

Building a Weather Station - WestCoastJustin
http://www.drbunsen.org/building-a-weather-station/

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MegaDeKay
I have a Davis Vantage VP2 station and reverse engineered the serial
connection to the back of the console, the datalogger interface, and the
wireless communications from the outdoor unit [1]. Using something like a $20
Moteino [2] (an Arduino clone with an RFM69W RF transceiver), I can monitor
its readings without even needing a console. The wxforum [3] is also a very
active and helpful site for people getting into this kind of thing. Recent
experiments are opening the door for homemade temperature / humidity sensors
and the like. Fun stuff.

[1]
[http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/search/label/Davis%20VP2](http://madscientistlabs.blogspot.ca/search/label/Davis%20VP2)

[2] [http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/](http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/)

[3]
[http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?board=59.0](http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?board=59.0)

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frik
_" I first considered using various Arduino or Tessel configurations, but I
soon came to the conclusion that the available hardware was not a good fit for
my project. I needed weather resistant hardware that could operate in extreme
conditions, preferably with low power consumption.

My research eventually lead me to purchase the Davis 6250 Vantage Vue for this
project because it had several advantages compared to other solutions I
considered."_

Hmm. He wanted an off-the-shelf weather station that he connected to a
RaspberryPI. Otherwise, Arduino would be a good fit too, especially if one
connects various weather sensors to it. It works also in extreme conditions
and has real low power consumption.

I built a weather station myself, with an Arduino UNO, connected several
sensors (temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rain meter, humanity, light
intensity, etc) and wrote a small webserver (ethernet shield) - total hw costs
about 120$. The Arduino run without maintenance outdoors (-25° to +45°
Celsius) since 2011. I built a web app that runs on a RPi that fetches the
data from the Arduino web server with REST API.

~~~
omnibrain
Do you have a writeup of what sensors you used and how you programmed it? I
started to look into this topic but was overwhelmed by the choices. When I
finally settled on a path I found out, that the combined wireless sensor
devices described are no longer available.

Edit: The sensor was called S 300 TH, and it was mentioned in several
writeups/tutorials for wireless weather stations with Raspberry Pi.

~~~
frik
Wind & Rain Sensor:
[https://www.argentdata.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=29](https://www.argentdata.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=29)
or
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8942](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8942)
; related Arduino sketch:
[http://code.google.com/p/pweatherstation/](http://code.google.com/p/pweatherstation/)

You want an RTC1307 real time clock, a humidity sensor and pressure &
temperature sensor from Sparkfun/Adafruit/etc.

e.g.
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11824](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11824)
. Good starting point on SF:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/152](https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/152)

Only buy sensors from vendors that provide you an up-to-date Arduino 1.2+
sketch for Uno/Mega or Due! I had to tune my sketch to fit it in Arduino Uno
32k memory (ethernet shield, various sensors code), so if it's your first
project maybe use an Arduino Mega (more memory). Test every sketch on its own,
then combine all sketches to one sketch. Cables are more reliable than
wireless, especially if it should work years without maintenance. You can also
use an RPi.

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techsupporter
Is there a weather station device that lets me query it directly? I just
wonder what happens if Weather Underground shuts down or starts charging for
API access so I'd rather have one I can access myself.

~~~
cryptoz
The future is that your _phone_ is the device that you can query directly.
Some phones have barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, or UV sensors, etc.
Our smartphones are becoming weather stations, and the future-proofing in your
scenario where WU shuts down is merely to startup your own mesh-network of
weather sensors.

My startup PressureNet aims to be the go-to platform for accessing/collecting
dense atmosphere measurements:
[http://pressurenet.io/](http://pressurenet.io/)

~~~
MegaDeKay
"Our smartphones are becoming weather stations..."

Only to a very limited extent. A phone is not going to give me rainfall data
nor wind information. A phone will also skew temperature readings because the
phone itself heats up with usage and the fact that it is typically kept close
to your body.

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hanspeide
AmatYr is a similar project, written in Lua and JS with Postgresql as a
backing database:
[https://github.com/torhve/Amatyr](https://github.com/torhve/Amatyr)

Live setup: [http://yr.hveem.no/](http://yr.hveem.no/)

I'm not the creator, but I set it up for my own weather station, and it has
been working flawlessly.

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jameswyse
I backed a project on Kickstarter back in July '04 called BloomSky. It's a
connected smart weather station with a sky facing camera. They haven't shipped
yet but it looks pretty good!

[http://www.bloomsky.com/](http://www.bloomsky.com/)

~~~
roel_v
Did you really mean 'July 2004' or is that a typo?

~~~
ldng
Kickstarter launched in 2009, so it's a typo.

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danjayh
He mentions weatherunderground a couple of times ... great service. For me it
has obviated the need to set up my own station, because the density and
quality of weather data available in my area is excellent.

