Bloomsky Weather Station

Yesterday, after I noticed my BS was down, we had a crazy storm here. Lots of trees down. A large branch dented my house, wood pile blew over, grill blew over, 5+ hour power outage, etc…

But I’m happy to report that my bloomsky is still properly mounted and doesn’t appear to have budged. I was certain it was going to be gone.

1 Like

I’m surprised how stable the mounts are. The only “problem” I have is sometimes the BS would rotate (the stake within the mount hole) just slightly when the wind blows. I need to firmly re-seat it … or epoxy it down, LOL.

I can’t remember what size hole I drilled into 4x4 & drove the mounting stake into it. AFAIK , it has never moved in almost 2 years

1 Like

I used the mount that it came with. It is mounted near the roofline and the stake just sits in the mount if I remember right. There might have been a hand turned tightener, I don’t remember and it isn’t something I can look at easily.

Regardless, again - impressed with the mount. I believe someone up thread said you can get BS for $40 now? I think that’s a great deal.

Price went back up to $70. Also, mine hasn’t moved since I got it long ago either.

In IFTTT, I only see an option to save the daily timelapse to dropbox.
How are you doing just the latest pic?

Strange… maybe BS pulled it?

image

Edit: Found it… Choose trigger > Device uploads new data

1 Like

Thanks!
Even better, there is now an option for when it uploads new image. :slight_smile:
I’m on it…

@eibyer
OK, now I’m stupid again…

I am in the process of creating the applet.
I have my BloomSky connected to my IFTTT.
I have my DropBox connected to my IFTTT.
I did the ‘IF THIS’ step just fine, but now at the ‘THEN THAT’ step, it’s not giving me an option to upload a file other than from a URL…

Is there another way of doing this, or has it changed since you did it?

It’s been a while since I set this up… select Add file from URL

Cool stats!
image

1 Like

Doh! Thanks.
I simply avoided that option, because I knew I wasn’t able to grab the image from a URL. lol

That part is now working.
So, I’m on to the next step… :slight_smile:

UPDATE:
Ooo…HEY!! :slight_smile:
I just noticed that the URL that IFTTT is grabbing the image from seems to be persistent from one upload to the next.
Is that true, or is it only appearing that way to me right now because it’s after sunset and no new images are actually getting uploaded, and just the same one is there all the time now until the next ‘real’ image gets uploaded tomorrow morning?

I think it’s best to mess with it in the morning when you get your new images. In all honesty, I never paid attention to the URL and just watched the new images being loaded.

1 Like

Makes sense.

UPDATE:
I found a different way of going about the step of getting the file from DropBox to the web server space…

I heard of someone else using something called Wappwolf. I searched for it, found it, connected my DropBox account, and created an ‘Automation’ in there.

First-off, I configured my IFTTT applet to append the timestamp to the name of the image file when it uploads it to my DropBox. Then…

My Wappwolf automation does the following:

  1. Rename the file to that which the ActionTiles Media link will be looking for.
  2. Copy the file to my web space.
  3. Delete the original file in the DropBox space.

I’m not opposed to using something running on a local system (I have many systems up all the time), but I figured, if I can have something else do it, I might as well off-load it. So, this Wappwolf option suits me better.

Here’s the link to Wappwolf…
http://wappwolf.com/dropboxautomator

@eibyer Thanks again for your assistance with this! :slight_smile:

I have to look at wappwolf again, I don’t remember why I didn’t go that route because that was the first thing that kept coming up when I was researching auto-renaming files in dropbox.

1 Like

I think I may have just figured out why you skipped Wappwolf…
I knew tehre was a limit to the free version, but I forgot about it until the notification I just got; alerting me tot he fact that I exceeded the limit, and that my automations will be disabled for the next 24 hours.

Now I will check to see if there is a way of limiting how often it fires (or an alternative to Wappwolf)…


UPDATE1:

OK, now I’m playing with Microsoft Flow…
https://us.flow.microsoft.com

The advantage with Flow over Wappwolf is that the free version allows 750 runs per month, which works out to ~25 per day; whereas Wappwolf only allows 10 per day.

Aw-nuts! I thought had Flow working, but the resulting file in the FTP destination is blank.
Later, I will do a little research to see if I can get it working properly, but I’m out of time for now.

Does anyone know this…
With SmartThings/IFTTT integration, is it possible to turn an Applet ON/OFF programatically?
If so, I could configure the IFTTT Applet to only be ON between sunrise and sunset.
This would allow me to increase the frequency of Flow runs (not by much, but better than just once per hour).


UPDATE2:

@eibyer

I finally decided to actually try the PHP script (links below) that’s out there, and it works PERFECTLY (much simpler and easier than trying to do it with a complex mash of online services and locally running apps and services, etc)!

With this method, the only catch is that your webspace needs to support PHP; most do now days. So, give it a try…if it works, you’re good to go. :slight_smile:

VERY-basic-instructions:
For anyone (like me) with multiple BloomSky units, you will need to
(if you only have a single BloomSky unit, just ignore step 3)

  1. Create a separate copy of the script for each BloomSky unit

  2. Insert your BloomSky API key where it says in the script

  3. In the line like this…
    $imageURL = $data[1][‘Data’][‘ImageURL’];
    …the numerical value represents which BloomSky unit the image is being grabbed from.
    The first one in your account will be digit 0, and the second one will be the digit 1, and so on.

  4. Upload (use plain, old notepade for editing, and ftp for uploading to make sure there is no odd formatting or anything) that PHP file to a directory in your webspace.

  5. Point the src= of wherever you’re wanting the image to this PHP file.
    i.e. in the case of those of us wanting these images on our ActionTiles Panels, etc, use the URL to this PHP file to create a new entry in ‘My Media’ (or just edit an old one), and use as normal.

Credits…

Originally shared by username Jáchym on WXforum.net
https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=28883.0

Reposted by username Johnny on Meteotemplate Forum
http://www.meteotemplate.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=160http://www.meteotemplate.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=160

1 Like

Cool, thanks! I will give this a try, good backup plan! :slight_smile:

It doesn’t look like this smartapp is going to work in the new SmartThings app. When you click on it, it just says it can’t open.

Hmmm … just tried opening the BloomSky (Conncect) “automation” in the new ST app … and it works — I can see the API settings, but I didn’t touch any of it :smile:

OK, back to using the classic ST app …

Smartapp or device handler? I got the device handler to work using the generic-moisture VID.

I can click on the device handler in the automations section of the app. But when I click on the device to view the readings, it doesn’t open.

add the highlighted part to the code

2 Likes