Bureau of Meteorology weather data

Overview

• The aim of this lesson is to learn how to retrieve weather data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) using an API (Application Programming Interface).
• An API is simply a URL that will automatically request data from a server.
• In this example we will extract rain data from the daily weather forecast.
• The daily weather forecast includes rain forecast data up to 7 days in advance.
• We will use this data for our smart rainwater tank.
• Smart rainwater tanks need to know rain events up to 7 days in advance so that they can discharge tank water before a storm arrives.

Learning Objectives

• Learn how to use the Developer tools in a Web Browser to find an API
• Learn how to use an API with HTTP Request node in Node-Red
• Learn how to extract data from a larger data sets using the function node
• Learn how to prepare data for a chart node

Obtaining BOM rain forecast data

• It is very important to always keep the firmware on a microcontroller updated to the most current stable version. Firmware is

Find Bureau of Meteorology API for daily weather forecast data

• Open a Web Browser.
• Enter the search term weather.bom.gov.au