Re: [Sbarc-list] WeatherFlow Tempest no moving parts home weather station
On 6/18/20 11:40, Ken Alker wrote:
I have a Peet Brothers weather station and it connects to a Raspberry Pi running Weewx. This allows me to view it locally as well as upload to Weather Underground (No, not THAT Weather Underground).
You must clarify the parenthetical... I'm missing something (likely "Jay humor" which is often above my brain power).
The Weather Underground was a well-known (at the time) radical Vietnam War protest group in the late 1960s and early 1970s responsible for several bombings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
Their website is kind of limited in technical details, but at first glance it looks like the data you get from it is via some cloud based service and an app. This wouldn't work for me but if the data can be pulled locally without "phoning home" to some service over the web and imported to Weewx via some form of API it would be sweet.
I opened a ticket last week to find out how to pull data locally and they came back with multiple ways:
"There are many ways to collect the raw weather data from your Tempest system. One of the easiest is via the IFTTT applet that automatically posts your station data to a Google spreadsheet. See more on using IFTTT with WeatherFlow devices here: https://ifttt.com/weatherflow. You can also leverage our API services to pull raw data from your station: https://weatherflow.github.io/SmartWeather/api/. Another way to download your data is to use our UDP Broadcast service which does not require an internet connection: https://weatherflow.github.io/SmartWeather/api/udp.html."
It sounds like the UDP broadcast or API could be used to talk to Weewx. For remote applications this could be useful, for example Santa Cruz Island. Is the 120V indoor device powered directly from the line or with a wall-wart? If a wall-wart, what's its output? Unfortunately there are a lot of personal weather stations around that aren't particularly weatherproof. Anemometers fall apart, electronic packages fill up with water, etc. The commercial stuff is like an order of magnitude more expensive. It will be interesting to see how this unit holds up in a few years. I think SBARC has gone through several and wound up spending big bucks on the commercial stuff. From what I've read on their website it gets rather confused by snow. Its acoustic sensor doesn't detect snow well if at all and the snow builds up on top of the device rendering the rain sensor useless until it melts. What would be cool would be for them to incorporate a weight sensor for snow. -- Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net Network Engineering - CCIE #7880 503 897-8550 - WB6RDV
--On Thursday, June 18, 2020 6:08 PM -0700 Jay Hennigan via SBARC-list <sbarc-list@lists.netlojix.com> wrote:
On 6/18/20 11:40, Ken Alker wrote:
I have a Peet Brothers weather station and it connects to a Raspberry Pi running Weewx. This allows me to view it locally as well as upload to Weather Underground (No, not THAT Weather Underground).
You must clarify the parenthetical... I'm missing something (likely "Jay humor" which is often above my brain power).
The Weather Underground was a well-known (at the time) radical Vietnam War protest group in the late 1960s and early 1970s responsible for several bombings.
Thanks for the 60-minute rabbit hole ;-)
Their website is kind of limited in technical details, but at first glance it looks like the data you get from it is via some cloud based service and an app. This wouldn't work for me but if the data can be pulled locally without "phoning home" to some service over the web and imported to Weewx via some form of API it would be sweet.
I opened a ticket last week to find out how to pull data locally and they came back with multiple ways:
"There are many ways to collect the raw weather data from your Tempest system. One of the easiest is via the IFTTT applet that automatically posts your station data to a Google spreadsheet. See more on using IFTTT with WeatherFlow devices here: https://ifttt.com/weatherflow. You can also leverage our API services to pull raw data from your station: https://weatherflow.github.io/SmartWeather/api/. Another way to download your data is to use our UDP Broadcast service which does not require an internet connection: https://weatherflow.github.io/SmartWeather/api/udp.html."
It sounds like the UDP broadcast or API could be used to talk to Weewx. For remote applications this could be useful, for example Santa Cruz Island. Is the 120V indoor device powered directly from the line or with a wall-wart? If a wall-wart, what's its output?
5VDC 1A USB charger (USB-A style connector that we are all used to). Power cable for indoor device is USB-A to micro-USB.
Unfortunately there are a lot of personal weather stations around that aren't particularly weatherproof. Anemometers fall apart, electronic packages fill up with water, etc. The commercial stuff is like an order of magnitude more expensive. It will be interesting to see how this unit holds up in a few years. I think SBARC has gone through several and wound up spending big bucks on the commercial stuff.
From what I've read on their website it gets rather confused by snow. Its acoustic sensor doesn't detect snow well if at all and the snow builds up on top of the device rendering the rain sensor useless until it melts.
What would be cool would be for them to incorporate a weight sensor for snow.
I'll mention it.
-- Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net Network Engineering - CCIE #7880 503 897-8550 - WB6RDV _______________________________________________ SBARC-list mailing list SBARC-list@lists.netlojix.com http://lists.netlojix.com/mailman/listinfo/sbarc-list
--On Friday, June 19, 2020 8:19 AM -0700 Ken Alker <ken@impulse.net> wrote:
--On Thursday, June 18, 2020 6:08 PM -0700 Jay Hennigan via SBARC-list <sbarc-list@lists.netlojix.com> wrote:
On 6/18/20 11:40, Ken Alker wrote:
From what I've read on their website it gets rather confused by snow. Its acoustic sensor doesn't detect snow well if at all and the snow builds up on top of the device rendering the rain sensor useless until it melts.
What would be cool would be for them to incorporate a weight sensor for snow.
I'll mention it.
Here is the response I got to the suggestion: William Gidley (WeatherFlow Support) Jun 22, 2020, 1:37 PM EDT Hi Ken, Thanks for writing in and sharing the suggestion. Tempest uses a haptic rain sensor which senses vibrations to determine a rain accumulation. Trying to add a weight sensor in there as well most likely wouldn't end well. Measuring snowfall would be an awesome add-on, however, we have no plans at the current time. We appreciate your support and please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns, I'll be happy to help! Kind Regards, William Gidley WeatherFlow Support
-- Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net Network Engineering - CCIE #7880 503 897-8550 - WB6RDV _______________________________________________ SBARC-list mailing list SBARC-list@lists.netlojix.com http://lists.netlojix.com/mailman/listinfo/sbarc-list
participants (3)
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Jay Hennigan -
Ken Alker -
Ken Alker