3 ms·

Thanks for your thoughts there! Yes we are working off of WU's data. They have an awesome database of weather data and they've been very kind in allowing us t

by bromley 15y ago

Thanks for your thoughts there! Yes we are working off of WU's data. They have an awesome database of weather data and they've been very kind in allowing us to use the temperature part of it for our degree days system. We do have a free API trial actually, though it's limited in the sense that you can only get data for the Cape Cod area: http://www.degreedays.net/api/test http://www.degreedays.net/api/test We'll happily give most people a full free trial if they ask. We don't offer that publicly, partly because a lot of people are just looking to assemble a database of 5-year-average data and then quit, and partly because the number crunching to calculate degree days properly is pretty expensive so we have to be careful about watching our costs. A proper free tier could kill us, particularly if a manufacturer of popular installable energy-related hardware or software decided to wire things up so all their customers fetched degree days from our system whether they wanted them or not. But perhaps we should re-consider the current setup for trials... We only launched the API recently so at the moment we're still playing it by ear somewhat. If you mention "bromley" in an email to that address or just email info at degree days dot net it'll get through to me - and I'd love to hear from you or anyone else developing software for energy-related applications.

schiffern 15y ago
>particularly if a manufacturer of popular installable energy-related hardware or software decided to wire things up so all their customers fetched degree days from our system whether they wanted them or not. I always check the TOS of any "public" API I use, and I suspect most developers are the same. Perhaps this could be mitigated by some carefully-worded clauses? If someone does it anyway, you could protect yourself by blacklisting their API key for TOS violation. We should continue this over email.
- bromley 15y ago
  It's possible that could work. Our current testing API is rate limited only on IP address but if we required a sign-up we'd have more options. A free tier couldn't go too far out of control if we could stop taking new sign-ups at any time. But at the same time we already have a full free tier in the sense that anyone can download free data from the website. At the moment we're seeing the API purely as something for those that want more data than the website practically allows. My hunch is that it's probably best to keep the API paid only... Free accounts with really low rate limits would be frustrating for the people using them (as they'd hit their rate limit all the time) and would just increase our support costs. In the end we'd have to increase the costs of new paid accounts to support them, which is not something I'd want to do. Never say never though... My thoughts on that could change over time as we get more customers and feedback. I got your email, thanks, will get back to you shortly :)

by bromley 15y ago

schiffern 15y ago

>particularly if a manufacturer of popular installable energy-related hardware or software decided to wire things up so all their customers fetched degree days from our system whether they wanted them or not. I always check the TOS of any "public" API I use, and I suspect most developers are the same. Perhaps this could be mitigated by some carefully-worded clauses? If someone does it anyway, you could protect yourself by blacklisting their API key for TOS violation. We should continue this over email.

bromley 15y ago
It's possible that could work. Our current testing API is rate limited only on IP address but if we required a sign-up we'd have more options. A free tier couldn't go too far out of control if we could stop taking new sign-ups at any time. But at the same time we already have a full free tier in the sense that anyone can download free data from the website. At the moment we're seeing the API purely as something for those that want more data than the website practically allows. My hunch is that it's probably best to keep the API paid only... Free accounts with really low rate limits would be frustrating for the people using them (as they'd hit their rate limit all the time) and would just increase our support costs. In the end we'd have to increase the costs of new paid accounts to support them, which is not something I'd want to do. Never say never though... My thoughts on that could change over time as we get more customers and feedback. I got your email, thanks, will get back to you shortly :)