MMM-MyWeather not working with Southern Hemisphere co-ordinates

[Jolt02]

Hi all!

Need help with an odd one. Is anyone else running into issues using MMM-MyWeather for Southern Hemisphere co-ordinates? The module gets stuck on “loading” if lat has a negative value, but works fine for negative value in longitude (eg New York with lat = 40.69 and lon = -74.25).

The response from the API as provided in the logs is fine in both instances, but it just looks like the module cant parse the json correctly and i can’t figure out why.

Sample of my config below.

modules: [
  {
    module: 'MMM-MyWeather',
    position: 'top_right',
    config: {
      apikey: 'xxxxxxxxxxxxx', 
      lat: "-22.27", // 
      lon: "133.77" , // 
      hourly: '1',
      fctext: '1',
      fcdaycount: "5",
      fcdaystart: "0",
      hourlyinterval: "3",
      hourlycount: "2",
      UseCardinals: 0,
      layout: "horizontal",
      debug : 1
    }
  },
]

[sdetweil]

@jolt02 remove the quotes from all the numbers

[Jolt02]

@sdetweil that’s not the issue though. using lat = “22.27” and “133.77” work even if the rest of numbers are in quotes.

the code above were copied and pasted the config from the module documentation. i’ve just changed the co-ordinates to be southern hemisphere co-ordinates

[sdetweil]

@jolt02 said in MMM-MyWeather not working with Southern Hemisphere co-ordinates:

  fcdaycount: "5",
  fcdaystart: "0",
  hourlyinterval: "3",
  hourlycount: "2",

but i don’t care what the author posted… those are strings, that need to be converted to numbers…

anyhow

[Jolt02]

@sdetweil 🤷‍♂️ that’s how they built the module and i’m not familiar enough with JS to go through and fix it. Thanks for trying anyways.

for what it’s worth, I ended up learning to use the console more and figured out something in the moon direction logic was broken because it was looking for there was a condition for lat >= 0. I’ve just gone through and deleted all references to moon phases in the MMM-MyWeather.js file and it’s working fine now.

probably not the most elegant of solutions, but at least it gives me way more information than “loading…”

[sdetweil]

@jolt02 said in MMM-MyWeather not working with Southern Hemisphere co-ordinates:

a condition for lat >= 0

so, to add to the prior discussion

if the user had coded lat:“-16” in config.js

the comparison would always be true comparing a string to a 0 (all ‘string’ objects would be non-zero, regardless of their content)

[harney]

try taking out the Lon And Lat and use a PWS like for me would be… Perth (IPERTH921). This usually happens when the site can’t match a co-ordinate to a location.

I have tried various modules that require Lon and Lat or area and found this happens a lot ‘down under’ as there seems to be less active locations than in the northern hemisphere.

for my mirror I used default weatherforecast and MMM-OpenmapWeather . Both of these use Open Weather map that has locations rather than co-ordinates.

MMM-MyWeather also uses locations (PWS)

[Jolt02]

@harney hello from Perth as well! how are you finding the accuracy of the OpenWeather data? I was using that initially, but found that it was telling me something different to the results from Google.

i used lat long in OpenWeather though and didnt try using the PWS so that might be the difference

[Jolt02]

@sdetweil from my very basic understanding of how it was developed, i think it was stored it as a string so that it could be concatenated? again, this is based on 5 minutes of Google-fu and no understanding of JS here

[sdetweil]

@jolt02 js will convert in either direction automatically, except if u ask, is this a number or a string

temp: 1234 is a number
temp ‘1234’ is a string
temp: ‘null’ is string
temp: null is undefined

print temp from above will do 1234, or 1234, or null, or undefined

[harney]

@jolt02 All these weather sites use data from private weather enthusiasts that have varying equipment so the accuracy will never be 100% spot on. Im using data from a Bassendean site which is in the proximity of my place. It is “close” but as there is no official BOM reading for the area, who is to say its wrong. BOM get there Temps for ‘Perth’ from their site at the airport and in the city,

I find a lot of the “Pro” sites like weather channel, Google etc are using data from sites in the northern Hemisphere. This can make it very hard to know what is the correct temp. I have an API from BOM but haven’t figured out the coding as they don;t use Json.

I would like to get data from Windy.com for cloud and wave data but that is expensive

[Saabman]

@harney thats a pitty the BOM doesnt have close data for your site.
I have found that all the regular weather providers (Open weather, darksky etc) forecasts and observations are less than adequate for Oz.

So I have been reworking the Weather Module from WallberryTheme to use Aus govs BOM data. getting observations was easier enough as they provide that in JSON format which makes it some what easy but they only provide XML data for forecasts and the format is different for every site :( so my plans to “release” my module have stalled. because it has to be customised for each site.

[harney]

@saabman yep. I have found the xml to be a problem and out of my range of knowledge. OpenWeather is close to accurate for my location for current conditions,. the particular site location uses excellent monitoring equipment, just a few degrees out, but for forecasting its not that accurate.

[sdetweil]

@harney use a lib to convert to json…

google search

nodejs xml to json

there are a few…
some let you target a specific section of the xml

[harney]

@sdetweil said in MMM-MyWeather not working with Southern Hemisphere co-ordinates:

nodejs xml to json

Thanks Sam, I will see what i can do

"John

[Saabman]

@harney

yes the XML issue was a problem but I got around that by downloading the XML then as sdetweil suggested using XLM2JS to convert the file to JSON which I could ten search for the relevant fields unfortunately its not very tidy and needs customizing for each site.

IF you want to have a look at how Ive done it the files are here
https://github.com/saabman/WallberryTheme/blob/master/WB-weather/README.md

I am not by any means a programmer - just kept hacking away at the weather module till it did what I wanted - Im sure there are better ways to do it… hopefully it is help full any way

[harney]

@saabman Legend

[Saabman]

@harney

Unfortunately BOM lately has made changes to their site which is preventing accessing their data claiming it’s scraping but they provide a JSON file which I’m accessing (for part of it anyway) so my module no longer works- I’ve changed things a couple of times to circumvent the issue but it keeps coming back so I’m going to look at other ways to access the data. One that looks promising is WillyWeather. It is a paid service based on the number of access’s billed monthly. But it appears to be very cheap - It looks like for one Magic Mirror accessing data from one weather station and radar image works out at less than $10 a year.
When accessing the BOM currently they return a message to fill in a request form and some one will make contact - I filled in their form a couple of months ago and am yet to receive a response. Maybe when they get the servers sorted out things might change….