Wunderground about to "Shaft" PWS Data Contributors

[Feildingweather]

Poking around in the forums tonight and discover that we are all about to lose our free
API access to Wunderground. According to the forums many Private weather stations are
already abandoning the WU ship as they are not keen on providing data for a company (IBM)
that plan to sell our station data for their profit!

Reading more into the forums, monthly API data packages will start at around $800 per month.
WUnderground no longer replying to emails, forum posts or support tickets and their contact telephone numbers have been disconnected.. Sucks for paid or paying API members!

Read the official announcement here: https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/weather-underground-api-changes

According to Ken True SaratogaWX this will only affect members that use the API key found in Saratoga provided site templates and WU-Forecast.php users.

Another Link Here :http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=34443.0

What do you all think?

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[Wolfie33]

Yep, the Subject says it all !!

They obviously don't give a stuff about real weather people & are quite prepared to lose a good number,
though sad to say, they will not even notice that in the overall scheme of things.

Their data & forecast sites are constantly not responding or only in part, I'm not a fan of recent page layout changes, pretty much useless to me.

I'll continue with them until things break/stop, but meantime, I'll be looking further in to the Aeris API.

Thanks for the post Feildingweather.
Cheers

[JennyLeez]

Yep and I am looking elsewhere also.
Their forecast is mainly empty and I seem forever forcing it to update.
Their web site bails out ways too often also.
For years they have had all this free data from our PWS to do as they please. Do they want to start charging us for our own data?
I also note you can not delete your account. They own it and all your years of data!!!!!!!!
To top all that off they have removed my webcam sky image. Now that really peed me off.....lol

For those using the WU forecast on their web sites, there are other options.
I have thrown some sample pages together to give you ideas in case WU does pull the plug on us.

Metno Weather -  Sample page using tabs:
http://nzpws.net/nzwn/forecasts/wsMetnoPage.php

Yahoo Weather - Sample page - using tabs
http://nzpws.net/nzwn/forecasts/wsYahooPage.php

yr.no Weather - Sample Page using tabs
http://nzpws.net/nzwn/forecasts/wsYrnoPage.php

Yr.no appears a bit warm for us at present but thats probably my configuration but you will get the drift

These are extremely configurable re colour/font size/tabs/no tabs etc
Also the above links do not use api keys of which are just becoming a pain. I now have so many keys for different scripts its just not funny!!!!! Instead they use your lat & long or country/city location.

Please, if these links do not load let me know.

Cheers
Jenny

[itaranak18]

I'm already using 7forecast (Dark Sky) on my front page at http://www.waitaraweather.com/index.php No key just location. https://forecast7.com/en/n39d00174d24/waitara/

[beteljuice]

@JennyLeez

Your yr.no page initially gave me "data grab fail"

Subsequentially, blank fields and data date as:

Forecast data created at: Thursday 01 January 1970 - 00:00
Next update: Thursday 01 January 1970 - 00:00

[JennyLeez]

@beteljuice well it was working last night but for some reason not today. I also have the above on another server and same thing is happening. Debug is on but I can not see any problem there. Permissions are set to full.
I might change that.
http://wairoa.dynu.net/forecasts/wsYrnoPage.php

@itaranak18 your webcams are very very cool
Yes I looked at darksky but prefer metno out of them all.
I see WU forecast is currently not working ( again ).

[itaranak18]

Do you think it's possible to adapt an alternative/replacement to WU for the Easysetup Dashboard without using the WU API Key??

[Wolfie33]

Thanks Guys, an interesting range so far.
Aeris appears to have gone "paid" $25/month, with a 2 month free testing/evaluation period & option for an extra 2 month extension. (One fingered salute!)

Cheers

[JennyLeez]

Hi again Charlie,

Have a read here for that answer

http://sandaysoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=15136&start=1515#p130268

[itaranak18]

Interesting read. Thanks Jenny. Looks like all will not be lost. 

Had a fiddle with it. Check it out Waitara Smart Home Weather Station

[Wolfie33]

Looking good Charlie, well done!!

[JennyLeez]

Sure does, good one Charlie

[Wolfie33]

UPDATE: Noticed this tonight . . .
Please read an important notice to our customers:
End of Service for the Weather Underground API

We’re contacting you today to tell you about some upcoming changes to the Weather Underground (WU) API and what these changes mean for you.

The WU API has been around since 2010 to help you develop apps and websites as well as manage your Personal Weather Station data.  During that time, we’ve watched you build amazing products and visualize weather data with creativity and purpose.

Over the years, our infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the growing numbers of users coming to us for API data. We realized we needed to make changes to ensure the highest level of quality, performance and uptime for our API users.

As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Weather Underground API. The Weather Company, which acquired WU back in 2012, offers a powerful suite of enterprise-grade APIs that might be better suited to meet your scale and performance needs while offering a broader range of weather data. You can see these products here.

Here’s what you need to know going forward:

    Your subscriptions, and therefore access, will continue to work through 12/31/2018.

    If you are a paying WU API customer, you will receive a call from a representative from The Weather Company, and IBM business, to discuss transition options to other API services. If you’d like to have these conversations sooner, contact us.

    If you are a Personal Weather Station owner, you will receive more information about our plan to offer free access to the data you provide to Weather Underground. We’ll reach out once that plan has been finalized.

    For developers who use WU API data for non-commercial purposes, you will have access to a new plan for a personal use, low call volume API. Stay tuned for more details as we build this out.

    The WU Forum will continue to be the best place to connect, keep you informed, share your feedback and get your questions answered as we go through this process.


We are grateful for your commitment to Weather Underground and appreciate your understanding and support as we work through this process. These changes will allow us to continually improve our services and develop new features to keep WU a thriving place for you for many years to come.

Thanks for being part of the community.

Sincerely,

The WU Team
Tim Roche, Official Rep


Full item here:-     https://apicommunity.wunderground.com/weatherapi/topics/end-of-service-for-the-weather-underground-api
(many comments including from Ken True - Saratoga & Brian - WD)