Which of the 3 Weatherflow integrations should I be using?

1

Question for anyone else using a Tempest weather station

Before, there was the briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt integration and everything worked well. I got it, it worked, and I have many automations based on it. Life was simple

Then, the notice for “Some MQTT entities have an entity name that starts with the device name” which means the add-on would need to be updated/changed. I’ve been following the issue on Github and its still open

Since then, the official Weatherflow integration has come out and I’ve just been waiting and watching

Well, now there is also briis/weatherflow_forecast which seems to do the same stuff as briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt but with fixes I guess?

I am on version 3.2.1 briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt

I am on HA 2023.9.3

Questions:

  • Can I update the briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt to 3.2.2 without breaking anything?
  • Can I update from HA 2023.9.3 to 2023.10.5 without breaking anything?
  • Should I move to the official integration?
  • Will briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt be updated and fixed?
  • Is briis/weatherflow_forecast the replacement for briis/hass-weatherflow2mqtt?

Apologies if these are stupid questions, I have been pretty busy and have not kept up with this. I’m not a mega power user of Weatherflow, so a lot of the features and forecast are not important for me, I just use LUX and temps and other basic measurements

Looking to find the most stable and simple path forward

2

The Bris one is being depreciated in favor of using the core integration and then a new HACS install for the sensors that are missing from core, so it boils down to using core in the and (and even his Git says don’t install this) then adding the HACS extension that’s in development.

Since the forecast fiasco sent my HA in a tailspin because of how many things I had tied to it, I decided at that time to simply create a template weather entity that referenced the values from one of four different weather integrations and I tied all my HA stuff to my new template entity - that way if and when something like this changes that has such a drastic impact on my system I only have to modify that template and all is right in the world again.

This is just the beginning of it, but the same logic is applied to each template sensor:

platform: template
name: Smart Weather Hourly
unique_id: 8c37cc08-4647-481f-8229-21e780acb9e2
condition_template: >-
  {% if states('weather.weatherflow_hourly_based_forecast') not in ['unavailable','unknown'] %}
    {{ states('weather.weatherflow_day_based_forecast') }}  
  {% elif states('weather.openweathermap') not in ['unavailable','unknown'] %}
    {{ states('weather.openweathermap') }}
  {% elif states('weather.accuweather') not in ['unavailable','unknown'] %}
    {{ states('weather.accuweather') }}    
  {% elif states('weather.kapa_daynight') not in ['unavailable','unknown'] %}
    {{ states('weather.kapa_daynight') }}    
  {% endif %}
1 Like
3

Thank you, it sounds like for me the core integration alone should be fine. I’ll try add it in side by side with the existing add-on so I can just modify my automations as needed. Hopefully it will work to have both

Perhaps going a bit off topic, but what automations do you have that utilize the forecast?

4

You can not run them side-by-side, you have to take the dive and totally remove yours first because they both share the same domain.

For my forecast automations I actually have all kinds, here’s a few off the top of my head:

  • Do I need to plug in the heater on my diesel truck because it’s going to be below freezing tomorrow?
  • If rain is forecasted, when? This announces when I wake up “there is an X% chance of rain that could start as soon as Y”
  • Are the next four days clear of precipitation? If so I schedule some things. I also use the Car Wash HACS add on for this, which is pointed to the same “Smart Weather” template
  • What is the humidity throughout the day? This with wet bulb and other factors calculate how effective my evaporative cooler will be on hot days and if I need to mitigate in the morning to stay cool at the heat of the day (i.e., close all curtains, stuff like that)

I use the heck out of weather data!

5

Well you just saved me some time, I had just fired up Wireshark to confirm that the UDP broadcast was hitting HA (It is) since the official integration was failing

6

Then you are better off than me, mine is not reporting back to me, already commented on the Git issues to see what I can do BEFORE I have a coronary after trying to make it work unsuccessfully!

7

Could your AP be filtering out UDP broadcast traffic?

8

I don’t think so, I say that because the HA is hard wired, my Mac is hard wired and the WF is still wifi so if there was an issue with my Orbi not wanting to pass UDP then my Mac wouldn’t get it either it absolutely gets the packet:

{"serial_number":"ST-000XXXXX","type":"rapid_wind","hub_sn":"HB-000XXXXX","ob":[1698691244,1.22,39]}

Honestly I wouldn’t have gone down this road if you hadn’t posted, I figured I would check how the core integration works before thinking about pulling the trigger. Here lately updates to HA have been burning me pretty bad so now I’m performing more due diligence.