Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/tedpearson/forecastmetrics

Get weather forecasts and write them into VictoriaMetrics (or InfluxDB), for use with Grafana dashboards. Currently supports the National Weather Service (NWS) and VisualCrossing forecast APIs.
https://github.com/tedpearson/forecastmetrics

forecast-dashboards forecast-data golang grafana national-weather-service victoriametrics visual-crossing weather

Last synced: about 3 hours ago
JSON representation

Get weather forecasts and write them into VictoriaMetrics (or InfluxDB), for use with Grafana dashboards. Currently supports the National Weather Service (NWS) and VisualCrossing forecast APIs.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# ForecastMetrics



ForecastMetrics is a tool to store forecast data from multiple

sources in VictoriaMetrics or InfluxDB.



Features:

- Hourly forecast updates written to Influx or VictoriaMetrics for multiple locations

- Http server implementing the prometheus `query_range` endpoint, allowing it to be

  used as a Prometheus data source for adhoc forecasts in Grafana.



I currently use [VictoriaMetrics](https://victoriametrics.com) as my time series database.

Because of that, this project does a few things specifically to support it:

- Writes hourly sunup information

- Uses no retention policies (not supported in VictoriaMetrics)

- No overwrite of metrics

  - Every forecast is a new tag/label, since VictoriaMetrics doesn't support overwriting

    metrics as Influx does.

  - Past data is written one data point per hour, also because overwriting data is unsupported.

  - An alternative mode can be enabled by setting `overwrite_data` to `true`

    in the config file. In this mode, there will only be one forecast series per source/location. 



#### Currently supported sources:

- National Weather Service (NWS) (US-only)

- VisualCrossing (Global)

- No other sources planned at this time, due to not meeting the below

criteria (7 day hourly forecast, reasonably priced or free)

- Open an issue if you find a worthy source!



## Usage:



### Install

- Download a binary from the latest [Release][release] if your architecture is available



      curl -O https://github.com/tedpearson/ForecastMetrics/releases/download/v4.1.0/forecastmetrics-linux-arm64



- Make the binary executable



      chmod +x forecastmetrics-linux-arm64



- If your architecture is not avaialable, you'll need to build from source:

  - Clone this repo

  - [Install Go][install-go]

  -

        cd ForecastMetrics

        go build



### Config



- Get the example application and location configs: 



      curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tedpearson/ForecastMetrics/master/forecastmetrics.example.yaml > forecastmetrics.yaml

      curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tedpearson/ForecastMetrics/master/locations.example.yaml > locations.yaml



- Modify the configs with your own values for:

  - locations

  - influxdb/victoriametrics connection

    - if using influxdb, you may set `overwrite_data` to `true`, creating only a single series for each source/location.

  - desired influx measurement names (metrics prefixes for victoriametrics)

  - which weather sources to enable

  - add your own key for Visualcrossing, if desired

  - server config for ad-hoc forecasts:

    - Set the port the server should listen on (set to `0` to disable the server)

    - Insert your own [Azure Maps Shared Key][azure-key] (requires Azure Maps account. There is a free tier.)



### Ad-hoc Forecasts Setup



Since version 4.0, ForecastMetrics supports use as a prometheus data source in grafana for getting

ad-hoc weather forecasts for any location.



- Only simple queries are supported, no functions or other features

- Queries should look like this: `forecast_metricname{source="nws",location="place"}`

- The `location` tag supports these formats:

  - place name 

  - lat,lon

  - place name|nickname

  - lat,lon|nickname

- An optional tag `save` is also supported. if `save="true"`, ForecastMetrics will add it to

  locations.yaml and update the metric every hour.

  - The locations.yaml file needs to be writable by the user running the process for this to work.

- To add as a data source to Grafana, add as a Prometheus data source. When you save, there will be an error

  about "404 Not Found - There was an error returned querying the Prometheus API." You can ignore this error

  and proceed to configuring a dashboard.



### Run

Run the binary like this:



    ./forecastmetrics --config forecastmetrics.yaml --locations locations.yaml



## Grafana Dashboard

I've included definitions for my grafana dashboard in the repo, both for [InfluxDB](grafana/influx.json) and

[VictoriaMetrics](grafana/victoriametrics.json) which I now use. Here are screenshots of each in use. I use

this dashboard daily for my local weather forecast.



### Influx Dashboard 

![influx grafana dashboard](grafana/influx.png)



### VictoriaMetrics Dashboard

![VictoriaMetrics dashboard](grafana/victoriametrics.png)



## Rationale behind included/planned sources:

I was looking for a replacement for DarkSky, who were bought by

Apple and retired their API in 2021 2022 2023.

DarkSky had the best forecasts and a generous free version,

with 7 days of forecast data available.



I used the DarkSky data to power my own visualizations of my

local forecast in Grafana. I find my Grafana graphs of forecast

data much more intuitive than any weather app or website out there.

I display the 7 day forecast for temps, precip, wind, and clouds,

on the same graph with 7 days of actual data history from my

Ambient Weather personal weather station, and also the forecast

from 24 hours previous. (You can find my Ambient Weather exporter

[here][ambientweatherexporter].)



So when I went looking for replacements I needed these features:

- At least 7 days of HOURLY forecast data. Daily highs and lows

are not very interesting to look at in a graph.

- I preferred Free APIs or APIs allowing at least 1500 forecasts

per month, as I only made <200 calls/day to DarkSky, and paying

large amounts for my personal forecast dashboard is just silly.

  - This is why visualcrossing is a supported source,

  because their free tier supports 250 forecasts/day.



[release]: https://github.com/tedpearson/ForecastMetrics/releases

[config-example]: https://github.com/tedpearson/ForecastMetrics/blob/master/config/forecastmetrics.example.yaml

[install-go]: https://golang.org/dl/

[azure-key]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-maps/azure-maps-authentication

[ambientweatherexporter]: https://github.com/tedpearson/ambientweatherexporter