Perceptive Automation, a provider of Mac-based home automation software, has released version 2 of the WeatherSnoop plugin, an update to the plugin for the company's intelligent home control and automation server for Mac OS X.

With Indigo and data from WeatherSnoop, users can create complex automation scenarios based on environmental data such as adjusting lawn sprinkler run times based on rainfall. WeatherSnoop 3 lets your Mac interface directly to one of many popular weather stations or an Internet-based data source such as Weather Underground.

You can watch your weather come to life with instruments and gauges that show temperature, wind, rain, and more changing in real-time. Once your weather data is obtained from the selected source, it can be published to Internet-based weather services such as Weather Underground and the Citizen Weather Observer Program. Weather data is also available via an HTTP API using WeatherSnoop's built-in web server, so other applications can obtain the latest weather quickly and easily.

The new plugin uses the service and agent discovery information that WeatherSnoop 3 publishes on the local network. To add a weather station device to Indigo, users need only select the appropriate WeatherSnoop instance and select the agent; there's no need to know host names or IP addresses. Once the station has been created, the plugin can dynamically add any new fields that may be added to the agent by a subsequent release of WeatherSnoop without the need for a plugin update.

The WeatherSnoop plugin is included free with Indigo 6 Pro which is available now for US$199.95 through the Perceptive Automation website (PerceptiveAutomation.com) and various resellers. Owners of some previous versions of Indigo can get an upgrade discount to Indigo 6. Also available online is a 30-day trial copy of Indigo 6 Pro. Indigo runs on Mac OS X 10.5 or greater.