Release 2.5.2

Release 2.5.2

Released: 2026-05-26 Minimum Indigo version: 2025.2

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Highlights

Two improvements to how the plugin handles an offline personal Tempest station:

1. Offline detection rewritten — the 2.5.1 implementation used a better_forecast field that proved unreliable; a correct documented API endpoint is now used instead.
2. Device error state — when a station goes stale or offline, the Indigo device turns red in the UI with a status string. Clears automatically when the station recovers.

Changes

Personal Station Offline Detection Rewritten

Problem (2.5.1 regression): The 2.5.1 fix for stale web data worked correctly for Public Tempest Station devices but not for personal stations. The personal web poller used better_forecast.current_conditions.time as the observation timestamp — a field that always reflects the time WeatherFlow generated the API response (2–3 seconds ago), not when the Tempest device last transmitted. Additionally, better_forecast.station.is_station_online returns True even when the device has a completely flat battery.

The result: the 10-minute age gate in 2.5.1 never fired for personal stations, and stale cached data continued to be written to Indigo states when a station was offline.

Investigation: A complete audit of available WeatherFlow REST API endpoints was performed against a live flat-battery device:

Endpoint / Field	Value when offline	Reliable?
better_forecast → current_conditions.time	Always 2–3 s	❌ API generation time
better_forecast → station.is_station_online	True	❌ Always true
better_forecast → station.state	1	❌ Static config value
/stations/{id} → device fields	No status fields	❌ Config metadata only
/diagnostics/{id}	Accurate	❌ Requires partner API key
/observations/stn/{id} → obs	[] (empty list)	✅ Definitive offline signal

Fix: Every web poll cycle now makes two API calls:

1. better_forecast — unchanged, provides current conditions data for device states.
2. /observations/stn/{station_id}?api_key={token}&bucket=1 — the documented personal station observations endpoint. bucket=1 returns the latest 1-minute record only. When the station is offline, obs: [] is returned.

Offline detection logic:

• obs: [] → station has no recent observations — update is rejected.
• obs[-1][0] → timestamp of the most recent observation record. If more than 10 minutes old, update is also rejected (secondary age gate).
• Normal operation — observation age is logged at Debug level:

  station 183063: /observations/stn status={'status_code': 0, 'status_message': 'SUCCESS'}  obs count=1
  My Tempest: web observation age 47 s (0.8 min)
  

Note on endpoint naming: /observations/stn is the documented personal station endpoint in the WeatherFlow API reference. /observations/station (used for public stations) also returns obs: [] when offline, but is the public-facing endpoint. Using the correct personal endpoint avoids any reliance on undocumented behaviour.

Device Error State When Station is Offline

When a personal station's data is stale or absent, the plugin now marks the Indigo device with an error state so it is immediately visible in the Indigo client UI (device row turns red, status column shows the error string).

Two thresholds:

Stale duration	deviceStatus state	Indigo error state
< 10 minutes	unchanged	none
10 – 30 minutes	Stale data	Stale data (device turns red)
> 30 minutes	Offline	Offline (device turns red)

Recovery is automatic — on the next successful poll after the station comes back online, the error state is cleared and all device states resume updating normally. No manual action required.

Cleared at startup — if the plugin is reloaded or Indigo restarts while a station is offline, any lingering error state from the previous session is cleared immediately on deviceStartComm and set fresh once the first poll completes.

Log output during an offline event:

Warning: My Tempest: station offline — no recent observations (stale 0 min)
Warning: My Tempest: station offline — no recent observations (stale 12 min)   ← device now shows "Stale data"
Warning: My Tempest: station offline — no recent observations (stale 31 min)   ← device now shows "Offline"
My Tempest: web observation age 43 s (0.7 min)                                 ← station recovered, error cleared

Upgrade Notes

• No configuration changes required. Both fixes are automatic.
• Reload the plugin after updating to clear any stale error state from prior versions.
• The Public Tempest Station offline detection from 2.5.1 is unchanged and unaffected.