# DarkSky is no more



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Apple bought DarkSky today.

They are shutting down the android application and they shutdown getting new API. The blog states that they will keep the API working until 2021.

I use the DarkSky API call to get weather data into my log sheet for monitoring Grow Potential and Dollar Spot. I will start to explore using OpenWeatherMap going forward and then write some API calls for it.

https://blog.darksky.net/


----------



## Gilley11 (Nov 3, 2019)

Man I just saw this. I finally found a weather app that I actually like and then Apple fubars it.


----------



## Gilley11 (Nov 3, 2019)

If anyone has any suggestions for a really good android weather app, please share.


----------



## ScottW (Sep 16, 2019)

g-man said:


> I use the DarkSky API call to get weather data into my log sheet


I've been playing around with your log sheet too. :thumbup: Looks like I'll still be able to use it this year.
Please keep us posted if you find a viable alternative.


----------



## testwerke (Apr 4, 2019)

First Wunderground, now this!


----------



## gm560 (Feb 22, 2018)

That stinks. @g-man unfortunately it looks like access to historical data on OpenWeatherMap is not free. So you would have to make your google sheets call it every day. I don't know if this is possible?

I actually started writing a webapp and backend platform that people could use to track disease, pgr, gdd, product apps, etc. I am probably 60% to MVP, but I got distracted. Weather data was the most difficult part. The best solution I found besides DarkSky (which isnt perfect by a long shot either) was going to the National Weather Service itself. I wrote some code to do it. If I find some time maybe I can standup a quick API service people can use in the interim.


----------



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@gm560 you are right. I realized that I can't see yesterday data.


----------



## daniel3507 (Jul 31, 2018)

Gilley11 said:


> If anyone has any suggestions for a really good android weather app, please share.


wX pulls from the NWS. The app isn't a fancy fluffy one but has a lot of good information. I have it, Wunderground, radarscope, and ambient weather for my PWS


----------



## synergy0852 (Jun 30, 2018)

Got this email today. It appears they will keep it functioning through 2021 just not allowing new signups.


----------



## Hoosier (Jun 12, 2018)

@Gilley11 I'm experimenting with:
-Flowx (good for radar tracking, especially on road trips/motorcycle rides to see if I'll hit any weather along the route, but not good for a current snapshot)
-Foreca (Ok, but I prefer line graphs for temperature and precipitation %/in)
-weawow (has all the graphs and stuff, will probably settle on this if it turns out to be accurate for my location)
-Yr (also has graphs/clean interface. Norwegian app, but pulls from other/local sources, so not sure on accuracy)

Once I settle on one, will get the paid version to get rid of adds, as I did with Dark Sky.


----------



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@TonyC and @gm560 . An idea I had was to use the API from openweathermap to get current data. Run it every 30min to a sheet and then at 11:55pm, run one that gets the min, max temps for that day and move it to the history. Thoughts?


----------



## gm560 (Feb 22, 2018)

g-man said:


> @TonyC and @gm560 . An idea I had was to use the API from openweathermap to get current data. Run it every 30min to a sheet and then at 11:55pm, run one that gets the min, max temps for that day and move it to the history. Thoughts?


That would work for sure. That is bascially what I planned on doing, but to the NWS API. Reason being its pretty much free use since we all pay for it. Not sure about the TOC on openweathermap.

The hurdle is how to automatically run a job periodically to hit the api, parse the data, and write it to whatever persistence layer, whether a google sheet, file, or database. In the past I have stood up a $5 VPS server at Digital Ocean and wrote a cronjob to do these kinds of tasks, but I was thinking of exploring one of the new serverless providers (Amazon Lambda, or some other free version).


----------



## TonyC (May 17, 2018)

gm560 said:


> g-man said:
> 
> 
> > @TonyC and @gm560 . An idea I had was to use the API from openweathermap to get current data. Run it every 30min to a sheet and then at 11:55pm, run one that gets the min, max temps for that day and move it to the history. Thoughts?
> ...


I posted this on the other sheet thread, we might be best to use Google Sheet's ImportHTML to scrape tables from websites.


----------



## gm560 (Feb 22, 2018)

TonyC said:


> gm560 said:
> 
> 
> > g-man said:
> ...


TBH I'm not super familiar with Google Sheets or the webscraping functionality. But it could certainly sounds like it could work. After I saw gmans post, I went back though my computer. I wrote a Jupyter Notebook (python) in the past to pull from NWS, convert the response to a table and write it to a csv. I am reading up right now if there is a way to just deploy that Notebook and have it run periodically. I would add something to write the CSV to a S3 bucket.


----------



## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@gm560 I run jobs using Google scripts (free). You set it to as often as you want. I don't love the html because it goes crazy when they update the code. I need to check the nws api.


----------



## gm560 (Feb 22, 2018)

g-man said:


> @gm560 I run jobs using Google scripts (free). You set it to as often as you want. I don't love the html because it goes crazy when they update the code. I need to check the nws api.


Cool, I didn't know they provided the ability to run a job without manually kicking it off.


----------



## Coach8 (Feb 28, 2017)

I wonder how that will affect the GreenKeeper website as this is what they use for GDD.


----------

