Home Assistant

Dark Sky Sensor

The darksky platform uses the Dark Sky web service as a source for meteorological data for your location. The location is based on the longitude and latitude coordinates configured in your configuration.yaml file. The coordinates are auto-detected but to take advantage of the hyper-local weather reported by Dark Sky, you can refine them down to your exact home address. GPS coordinates can be found by using Google Maps and clicking on your home or Openstreetmap.

You need an API key which is free but requires registration. You can make up to 1000 calls per day for free which means that you could make one approximately every 86 seconds.

Dark Sky will charge you $0.0001 per API call if you enter your credit card details and create more than 1000 calls per day.

To add Dark Sky to your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  - platform: darksky
    api_key: YOUR_API_KEY
    monitored_conditions:
      - summary
      - icon
      - nearest_storm_distance

Configuration variables:

  • api_key (Required): Your API key.
  • name (Optional): Additional name for the sensors. Default to platform name.
  • forecast array (Optional): List of days in the 7 day forecast you would like to receive data on, starting with tomorrow as day 1. Any monitored_condition with a daily forecast by DarkSky will generate a sensor tagged with _<day>.
  • latitude (Optional): Latitude coordinate to monitor weather of (required if longitude is specified), defaults to coordinates defined in your configuration.yaml
  • longitude (Optional): Longitude coordinate to monitor weather of (required if latitude is specified), defaults to coordinates defined in your configuration.yaml
  • monitored_conditions array (Required): Conditions to display in the frontend.
    • summary: A human-readable text summary of the current conditions.
    • precip_type: The type of precipitation occurring.
    • precip_intensity: The average expected intensity of precipitation occurring.
    • precip_probability: A value between 0 and 1 which is representing the probability of precipitation.
    • precip_accumulation: Daily snow accumulation. Returns unknown if no snow accumulation available.
    • temperature: The current temperature.
    • apparent_temperature: A numerical value representing the apparent (or “feels like”) temperature.
    • dew_point: The dew point.
    • wind_speed: The wind speed.
    • wind_bearing: Where the wind is coming from in degrees, with true north at 0° and progressing clockwise.
    • cloud_cover: The percentage of sky occluded by clouds.
    • humidity: The relative humidity.
    • pressure: The sea-level air pressure in millibars.
    • visibility: The average visibility.
    • ozone: The columnar density of total atmospheric ozone in Dobson.
    • minutely_summary: A human-readable text summary for the next hour.
    • hourly_summary: A human-readable text summary for the next 24 hours.
    • daily_summary: A human-readable text summary for the next 7 days.
    • temperature_max: Today’s expected high temperature.
    • temperature_min: Today’s expected low temperature.
    • apparent_temperature_max: Today’s expected apparent high temperature.
    • apparent_temperature_min: Today’s expected apparent low temperature.
    • precip_intensity_max: Today’s expected maximum intensity of precipitation.
    • uv_index: The current UV index.
  • units (Optional): Specify the unit system. Default to si or us based on the temperature preference in Home Assistant. Other options are auto, us, si, ca, uk and uk2. auto will let Dark Sky decide the unit system based on location.
  • update_interval (Optional): Minimum time interval between updates. Default is 2 minutes. Supported formats:
    • update_interval: 'HH:MM:SS'
    • update_interval: 'HH:MM'
    • Time period dictionary, e.g.: 
      update_interval:
    # At least one of these must be specified:
    days: 0
    hours: 0
    minutes: 3
    seconds: 30
    milliseconds: 0

While the platform is called “darksky” the sensors will show up in Home Assistant as “dark_sky” (eg: sensor.dark_sky_summary).

Details about the API are available in the Dark Sky documentation.