Topic: USB vs. Wireless

[Jack Bowman]

Hello,
     I am new to the forum, and have learned much by reading the archive post here concerning Acurite equipment. I have a 5-in-1 Sensor, and a 01010 base. I am ready to take the next step, and get my data onto the internet. I want to get my data onto wunderground. Looking at the Acurite website It would appear that have 4 ways of doing this with my 5-in-1 sensor.

(Wireless)
AcuLink Internet Bridge  $79.00  UPDATE: (This is my choice. Ordered from Acurite, and on the way.)

or

(USB PC-Connect)
Add-on Display 1035RX  $80.00
Add-on Display 1025RX  $80.00
Add-on Display 1525RX  $80.00

I have seen answers to these questions, but some of the forum post are dated, and just wanted to get updated information if any is available.

1. What are the advantages/disadvanteges of Wireless vs. USB.
2. What is the current time interval for data to be transferred from the "My Backyard Weather" site to wunderground?
   **** (Got an answer on this one from another thread... 15 Minute intervals) ****

3. Is there any other solution for faster updates(wunderground) other than the Meteobridge aka Weatherbridge?

Thanks in advance for your help, and input. I appreciate it very much!

Jack

[nincehelser]

In my opinion, the bridge is more "hackable" than the USB method.   If I were more of a USB guru, my opinion might be different.

It's not hard to grab the data from the bridge.  All you need is some sort of computing device and a little code.  I use a Raspberry PI running Linux.  Someone motivated could use the same technique on a windows machine with a spare network interface.

Basically you just monitor the network interface and grab the data as it passes by.  The hard part is just figuring out the format, but I've got that figured out and can provide some code if you're interested.

Once you've got the data you just need to feed it to your favorite weather program.

As for being "faster", there's not much point in going too fast, because the shortest update interval from the 5-in-1 (wind speed) is 18 seconds to begin with.

[Jack Bowman]

As for being "faster", there's not much point in going too fast, because the shortest update interval from the 5-in-1 (wind speed) is 18 seconds to begin with.

I guess I don't understand this? There is a vast difference between 18 seconds, and 15 minutes. What am I missing here?

[nincehelser]

As for being "faster", there's not much point in going too fast, because the shortest update interval from the 5-in-1 (wind speed) is 18 seconds to begin with.

I guess I don't understand this? There is a vast difference between 18 seconds, and 15 minutes. What am I missing here?

15 minutes is just how often MBW forwards data to wunderground.  (the bridge has no involvement in this)

The bridge is actually sending MBW data all the time, the shortest update interval being 18 seconds.  So if you are handling wunderground updates yourself (through third-party software) you can send data to wunderground much more frequently.  

Wunderground can take updates every 2.5 seconds.  However, since the shortest update interval for Acurite is 18 seconds, there's not much use reporting every 2.5 seconds.  I report at 1-minute intervals which seems reasonable to me.

[Jack Bowman]

OK, it sounds like the "My Backyard Weather" page updates at a very respectable time increment then. So Acurite is putting the breaks on at their hosting website? Why would they cripple the functionality of their products like this? Bummer...

[nincehelser]

OK, it sounds like the "My Backyard Weather" page updates at a very respectable time increment then. So Acurite is putting the breaks on at their hosting website? Why would they cripple the functionality of their products like this? Bummer...

It seems the issue is resources.  I guess they don't feel they can justify the bandwidth and processing power necessary to forward data to wunderground more often.

Since they aren't generating any direct income from this service, I guess I can understand that.  However, I've done the calculations and it shouldn't, in theory, be that difficult, but there may be internal problems with their design that I don't know about.

That's why I just go around the problem.

[Jack Bowman]

I have the Bridge ordered, and on the way from Acurite. Thanks for the help.