ambient-archiver

Download and analyse your data from ambientweather.net

Installation

pip install ambient-archiver

This installs ambient in your PATH.

Usage

ambient takes three required options: --api_key, --application_key and --mac, which you can get from your account page on ambientweather.net. You can omit the options by setting AMBIENT_API_KEY AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY and AMBIENT_MAC in your environment.

See ambient --help for more.

Commands

• ambient backfill writes all data from 2020-01-01 to the end of the last UTC day into YYYY-MM-DD.json.gz files in the present working directory (one file per day)

• ambient today overwrites .json.gz with all data since 00:00 UTC

• ambient yesterday overwrites .json.gz with all data between 00:00 UTC yesterday and 23:59 UTC yesterday.

backfill does not overwrite files. You must manually delete them if you want fresh copies for some reason. today and yesterday overwrite.

Shell completion

You can optionally enable shell completion by running the appropriate command for your shell:

eval "$(_AMBIENT_COMPLETE=bash_source ambient)" >> ~/.bashrc # bash
eval "$(_AMBIENT_COMPLETE=zsh_source ambient)" >> ~/.zshrc  # zsh
_AMBIENT_COMPLETE=fish_source foo-bar > ~/.config/fish/completions/ambient.fish  # fish

Automation with Github Actions

1. Create a new repository, run ambient backfill then check everything in

2. Add these files in .github/workflows/

   .github/workflows/ambient.yml (ambient today every five minutes)

    name: ambient
   
    on:
      workflow_dispatch:
      # every 5 minutes
      schedule:
        - cron:  '*/5 * * * *'
   
    jobs:
      ambient:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Check out repo
          uses: actions/checkout@v3
        - name: Set up Python
          uses: actions/setup-python@v4
          with:
            python-version: 3.10
        - name: Install Python dependencies
          run: |
            pip install ambient-archiver
        - name: Overwrite since midnight
          env:
            AMBIENT_MAC: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_MAC }}
            AMBIENT_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_API_KEY }}
            AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY }}
          run: ambient today
        - name: Commit and push if it changed
          run: |-
            git config --global user.name "scraper-bot"
            git config user.email "actions@users.noreply.github.com"
            git add -A
            timestamp=$(date -u)
            git commit -m "Scraped at ${timestamp}" || exit 0
            git push
   

   .github/workflows/daily.yml (ambient yesterday every day at 01:00 UTC)

    name: daily
   
    on:
      workflow_dispatch:
      # daily, 1am UTC
      schedule:
        - cron:  '0 1 * * *'
   
    jobs:
      daily:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Check out repo
          uses: actions/checkout@v3
        - name: Set up Python
          uses: actions/setup-python@v4
          with:
            python-version: 3.10
        - name: Install Python dependencies
          run: |
            pip install ambient-archiver
        - name: Overwrite yesterday
          env:
            AMBIENT_MAC: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_MAC }}
            AMBIENT_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_API_KEY }}
            AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY: ${{ secrets.AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY }}
          run: ambient-oy
        - name: Commit and push if it changed
          run: |-
            git config --global user.name "scraper-bot"
            git config user.email "actions@users.noreply.github.com"
            git add -A
            timestamp=$(date -u)
            git commit -m "Downloaded at at ${timestamp}" || exit 0
            git push
   

   The daily workflow deals with the fact that the more regular job does not in practice run every five minutes. It ensures the completed file for that day has the last few records for the day.

3. Push to GitHub

4. Configure AMBIENT_MAC, AMBIENT_API_KEY and AMBIENT_APPLICATION_KEY as Secrets in the GitHub settings for that repository