Templates

Meteobridge provides a very flexible mechanism to smuggle sensor data of different kinds into strings to be used by Meteobrdge push services like Twitter, HTTP GET uploads or MSQL database insert requests.

Simply type in the text you want to upload and represent the pieces of sensor data by so called variables. When data gets uploaded, these variables will be replaced by current sensor data and so a string filled with the data you intended will be uploaded.

Each variable starts with an opening square bracket "[" and is terminated by a closing square bracket "]". The structure of the variable name between these brackets is as follows:

sensor-selector=converter.decimals:replacement

"converter", "decimals" and "replacement" can be omitted, "sensor" and "type" are mandatory. While "sensor" tells what sensor and what piece of information of the sensor to use, "selector" decides data from what time period should be taken into account and "converter" does convert data into measurement units the user likes most. "Decimals" decides about precision the result should be shown in and "replacement" gives the string to be returned when there is no data for defined sensor available.

Sensors

These sensors are defined in Meteobridge.

• th0temp: outdoor temperature in degrees Celsius
• th0hum: relative outdoor humidity as percentage
• th0dew: outdoor dew point in degrees Celsius
• thb0temp: indoor temperature in degrees Celsius
• thb0hum: indoor humidity as percentage
• thb0dew: indoor dewpoint in degrees Celsius
• thb0press: station pressure in hPa
• thb0seapress: normalized pressure (computed to sea level) in hPa
• wind0wind: wind speed in m/s
• wind0avgwind: average windspeed in m/s (time used for average depends on station)
• wind0dir: wind direction in degress (0° is North)
• wind0chill: wind chill temperature in degrees Celsius
• rain0rate: rain rate in mm/h
• rain0total: rain fall in mm
• uv0index: uv index
• sol0rad: solar radiation in W/m^2

If a sensor is not there or data of sensor has passed the "tolerated data age" interval, Meteobridge will not provide data for it and will present the value defined as "replacement". If no replacement is given, variable will not be converted into data but will stay as is.

Selectors

Sensors are followed by a selector (syntactically separated by a dash) that specifies what period in time should be used for evaluation. Valid selectors are:

• act: most recent data
• hmin: minimum value of this hour
• hmax: maximum value of this hour
• dmin: minimum value of today
• dmax: maximum value of today
• ydmin: minimum value of yesterday
• ydmax: maximum value of yesterday
• mmin: minimum value of this month
• mmax: maximum value of this month
• ymin: minimum value of this year
• ymax: maximum value of this year
• amin: minimum value of all time
• amax: maximum value of all time
• daysum or sumday, monthsum, yearsum, allsum, ydaysum: selects summerized delta values from today, this month, this year, all time or yesterday: "rain0total-sumday" is todays rain fall.

When you are interested in timestamps of min/max values, you can make use of these selectors:

• hmintime: timestamp of minimum value of this hour
• hmaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of this hour
• dmintime: timestamp of minimum value of today
• dmaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of today
• ydmintime: timestamp of minimum value of yesterday
• ydmaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of yesterday
• mmintime: timestamp of minimum value of this month
• mmaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of this month
• ymintime: timestamp of minimum value of this year
• ymaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of this year
• amintime: timestamp of minimum value of all time
• amaxtime: timestamp of maximum value of all time

Timestamps are strings of format "YYYYMMDDhhmmss". Year "YYYY" is reported in 4 digits, all other values (month "MM", day "DD", hour "hh", minute "mm", second "ss") come with 2 digits, leading zeros are not supressed.

Apart from selectors that use absolute, predefined time slots there are also selectors that look for a certain amount of time into the past.

• val2, val5, val10, val15, val30, val60: selects the value the sensor has shown 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes ago
• max2, max5, max10, max15, max30, max60: selects the maximum value from the last 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes
• min2, min5, min10, min15, min30, min60: selects the minimum value from the last 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes
• avg2, avg5, avg10, avg15, avg30, avg60: selects average value from the last 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes
• sum2, sum5, sum10, sum15, sum30, sum60: selects summerized delta values from the last 2, 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, which is useful to get amount of total rain in a certain time frame: "rain0total-sum60" is rainfall im mm of last 60 minutes.

Converters

Sensor data is reported in ISO units (°C, hPa, mm, m/s) by default, but can be converted into non-ISO units (imperial) by adding a conversion token. Defined tokens are:

• F converts temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit.
• psi converts pressure from hPa (equivalent to mbar) to psi.
• mmHg converts pressure from hPa to millimeters of mercury.
• inHg converts pressure from hPa to inches of mercury.
• kmh converts wind speed from meters per second to kilometers per hour.
• mph converts wind speed from meters per second to miles per hour.
• kn converts wind speed from meters per second to knots.
• bft converts wind speed from meters per second to Beaufort scale.
• in converts millimeters to inches.

If an unknown conversion string is used, no conversion will take place, no error message will appear.

When variable returns a timestamp, then this converter can be applied:

• utc reports timestamp in UTC instead of localtime, which is default.

Special Variables

There are a couple of variables that don't come as "sensor-selector=converter" chains but have a distinct meaning by themselves.

Date und time variables are defined as follows:

• YYYY: year as four digit number
• YY: year as two digit number
• MM: month as two digit number, if only one digit neede a zero will be used as first digit
• M: month as one or two digit number, no leading zeros
• DD: day of month as two digit number, if only one digit neede a zero will be used as first digit
• D: day of month as one or two digit number, no leading zeros
• hh: hour as two digit number, if only one digit neede a zero will be used as first digit
• h: hour as one or two digit number, no leading zeros
• mm: minute as two digit number, if only one digit neede a zero will be used as first digit
• m: minute as one or two digit number, no leading zeros
• ss: seconds as two digit number, if only one digit neede a zero will be used as first digit
• s: seconds as one or two digit number, no leading zeros

When a capital "U" preceeds a date/time variable name, UTC is used instead of local time ("[Uhh]:[Umm]:[Uss] UTC" is evaluated to a string like "16:03:33 UTC")

Decimals

Unless otherwise defined numbers are reported with one decimal. By specifying a value for "decimals" you can determine resolution of presented values.

When variable returns a string instead of a number (in case of a timestamp for example), "decimal" specification does have a different format and meaning, which allows to select a substring. Specification of the substring consists of two lower-case letters. The first one specifies start point of the substring, second leter the position of last character of the string to be reported. For example, when string is timestamp "20130303121055" a specification of ".ad" selects a substring from first character (position code "a") until fourth character (position code "d"). When you want to grab the time for lowest outdoor temperature of today the template for that will be [th0temp-dmintime.ij:--]:[th0temp-dmintime.kl:--]. "ij" selects the hour part at position 9-10 and "kl" selects minute part at position 11-12 of the timestamp.

Replacement

When a variable is not defined or there is no data for a specified sensor, information specified as "replacement" string will be represented instead.

Examples

Having a look at examples usually helps to understand how easy that is.

1. Template Outdoor temperature is [th0temp-act=F.1:--]°F will be converted into Outdoor temperature is 3.4°F when there is outdoor temp data and into Outdoor temperature is --°F if outdoor temp sensor does not provide recent data.
2. Template Local time is [hh]:[mm] will be converted into Local time is 09:27.
3. Template Max gust in last 10 minutes was: [wind0wind-max10.1:--]m/s, [wind0wind-max10=mph.1:--]mph, [wind0wind-max10=kn.0:--]kn will be converted into Max gust in last 10 minutes was: 10.5m/s, 23.5mph, 20kn.