reason to modify the WU version with the looming lose of that data. :x
If time permits, I will keep this in mind, but can't say if I will be able to change how it currently works. :)
MikeG621
Posts: 87
Joined: March 18th, 2013, 1:59 pm

Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by MikeG621 »

I wasn't asking for a fix to the WU version, I consider it obsolete/unsupported and I'm just using it until I can't :D

I was merely wondering if you noticed the behavior in general and addressed it in the current NWS version, but if you haven't even seen that behavior then I suppose that's a "no". I admit I haven't done much troubleshooting, so I don't know if it's something on my end, WU, the skin itself, or even if I'll see the same thing using the NWS version.

So don't worry about it, if I get really bored one day I may try to solve it but it's not that big of a deal :thumbup:
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eclectic-tech
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Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by eclectic-tech »

MikeG621 wrote: March 5th, 2019, 3:21 pm I wasn't asking for a fix to the WU version, I consider it obsolete/unsupported and I'm just using it until I can't :D

I was merely wondering if you noticed the behavior in general and addressed it in the current NWS version, but if you haven't even seen that behavior then I suppose that's a "no". I admit I haven't done much troubleshooting, so I don't know if it's something on my end, WU, the skin itself, or even if I'll see the same thing using the NWS version.

So don't worry about it, if I get really bored one day I may try to solve it but it's not that big of a deal :thumbup:
Gotcha! :great:
I will keep an eye out for anything unusual on either skin, but so far they both are working. 8-)
MikeG621
Posts: 87
Joined: March 18th, 2013, 1:59 pm

Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by MikeG621 »

Aaaaand, WU's dead. Looks like I spoke too soon, both yours and my standard WU skin died last night (the link fails and redirects to somewhere in Finland if I put it in a browser :p) and the one here at work (different city) is also dead. Oh well, guess I have some work to do.
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jsmorley
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Re: Talking NWS Weather Forecast

Post by jsmorley »

Free RSS/ATOM feeds of information that can be "monetized" by selling API keys to apps, or forcing you to view on a web page with advertising, are an endangered species. I wouldn't count on ANY of them, even WXData, lasting forever.