Author Topic: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect  (Read 1489 times)

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Offline mlhalegr

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Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« on: October 18, 2018, 11:38:25 AM »
If I purchase the Acurite Access, will this eliminate the need for a computer and PC Connect?

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2018, 11:39:38 AM »
If I purchase the Acurite Access, will this eliminate the need for a computer and PC Connect?

Yes.

Offline DoctorKnow

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2018, 11:42:50 AM »
If I purchase the Acurite Access, will this eliminate the need for a computer and PC Connect?
Purchase a meteobridge, and connect the console to it. No PC needed, and you can upload to all the weather sites. The Access only uploads to Wunderground.

Offline galfert

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2018, 02:43:36 PM »
If I purchase the Acurite Access, will this eliminate the need for a computer and PC Connect?
Purchase a meteobridge, and connect the console to it. No PC needed, and you can upload to all the weather sites. The Access only uploads to Wunderground.

Depends on which console mlhalegr has, as all consoles are not compatible with the Meteobridge.
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Offline SkellyCA

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2018, 03:06:04 PM »
So the Meteobridge isn't compatible with the Atlas console?

If not, do you think it will be in the future?
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Offline nincehelser

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2018, 03:34:06 PM »
If I purchase the Acurite Access, will this eliminate the need for a computer and PC Connect?
Purchase a meteobridge, and connect the console to it. No PC needed, and you can upload to all the weather sites. The Access only uploads to Wunderground.

Depends on which console mlhalegr has, as all consoles are not compatible with the Meteobridge.

As far as I'm aware, all PC Connect consoles have a serial port that can be used by Meteobridge or other software packages.

If the console does not specify it is "PC Connect", then you should assume there is no customer-usable serial port.

The Atlas and some other HD consoles do have a USB port, but presently it is "for factory use only".

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2018, 03:39:20 PM »
So the Meteobridge isn't compatible with the Atlas console?

If not, do you think it will be in the future?

No it isn't.  It's future compatibility is up to Boris.

Acuparse seems to be leading the pack in Atlas-compatible software.

Personally, I'd like to see an RTL_433 driver for the Atlas.  Once we have that, the sky's the limit on what you might want to do.

Offline Storm017

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2018, 08:08:06 PM »
Personally, I'd like to see an RTL_433 driver for the Atlas.  Once we have that, the sky's the limit on what you might want to do.

The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Offline nincehelser

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #8 on: October 19, 2018, 05:49:38 AM »
Personally, I'd like to see an RTL_433 driver for the Atlas.  Once we have that, the sky's the limit on what you might want to do.

The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Has anyone tried to see if the new Atas data is decoded.

Offline vreihen

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #9 on: October 19, 2018, 08:01:29 AM »
Has anyone tried to see if the new Atas data is decoded.

I can find no evidence of specific Atlas support in the RTL_433 source code:

https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433
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Offline WonderWX

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2018, 12:18:32 PM »
The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Nope -

Guessing modulation: No clue...
Guessing modulation: Single pulse detected. Probably Frequency Shift Keying or just noise...

I'm capturing data from Atlas with rtl_433 and have the 10 second WU updates, might be able to work it out for at least the basic info.

Offline BeaverMeadow

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2018, 02:56:47 PM »
The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Nope -

Guessing modulation: No clue...
Guessing modulation: Single pulse detected. Probably Frequency Shift Keying or just noise...

I'm capturing data from Atlas with rtl_433 and have the 10 second WU updates, might be able to work it out for at least the basic info.

Why doesn't Acurite release this information?

Offline galfert

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2018, 03:12:28 PM »
The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Nope -

Guessing modulation: No clue...
Guessing modulation: Single pulse detected. Probably Frequency Shift Keying or just noise...

I'm capturing data from Atlas with rtl_433 and have the 10 second WU updates, might be able to work it out for at least the basic info.

Why doesn't Acurite release this information?

Probably for several reasons. They are so tight lipped that we will never know what they are thinking.
- They just want you to use the product as they designed it, nothing more
- They don't care about the hobbyist enthusiast
- They don't want to have to support the API to outsiders
- They want to be able to change the API as they see fit without repercussions
- They want to control the product to sunset and ensure obsolescence as they did with the old Hub as they see fit

I'm probably going to draw criticism for this post. So what. That is how I feel and it isn't to intended to product bash. I think Acurite has a lot of potential and they could be competing with Davis if they just did things differently. I want competition in the marketplace as I believe in capitalism. The only reason we have an ancient Davis VP2 still for sale is because there is no competition. I as a consumer find myself without a good solid top of the line buying choice in 2018 with all the features. So I'm passing the time with an Ambient station for now and doing the best I can with it hoping that something better comes along. I'm not a fan nor hater of any particular brand. At least with Ambient they have a supported solution to use a Meteobridge and I can post to just about anywhere including sending my data to my own SQL database and I'm not restricted to how frequently I can grab the data. I'll jump ship from Ambient the minute I see something that checks more boxes.
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Offline nincehelser

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #13 on: October 19, 2018, 03:46:36 PM »
The current RTL_433 driver with a SDR should work.

Nope -

Guessing modulation: No clue...
Guessing modulation: Single pulse detected. Probably Frequency Shift Keying or just noise...

I'm capturing data from Atlas with rtl_433 and have the 10 second WU updates, might be able to work it out for at least the basic info.

Why doesn't Acurite release this information?

Probably for several reasons. They are so tight lipped that we will never know what they are thinking.
- They just want you to use the product as they designed it, nothing more
- They don't care about the hobbyist enthusiast
- They don't want to have to support the API to outsiders
- They want to be able to change the API as they see fit without repercussions
- They want to control the product to sunset and ensure obsolescence as they did with the old Hub as they see fit

I'm probably going to draw criticism for this post. So what. That is how I feel and it isn't to intended to product bash.

It is rather cynical.

More simply put, there is far more business risk in doing so than not.  Even if there is no risk, the cost to curate is prohibitive.

Offline Bushman

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #14 on: October 19, 2018, 04:42:10 PM »
Pretty hard for Chaney to monetize open data.  Interestingly, there is a viable  business model for open source (free) software.  Davis tried the proprietary route (Green Dot loggers) and you can see where that got them.  I fully expect a decoded stream in Acuparse then Meteobridge etc.
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Offline BeaverMeadow

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #15 on: October 19, 2018, 08:47:18 PM »
Pretty hard for Chaney to monetize open data.....

They're doing a great job monetizing by the planned "bricking" of the SmartHub and thereby forcing customers into buying the Access.

Offline vreihen

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #16 on: October 20, 2018, 07:23:15 AM »
This is my only gripe about Acurite.  They have never made it easy for software developers to *locally* access the data being collected.  VIS was apparently the only outsider with access to the old USB port protocols, and only released Windows-based software.  The old bridge/smartHUB didn't have a way to tap the data locally, outside of man-in-the-middle network sniffing.  The new Access (oxymoron name) and lack of USB access of any type in the Atlas speaks volumes about their understanding and commitment to the very weather enthusiast market that they are trying to enter.

As much as people like to slam Davis for their insane logger pricing, I have one of their USB loggers in an Envoy and it has been the cat's meow of reliability.  The weewx driver is even smart enough to pull archived data out of it if the computer is down for some reason, reminding me why they call it a logger and not just a simple USB port.

Another example is WeatherFlow.  Their Hub actually sends live UDP broadcasts of every sensor observation over the local network, which ironically means that every device on your home network is having the weather data sent to it if it wants to decode it.  The UDP packet protocol is freely documented, and it took me only a few hours to write the weewx station driver to grab that data and import it.  No drama, no reverse-engineering, no rtl_433 and an SDR.

Over the years, Acurite users have accepted being locked out of their data without using reverse-engineering or ugly hacks as being the norm.  If they want to play in the Davis sandbox, they need to do more than tout an SHT-31 and make it easy to access the collected data locally.....
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Offline galfert

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Re: Acurite Access vs. PC Connect
« Reply #17 on: October 20, 2018, 07:47:31 AM »
vreilhen,
Well said. Very factual and slim on opinion. Hopefully Acurite (Chaney) is listening. They can still right the ship. I hope they do.
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