As I understand things, we are now being charged for purple air data downloads using our API key. Can someone tell me where I can track how many points I have used and how much I will be charged? Second question: we so far have not used the downloader tool that PA has made available, but rather routines developed in ‘R’ using the API key to capture data. It is soooo much easier to run our routine instead of the downloader tool. Is that still going to be ‘legal’?
A little background on oar project: We capture historical data for the pervious month for 4 groups of sensors: our home town of Eden, UT, and the nearby cities of Ogden, Salt Lake City and Logan to prepare a report we publish in our local paper once a month. There are about 30 sensors in total that we track. So we download data mostly at the end of the month, but also if we are debugging the routine to prepare for data presentation.
Hi @Kenneth_Beck, you can track the points usage and manage your keys using our Developer Dashboard. If you click on “TopUp Account” in the dashboard, you’ll also be able to see a pricing table indicating how many points you can receive per USD spent. Entering a dollar amount in the box that appears will also show how many points would be purchased. You can take a look at our How to Make Efficient API Calls article for some tips on how to reduce point usage.
Regarding your second question, the PurpleAir API was designed and implemented before the Data Download Tool became available. It will always be fully supported to directly query the API instead of using the Download Tool.
Thanks @Josh_PurpleAir for the info! When I look at my account, ‘Projects’ on the left, it says I have -137M points. Is that points used, or points credit? I ran a query just this morning and did not get any errors, so I must not be blocked for no payment quite yet. When I view the graph, it shows I spent 5.7M points yesterday and 1.3M today. Looking back a few months I see where the 131M might add up (it would be convenient to show totals in the table for the date range chosen). So that leaves the question, given the amount of points I have apparently consumed in the last couple months, when will I start getting blocked?
The negative points are indicative of points used. It’s likely that your keys have not yet been migrated to the new points based billing system. For users we’re moving over, an advance notice will be sent via email. If you have further questions, please send an email to contact@purpleair.com with either your API keys or the email you use to log in and we can take a look at your account.
This is good, that I am apparently not being charged yet. I did get an email on Oct 30 stating I would be charged starting Nov 21!
So apparently that did not happen. The email also mentioned ‘face to face’ meeting, which has not happened. I tried to call several times, but after several minutes on hold, the call is terminated with no chance to leave a call back.
We have lots of room to reduce our data download by something close to or exceeding 90%. It appears I still have some time to fine tune that before I start getting charged. Any idea how much time?
Just sent email to contact as you suggested