AppDaemon Q&A

turboc · January 20, 2017, 5:31pm

yea there are a few issues with dashboard that I haven’t gotten back to. It works, but doesn’t display some of the things the way I want them displayed. The bug hasn’t bitten me to figure them out over there yet.

But back to this topic. I have a AD app that will take a list of items from the AppDaemon config file as parameters that are the types of alerts we are interested in (so it’s configurable). It then scrolls through any alerts out there and for the ones we are interested in, it currently displays them to the log, although from there we could dump the to speech, or to a control in HA.

Sound like what we want?

turboc · January 20, 2017, 6:31pm

another thing I found that might help. In addition to the alert type, there is a significance field that could be leveraged as well.

W Warning
A Watch
Y Advisory
S Statement
F Forecast
O Outlook
N Synopsis

scadaguru · January 20, 2017, 7:12pm

Nice, this is good information but HA component is not capturing this information so it will not be available to HA or AD.
May be we can put feature request for this. Here is the link to that PDF file from Weather Underground which shows details about this significance field.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/vtec/pdfs/VTEC_explanation6.pdf

scadaguru · January 20, 2017, 7:13pm

If you don’t mind sharing that AD app will be nice.
Thanks

turboc · January 20, 2017, 7:40pm

Ok, still working on it. Trying to make sure it doesn’t duplicate alerts now and need to set up callback to repeat checks every so often.

turboc · January 20, 2017, 10:02pm

The problem is that WeatherUnderground doesn’t give the alerts a unique key. So I have to generate a repeatable unique key for each alert, build a list of the ones I have reported, and then clean it up after the alerts expire so you don’t get alerted for the same thing multiple times. Maintaining that list is giving me a little trouble at the moment. It’s the whole list/dictionary thing. I sure miss arrays. LOL

scadaguru · January 20, 2017, 10:57pm

Oh man, looks like big efforts, appreciate it but hope you are not just doing for me. I can come up something @ReneTode showed or even have custom component to get additional attributes for pws_alerts sensor to make it little more easy.
Thanks

turboc · January 21, 2017, 2:32am

Give this a try.

github.com

turboc1208/AppDaemonApps/blob/master/weatherAlert.py

###################################################################
# Weather Alert - Poll for alerts from weatherunderground and alert to HA
# Written By : Chip Cox  20JAN2017
#              
#    V0.01.1 21JAN2017 - updated to handle european data
#    V0.01.2 21JAN2017 - added configuration options 
#
###################################################################
#
# Use:
#   Add the following lines to your appDaemon config file
#     [weatherAlert]
#     module=weatherAlert
#     class=weatheralert
#     alerts = {"HEA","TOR"}
#     key = "your weather underground key"
#   * location={"city":"your city","state":"your state"}  or {"zmw":"your zmw"}`
#   * frequency=minutes between checks   ( Defaults to 15 min )
#   * title=title of persistent notification window
#

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and you may also want this as a test file. You can just change the LOGLEVEL variable to “DEBUG” to use it instead of querying weather underground.

github.com

turboc1208/AppDaemonApps/blob/master/samplealert.json

{
  "response": {
  "version": "0.1",
  "termsofService": "http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/d/terms.html",
  "features": {
  "alerts": 2
  }
  },
  "alerts": [{
  "type": "HEA",
  "description": "Heat Advisory",
  "date": "11:14 am CDT on July 3, 2012",
  "date_epoch": "1341332040",
  "expires": "8:50 PM CDT on January 23, 2017",
  "expires_epoch": "1341662400",
  "message": "\u000A...Heat advisory remains in effect until 7 am CDT Saturday...\u000A\u000A* temperature...heat indices of 100 to 105 are expected each \u000A afternoon...as Max temperatures climb into the mid to upper \u000A 90s...combined with dewpoints in the mid 60s to around 70. \u000A Heat indices will remain in the 75 to 80 degree range at \u000A night. \u000A\u000A* Impacts...the hot and humid weather will lead to an increased \u000A risk of heat related stress and illnesses. \u000A\u000APrecautionary/preparedness actions...\u000A\u000AA heat advisory means that a period of hot temperatures is\u000Aexpected. The combination of hot temperatures and high humidity\u000Awill combine to create a situation in which heat illnesses are\u000Apossible. Drink plenty of fluids...stay in an air-conditioned\u000Aroom...stay out of the sun...and check up on relatives...pets...\u000Aneighbors...and livestock.\u000A\u000ATake extra precautions if you work or spend time outside. Know\u000Athe signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Anyone\u000Aovercome by heat should be moved to a cool and shaded location.\u000AHeat stroke is an emergency...call 9 1 1.\u000A\u000A\u000A\u000AMjb\u000A\u000A\u000A",
  "phenomena": "HT",
  "significance": "Y",
  "ZONES": [
  {

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turboc · January 21, 2017, 2:39am

Not so much a big effort. Fun mostly. Our site at work is being closed later this year. As a result, there aren’t many (any) projects going on, so I have a lot of free time. This was in line with something I was doing, and it sounded fun. And it was right, it was. Let me know what else you want it to do, or whatever changes you like and we can make it happen.

scadaguru · January 21, 2017, 4:35am

Wow! that was really nice work and very involving time and efforts wise. I really appreciate it and thank you so much.
There were few hiccups but I made it. The class name “weatheralert” vs “weatherAlert” was one of issue, capital vs small ‘a’. Other then that I have module name given different. But everything is working now in debug mode with the json you provided and I see two alerts in my HA. Nice.
I will have some modifications to fit my need to do audio notifications.
One more time appreciate your help and lots of time plus efforts.
Thanks

Below are the screenshots of those two persistent notification alerts from your app.

turboc · January 21, 2017, 12:31pm

One other note, I just thought of. If you are in europe, there may be slightly different information coming from weatherunderground. Check the page I sent earlier and there is a link at the bottom showing the json output for US and one for europe. I’ll see if I can do anything to make it a little smarter and adjust based on where you are.

turboc · January 21, 2017, 12:32pm

oh and you will want to change your weatherunderground key and location information at the top. I need to move that to the config too I guess.

turboc · January 21, 2017, 1:25pm

Ok there is a new version out there that I think handles europe. Also it handles an error condition this morning where for some reason there is a header coming from weatherunderground without any alert data. Yesterday the alerts key was just “”, today it’s not there.
Look at the head ing about how to setup your AppDaemon config file now. If you are in europe you use your zmw whatever that is. The location line is going to be interpreted as a dictionary so it’s
location={“zmw”:“whatever”}
Give it a try and let me know what blows up and I’ll fix it.

rpitera · January 21, 2017, 3:32pm

This looks awesome!!! Can’t wait to try this out!

anon35356645 · January 21, 2017, 3:37pm

Is there a guide (for dumb newbs that have done HASS AIO in virtual environment) ) about how to install Appdaemon?

rpitera · January 21, 2017, 3:41pm

I installed mine in my /home/pi directory using the normal instructions in the repo and it works fine.

Some of the more experienced AD users can check in though and tell you if there is a better way.

anon35356645 · January 21, 2017, 3:53pm

so yours is in
/home/pi/appdaemon

correct?

Mine too but is not working (I do need a very dumb newb guide …)

rpitera · January 21, 2017, 3:56pm

Yep. Can you be more specific about what isn’t working? Are you getting any errors, etc?

ReneTode · January 21, 2017, 4:05pm

sorry read it wrong

you probably didnt install correct.

did you do:

sudo pip3 install .

and notice the dot at the end!!

Martin_Bernstorff · January 21, 2017, 4:12pm

@aimc Once again, thanks a lot for AppDaemon! It’s awesome.

Do you have any plans to implement a transition parameter for the turn_off method, if the given entity is a light, just like the native HASS service? Right now I’m doing a pretty hack-y work-around:

if device == "light":
         self.turn_on(self.entity, transition = 30, brightness = 0)
         time.sleep(30)
         self.turn_off(self.entity)
else:
         self.turn_off(self.args["entity"])