I’ve been working on integrating weather data into my smart home setup to optimize energy usage, and I wanted to share my experiences and ask for some advice.
My Setup: I’ve connected my system to MeteoBlue to retrieve hourly sunshine forecasts. This data is crucial for managing my off-grid solar PV system. By understanding how much sunlight I’ll receive the next day, I can adjust my energy consumption accordingly—especially important during low-battery periods when I might need to start a generator.
Current Configuration: I’ve set up the HTTP binding to pull data from MeteoBlue every hour. The cache is configured to store this data, and multiple items access this cache without hitting the external API repeatedly. This setup seems efficient, but I’m curious about the specifics.
Questions: What’s the exact difference between setting updateInterval in the http.cfg file versus defining it in the item configuration? Is the cache shared across all items, meaning that even if multiple items access the same data, it only fetches once from the external source? I’d love to confirm this to ensure I’m not inadvertently causing extra traffic or load.
Parsing Process: I’ve written a rule to parse the JSON data from MeteoBlue, extracting the total sunshine time for the next day. This involves iterating through hourly data points and summing up the sunshine minutes. While this works, I’m always on the lookout for ways to optimize the code further.
Additional Info: I’m also cross-referencing data from MeteoGroup to check accuracy and considering averaging the two for better reliability. However, not many providers offer detailed sunshine data, so it’s a bit of a challenge.
Looking for Feedback: If anyone has tips on optimizing JSON parsing in rules or suggestions for improving the overall setup, I’d be grateful! Also, if there are alternative weather APIs that provide similar or better data, please let me know.
Thanks for your insights and help!