MMM-WeatherAlerts

Gjones93

I created a module that displays active weather alerts from the openWeatherMap ‘onecall’ API.

Screenshot

JohnGalt

@Gjones93 Thanks for the module - it should be very useful. Can you tell us what constitutes an ‘alert’ that will trigger the module? I have installed the module and have no output. My location is currently under a NWS ‘Wind Advisory’, but I get no output from the module. I have also input the lat and long for a place in Alaska that currently has a blizzard warning in effect - and that still does not trigger the module. Below is the configuration I am using.

{ module: "MMM-WeatherAlerts",
      position: "bottom_bar", // top_right
      header: "Weather Alerts",
      config: {
      // See 'Configuration options' for more information.
        lat: "62.037360", // Alaska
        lon: "-163.272301", // Alaska
        apiKey: "bc95bfa26f5d55522eb3d2cd0cdc7580",
        colored: true
},
},

croc_dad72

Is there a specific lat/lon list to use, I’ve tried several different combinations and locations and I can’t get module to show?

Gjones93

@JohnGalt Thanks for checking out my module.

With regard to your question of “what constitutes an alert that will trigger the module”: the answer is any alert that is provided by the openWeatherMap one-call API. As far as “what alerts are provided by openWeatherMap”, the details are shared on their website in the section linked here. They list the following reporting agencies for the US:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Air Quality Alerts
Integrated Public Alerrt and Warning System (IPAWS)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Tsunami Warning Center
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Weather Service
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
National Weather Service - Marine Zones
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Volcano Hazard Program

I verified the behavior that you described for the lan and lon you provided. Upon further investigation, it looks like the module is performing properly, but there is no alert coming from the OpenWeatherMap API.

I am sending the OpenWeatherMap team an email with the details of the NWS Blizzard Warning and lack of a corresponding alert data from their API. I will let you know if I hear a reply.
From the testing I have done previously, it looks like the NWS has different regions that are responsible for sending their own alerts. There may be an outage from the Alaska region, specifically National Weather Service Fairbanks AK.

Unrelated to this issue, I noticed that you have the module position set to “bottom-bar”. I hadn’t tested that position until just now and the styling is not optimized for that location. I’m going to see about fixing that.

Gjones93

@croc_dad72 The module will only be visible if an alert is active for the given lat/lon. Are you expecting an active weather alert for the location you are using? If yes, can you share a lat/lon and I would be happy to investigate further?

Here is a lat/lon that currently has an active alert and the module appears with the relevant alerts; you can use these as a test:

lat: "38.93323"
lon: "-119.98435"

croc_dad72

@Gjones93 I think the issue is the one call subscription, I thought this worked with the free api or the same api at the weather forecast api.

Gjones93

@croc_dad72 If your API key is for version 3.0 of the API, then yes you would need to subscribe to their onecall API to be able to receive alert data. Unfortunate that they changed the onecall model to subscriber based.

croc_dad72

@Gjones93 Honestly, im not really sure what I have, I know I signed up for free? I also put in lat/lon for concord ms(42.4604,-71.3489), which is under an active watch and nothing is showing on my mirror? Sorry for the trouble, in relatively new to this, so im sure I did something wrong!

JohnGalt

@Gjones93: I do have it working now [I think the original issue was bad installation on my part]. FWIW, I also moved it up from the bottom bar to the top bar, and it is displaying the current wind alert at my location just fine. Thanks again.

JohnGalt

@Gjones93: BTW, when I set alertTimeFormat to absolute [overriding the default ‘relative’] - I get a black screen on the display, and the web page won’t load on the remote machine. I haven’t done any troubleshooting on this yet, but it has the feel of a module using an old library that is no longer supported…