1.2 September 11, 2020

Breaking Changes

• DarkSky has announced that they were acquired by Apple and will be removing their API. This release adds Aeris Weather as a forecast provider with the intent to remove DarkSky in a later version.
• New option forecast_provider is added to specify which provider you are using (DarkSky or Aeris)
• Aeris Weather is a very close drop-in replacement and is free if you send your station data to pwsweather.com. In return they give you free access to their weather API. I was considering OpenWeatherMap, but they were lacking some key observations in my opinion.
• graphs.conf gapsize is now in seconds, not milliseconds. This is to stay consistent with other graphs.conf settings. Make sure to update your graphs.conf. Divide by 1000 to get the seconds you need for the new gapsize setting.
• Forecast file darksky_forecast.json renamed to forecast.json for all providers.
• skin.conf option darksky_units renamed to forecast_units
• skin.conf option time_darksky_alert_expires renamed to time_forecast_alert_expires

Added

• An entire forecast section to the labels. This allows you to translate the Aeris Weather observations to your language.
• skin.conf option forecast_units. I incorporated the old DarkSky approach to the units. Options are si, ca, uk2 or us. See README for more info.
• graphs.conf option for legend. This allows you to show/hide the legend per-chart. More information under legend in the graphs wiki.
• Adds logo_image_dark option to specify an alternate logo when in dark mode.
• skin.conf: new option almanac_extras to enable or disable showing the extended almanac information table. Requires pyephem to be installed.
• The almanac extras table is now updated automatically with the ajaxweewx() function.
• New chart type called "haysChart". Thanks to @uajqq for this one! Check the charts wiki for more information.
• graphs.conf option for year_to_now. In weewx 4, the method which gets results from the database for archiveYearSpan (aka time_length = year) will return a full year's worth of data - even if the year hasn't ended. So if your chart is being created on February 1, you'll have data from Jan 1 to Feb 1, but the chart will continue to Dec 31 with empty plots. If you do not want a semi-empty chart, and instead want Jan 1 to "today", then use the year_to_now for time_length.
• Added new time_length options. year_to_now, hour_ago_to_now, day_ago_to_now, week_ago_to_now, month_ago_to_now, year_ago_to_now and timestamp_ago_to_now. See charts wiki for more info on these time lengths.
• Added new start_at_midnight option for use with specific time_length options. See charts wiki for more information.

Changed

• Renamed skin.conf label darksky_rain to forecast_rain
• Renamed skin.conf label time_darksky_forecast_date to time_forecast_date
• Weather alerts are available through Aeris but only for USA and Canada
• Weather alerts are now in-line with the website and not a link to an external website. This is because Aeris doesn't provide an external link with the alerts, only the text itself.
• Can now customize the Daily Forecast link
• Updates bootstrap to 3.4.1
• DarkSky weather alerts now open in a modal similar to Aeris and no longer link to the alert source.
• rainTotal now charts only rain values which exist. This is a fix so that full-length charts (like year) do not have rainTotal past the actual last observation plot.
• windRose beaufort group colors can now be changed. See charts wiki for more info.
• The earthquake table now shows the earthquake's distance away from your station's lat/lon from weewx, and general bearing direction.

Removed

• Daily Forecast link in the forecast row is no longer available due to the way Aeris operates currently. Can't extrapolate a URL from the API.
• skin.conf option darksky_secret_key
• skin.conf option darksky_lang
• The GitHub check for updates has been removed since it is not reliable.

Install

If you are upgrading from before skin version 1.0, you MUST read these instructions: https://github.com/poblabs/weewx-belchertown/wiki/Upgrading-to-Belchertown-skin-1.0

If you are installing Belchertown as a brand new skin:

You must be using weewx 3.9 or newer.

While unlikely something will go wrong, please make sure you have a backup your weewx.conf configuration.

Download:

wget https://github.com/poblabs/weewx-belchertown/releases/download/weewx-belchertown-1.2/weewx-belchertown-release-1.2.tar.gz

Then run:

sudo wee_extension --install weewx-belchertown-release-1.2.tar.gz

Configure the weewx.conf pre-requisites and restart weewx when done.