Change playlist based on weather

[stre1026]

Hello -

Hope everyone's show is working well. My show has been running great and I'm now trying to tweak a couple of things. I'm going to be away for a week and so I won't be able to disable my show if it's raining, etc. I was wondering if there was a plugin that I could run on FPP that can check if it's raining and run an alternative playlist? I was hoping to keep everything inside the FPP scheduler but my alternative is to run the show from Home Assistant and run the weather logic from inside Home Assistant. I was hoping there was an easier solution though.

Thanks,

[jnealand]

This is my 18th year animated.  I've always started my show schedule once everything was ready and let it run until it was time to take it down.  Rain, shine, snow, sleet, wind, etc. and never had a problem.  I might turn it off for a tornado, but never had one here yet.

[almostengr]

Hello -

Hope everyone's show is working well. My show has been running great and I'm now trying to tweak a couple of things. I'm going to be away for a week and so I won't be able to disable my show if it's raining, etc. I was wondering if there was a plugin that I could run on FPP that can check if it's raining and run an alternative playlist? I was hoping to keep everything inside the FPP scheduler but my alternative is to run the show from Home Assistant and run the weather logic from inside Home Assistant. I was hoping there was an easier solution though.

Thanks,

I just completed a plugin. You can find it at https://github.com/almostengr/fpp-weather-monitor-plugin.

In the current version, it will stop the show based upon values entered in the configuration. To have your show stop when it is raining, add "Rain" as one of the Text Descriptions.

I can look into having the plugin run a different playlist instead of stopping the show gracefully as it is currently designed.

[jnealand]

@almostengr Did you notice that you are responding to a question that was asked in 2022.   Been there done that back in my newbie days and still forget to look at dates sometimes.  sigh

[almostengr]

@almostengr Did you notice that you are responding to a question that was asked in 2022.  Been there done that back in my newbie days and still forget to look at dates sometimes.  sigh

I'm aware of when it was asked, which was 4 months ago. I responded because I just completed the plugin and the OP may still be looking for a solution for this years show. 

[k6ccc]

I'm with the other Jim.  Show runs regardless of weather.

[tbone321]

Doing that really depends on what your show is made up of.  In my case, I have a lot of airblowns and where they are not affected much by rain, they don't like the wind or heavy snow much so in my case, I pretty much shut down my display on nights with wind gusts exceeding 30MPH. Here in NC, heavy wet snow is not much of an issue but we usually get a bad storm or two during the Christmas season that requires the show to be shut down. 

[k6ccc]

I do have the advantage that this is southern California.  We sometimes get rain, but during the Christmas season, high wind is almost unheard of.  And I don't have any inflatables.

[almostengr]

Doing that really depends on what your show is made up of.  In my case, I have a lot of airblowns and where they are not affected much by rain, they don't like the wind or heavy snow much so in my case, I pretty much shut down my display on nights with wind gusts exceeding 30MPH. Here in NC, heavy wet snow is not much of an issue but we usually get a bad storm or two during the Christmas season that requires the show to be shut down.

Consider using my plugin for my show. Right now, it will only stop the show if the wind gets above the configured speed. I will be adding more functionality to it that will include checking for severe weather alerts and stopping a show based on forecasted conditions. 

https://github.com/almostengr/fpp-weather-monitor-plugin


I would appreciate any feedback that you have on it

[Kensington Graves]

I'll play around with it.  My light pole P10 matrix gets a bit wonky when it rains heavy (which we get at least twice during show season), and it would be nice to disable it.  I usually just pull the plug.  If it can control a relay, that would be the cat's pajamas.

[almostengr]

I'll play around with it.  My light pole P10 matrix gets a bit wonky when it rains heavy (which we get at least twice during show season), and it would be nice to disable it.  I usually just pull the plug.  If it can control a relay, that would be the cat's pajamas.

I have on the list of future features, for it to be able to play a different playlist than what is currently running when rain or other weather event is reported. That said, you could have a playlist, that would run during rainy weather, that would include a command that would turn off that relay.

[tbone321]

Consider using my plugin for my show. Right now, it will only stop the show if the wind gets above the configured speed. I will be adding more functionality to it that will include checking for severe weather alerts and stopping a show based on forecasted conditions.

My current setup will not work that way.  My home automation system controls the power to the display, not FPP so regardless of what FPP is doing, the home automation system will still power up the airblowns blowers during the day so that they don't kill the grass and keep them on until either the sun goes down or the show is over, depending on system settings that are independent of FPP.  There is currently a "Windy Day" setting that both keeps the airblowns from powering up as well as keeping power off to the rest of the display, including the lights because it doesn't look good to light up airblowns that are lying flat on the ground. 

I will take a look at your plugin in the near future to see if I can use it to control the windy day setting in Homeseer.  Then I can alter the power system for my display to keep the lights in the airblowns off when the blowers are not powered up without the need to create all new sequences that don't include them which will make my life so much easier during show season.  That will also allow me to reconfigure the "Windy Day" setting in Homeseer to just shut down the airblowns blowers, allowing the rest of the show to run without them.

[almostengr]

Consider using my plugin for my show. Right now, it will only stop the show if the wind gets above the configured speed. I will be adding more functionality to it that will include checking for severe weather alerts and stopping a show based on forecasted conditions.

My current setup will not work that way.  My home automation system controls the power to the display, not FPP so regardless of what FPP is doing, the home automation system will still power up the airblowns blowers during the day so that they don't kill the grass and keep them on until either the sun goes down or the show is over, depending on system settings that are independent of FPP.  There is currently a "Windy Day" setting that both keeps the airblowns from powering up as well as keeping power off to the rest of the display, including the lights because it doesn't look good to light up airblowns that are lying flat on the ground. 

I will take a look at your plugin in the near future to see if I can use it to control the windy day setting in Homeseer.  Then I can alter the power system for my display to keep the lights in the airblowns off when the blowers are not powered up without the need to create all new sequences that don't include them which will make my life so much easier during show season.  That will also allow me to reconfigure the "Windy Day" setting in Homeseer to just shut down the airblowns blowers, allowing the rest of the show to run without them.

That makes sense.

The intent of the plugin is to only check the weather conditions when the show is actively running. I could change this to check all the time.

Does Homeseer have the ability to make a REST call to an endpoint? If so, I could implement a feature where an "isWindy" setting is set to true or false. Then Homeseer can call the Settings end point and from that make an automation decision to turn on or off the airblowns