Weather Station Discussion

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meow
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#3056466 30-Mar-2023 11:29

mailmarshall: My Tempest died after a year- am in Wellington. Batttery not charging and device not communicating. Does anyone have a good alternative?

Also contact them and they’ll send out a new one with zero fuss.

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littlehead

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#3056501 30-Mar-2023 13:06

neb: In that case @eonsim's suggestion sounds fine. The Wittboy is pretty pricey though, you could also look at their more traditional ones (anemometer + tipping-bucket rain gauge) which are quite a bit cheaper. If you want it specifically for agricultural purposes you could also look at an Arduino or ESP32 with a soil moisture sensor attached to check on what needs watering and how much.

I recently got a weather station for my older parents new holiday home property. Looked at both Tempest and the Wittboy but both had reports of either reliability or setup issues. They also didn't come with a simple display they can just have around to easily view. Eventually decided on a Ecowitt HP2551 kit. Amazon.com.au have these frequently on special. Easy enough to setup, though a bit of a chore/process. The Ecowitt apps are fairly basic. Set it up for both Weatherunderground and the Ecowitt website.The Ecowitt one has more detail but can't be shared easily. WU has less detail but is easy to share to others and have public.

Nice thing about this is that you can buy and add other sensors like soil moisture sensors. You do need to be careful around compatibility and capabilities of each of the components and base stations/displays. https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=40730.0 is a very in-depth resource on this and all Ecowitt/Ambient/Fine Offset devices. I will note that the range of the soil sensors is not a good as I hoped vs as advertised, walls between the sensor and base station kill the range. The weather station itself, however, has plenty of range.

Both my parents absolutely love this setup.

farcus

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#3056809 30-Mar-2023 19:26

mailmarshall: I bought the Tempest because it seemed like a simple all in one solution. I am not a weather nerd at all.

My basic requirements were about knowing more about the weather in my suburb / property:
- wind speed
- temperature
- hours of sunshine
- rainfall measurement

My wife was trying to use Tempest to work out what to grow / when in the vegepod. We tried automation (watering) but it was too unreliable.

All home grade :)

if these are your requirements just go for a "branded" fine offset station.
Something like this

I've been using a slightly earlier model (which you can still buy) for about 5 years and it hasn't missed a beat. Haven't even needed to change the batteries in it.
On the whole it seems to have given more accurate info than a nearby tempest station (which has now disappeared).

hsvhel

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#3056819 30-Mar-2023 20:48

farcus:

mailmarshall: I bought the Tempest because it seemed like a simple all in one solution. I am not a weather nerd at all.

My basic requirements were about knowing more about the weather in my suburb / property:
- wind speed
- temperature
- hours of sunshine
- rainfall measurement

My wife was trying to use Tempest to work out what to grow / when in the vegepod. We tried automation (watering) but it was too unreliable.

All home grade :)

if these are your requirements just go for a "branded" fine offset station.
Something like this

I've been using a slightly earlier model (which you can still buy) for about 5 years and it hasn't missed a beat. Haven't even needed to change the batteries in it.
On the whole it seems to have given more accurate info than a nearby tempest station (which has now disappeared).

How do you find the accuracy of the rain guage?

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farcus

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#3056823 30-Mar-2023 21:03

hsvhel:

How do you find the accuracy of the rain guage?

I've never checked it against a manual gauge - but it is in the ballpark of other stations nearby

corksta

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#3065412 19-Apr-2023 11:45

My replacement/fourth Tempest arrived this morning. There's a slight redesign with this one with the internal on/off switch being a lot larger. It comes with newer firmware too. Maybe there's been some internal design changes and I'll get lucky this time. It's definitely a newer hardware version at least as the Tempest logo is shaded in purple in line with their recent colour update to the app.

If anyone wants a broken Tempest to play with let me know. Everything works in it except the temperature sensor.

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Stu

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#3065415 19-Apr-2023 12:02

@corksta we should have a look inside. Although, it looks like I'll be doing that with mine soon enough...

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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neb

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#3065417 19-Apr-2023 12:06

Stu: @corksta we should have a look inside. Although, it looks like I'll be doing that with mine soon enough...

if you do, post a teardown video on YT or photos on somewhere like Imgur.

Silvrav

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#3065431 19-Apr-2023 12:40

farcus:

mailmarshall: I bought the Tempest because it seemed like a simple all in one solution. I am not a weather nerd at all.

My basic requirements were about knowing more about the weather in my suburb / property:
- wind speed
- temperature
- hours of sunshine
- rainfall measurement

My wife was trying to use Tempest to work out what to grow / when in the vegepod. We tried automation (watering) but it was too unreliable.

All home grade :)

if these are your requirements just go for a "branded" fine offset station.
Something like this

I've been using a slightly earlier model (which you can still buy) for about 5 years and it hasn't missed a beat. Haven't even needed to change the batteries in it.
On the whole it seems to have given more accurate info than a nearby tempest station (which has now disappeared).

Do you know if the data is available through an API? i am starting to look at some stations as well and this seems to fit what I need, but want to extract info and integrate it with home assistant.

SumnerBoy

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#3065433 19-Apr-2023 12:41

Yeah the hub broadcasts UDP packets on your local network with all the telemetry data. Very easy to read and re-publish to MQTT to whatever you like - I am using NodeRED for this.

corksta

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#3065435 19-Apr-2023 12:44

@stu yes you’re right yours isn’t really improving is it. But yeah I’ll bring it down and we’ll take a look inside.

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gzt

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#3065440 19-Apr-2023 12:51

Costco has LaCrosse 3day forecast wifi station for $99. Any good as entry level with app only?

michaelmurfy

meow
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#3065624 19-Apr-2023 15:21

corksta: @stu yes you’re right yours isn’t really improving is it. But yeah I’ll bring it down and we’ll take a look inside.

I got one from @edge but be prepared when tearing down to come across some waterproof grease I got partway through my teardown and put it together as my hands got covered. Was going to re-attempt this weekend a bit better prepared :)

eonsim

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#3065685 19-Apr-2023 15:55

Silvrav:

Do you know if the data is available through an API? i am starting to look at some stations as well and this seems to fit what I need, but want to extract info and integrate it with home assistant.

Home Assistant has an integration for the Ecowitt weather stations, you can configure them to send the data directly to your HA machine no need to go via the cloud. You can also use RTL_433 to decode the broadcasts from the station and write your own code to import it into Home Assistant (should be able to do it with ESPhome).

DjShadow

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#3077249 17-May-2023 17:48

My tempest has officially failed, both the Wind and Pressure sensor gave up yesterday morning. Normally switching it off for a min then going through a pairing process (and having Weatherflow merge the old data) would work but the red light wouldn't go away this time. I had 200 days straight of satisfactory performance out of it too which is a record.

They are doing a no-fuss replacement for me which is great

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