(2021-04-26, 06:29)bossanova808 Wrote: Right, well that would explain things I guess!

Where's the link to the old one - I have lost track a bit....I don't use Estuary, only Estouchy (phone, tablets) and Confluence (main machines).  I may well have stuffed it up somehow although when I search for the error your logs were showing I didn't find that code in the patcher folder, so it's a bit odd.

In the meantime, I am making (slow) progress on the BOM api side of things.

(2021-04-27, 03:01)bossanova808 Wrote: Yep so I'm in an awkward stage of mess as I rebuild everything from the ground up so for now just carry on as you were and I will fix it all up when I get through the BOM API changes, basically.  Realistically it's likely to be a few weeks as there's a lot to do and I haven't got a lot of time (business, kids, etc...)

(2021-04-28, 00:31)bossanova808 Wrote: IMPORTANT UPDATE:

There are lots of changes going on with the BOM data/services right now.  I am busy re-writing things to use the new BOM API for weather observation/forecast data.

But - also - after being able to download the radars just fine for ~10 years now, this morning instead of radar backgrounds, I see this message:

Potential automated request detected! We are making changes to our website therefore web scraping is no longer supported. Please contact us by filling in the details at http://reg.bom.gov.au/screenscraper/screenscraper_enquiry_form/ and we will get in touch with you.

Looks like I may have even more re-writing to do!  I had hoped just to release the new BOM API data part first (and am a fair way through that now) - without having to re-code the radar side of things.  But that is now looking less likely.  The message is odd as no scraping is involved in the radars, it's done with anonymous FTP as per the BOMs process for this.  But looks like they are blocking anonymous access.  I have contacted them and will see what they say, anyway...


Thus I suspect there is going to be a few weeks of breakage with OzWeather before things are working again (and I am presuming there will be public, free access to the radars again, somehow...). 
I suppose it is not surprising - 10 years is a long time to go without major changes, especially for something that scrapes, rather than uses a proper API.

So...the good news is weather data will soon use the BOM API (primarily because WeatherZone forecast data is no longer coming from the BOM it seems - and also because using an API is much better than scraping, anyway!).
The bad news is I have to find out what is going to happen with radars and that is much trickier coding so might take a while for me to work it all out. 

When the new release comes, everyone will have to re-configure the addon so that the addon knows the geohash for you location.  This will be built in, but it will mean you need to visit settings and update each of your locations to get things working again.

(2021-04-28, 04:32)bossanova808 Wrote: As trivia, I actually think the Home Assistant stuff was forked off Oz Weather years ago...I remember the dev asking about it long ago. I told him/her that that's kinda the point of open source...have at it!  I might be wrong though - it was definitely one of those home automation things, just can't remember which one...

(2021-04-28, 05:22)bossanova808 Wrote: The big question, really, is will this new JSON API remain open as it is now?  It does not seem super likely that it will, given that statement above (http://www.bom.gov.au/weather-services/announcements/). 

(2021-04-28, 06:17)bossanova808 Wrote: Re: the Home Assistant radars - how do you configure what radar to show with that?  Do you have to enter lat/long, or does it work it out from the geohash??

It looks like it has a list of radar locations in lat/long terms, actually (https://github.com/theOzzieRat/bom-radar-card/blob/9ab11e7e5ba3edffbd2ee0b4d1edcf2069baca6b/src/bom-radar-card.ts#L130) - perhaps compiled from here - http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/radar/about/radar_site_info.shtml ?

In theory one could decode the geohash to lat/long, then find the closest from that list I suppose.  But generally I'd prefer to just let the user choose the radar they want...

(2021-04-28, 07:30)bossanova808 Wrote: Yep so I have got as far as configuring it via input a location (suburb, postcode, etc) -> get back a list of geohashes, choose one, then get lat/long from that geohash.

And a function to work out distance between lat/long pairs...so yes, in short, should then be able to come up with the closes radar lat long from that list.  Meaning a one step config which is nice.

Only disadvantage is it stops people choosing a specific radar, but I think that is ok really, as really 99.99% of folks will want the default radar for the locality.

(Without a LOT of work anyway...) Kodi won't support a complex radar control like that...it will be much as it is, just more modern version thereof, if all goes to plan.  It's just an animation of frames that the addon spits out, to the standard Kodi multi-image control designed for such...obviously in a full browser environment you can do much more.   But really, I'd guess mostly the default view will be just fine.