Weather Station Hardware > Ambient Weather and Ecowitt and other Fine Offset clones

How to upload to Ambientweather.net

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galfert:
What is Ambientweather.net
Ambientweather.net is an online weather service by Ambient Weather. This service was designed to only be used with Ambient licensed hardware.

You don't need a weather station to enjoy Ambientweather.net. Anyone can check it out and see the stations that have decided to make their data public. Go check it out and see all that it has to offer. A new version 2.0 recently launched with a map and many new features. This service is evolving and there are future plans for new game changing things.

https://ambientweather.net/

Who can't upload to Ambientweather.net?
If you have similar hardware to Ambient you cannot upload to Ambientweather.net. It must be Ambient branded to upload. There are several limiting factors. The firmware is different in your similar looking hardware and you don't have a license from Ambient which is governed by Ambient by whitelisting device MAC addresses on their servers that are allowed to use Ambientweather.net.

If you think your hardware should be able to upload to Ambientweather.net but doesn't seem to have the functionality, then perhaps it has outdated firmware. Try updating your firmware to the latest version. Some earlier models didn't gain this ability until after they were manufactured and require updating. You should update your firmware anyway.

If you have Ambient Virtual Weather Station software (VWS) you can't upload to Ambientweather.net. This software has been discontinued and is no longer being developed. This software precedes the existence of Ambientweather.net. Therefore this software will not gain the capability to upload to Ambientweather.net. Ambient developed Ambientweather.net as a follow-up to VWS. The growing trend in the past decade is for software to go into the cloud and that is why this decision was made to put all efforts into the cloud and stop with VWS. New hardware can't use VWS. But old hardware often can be adapted to support Ambientweather.net, but it will require some investment on your part to expand your stations capabilities. See below for requirements and options.

Why is uploading to Ambientweather.net limited to Ambient licensed hardware?
Uploading to Ambientweather.net is limited because to run this service requires resource expenditure. The more stations and data the costlier it is to run, maintain and support. Ambient does not make any money off your data. This is different than other online services that monetize your data by selling it, which is what allows them to provide a free place for you to upload data. There are several advantages to Ambientweather.net, one of them being no ads.

Other companies that sell weather stations have services that are also limited to only their customers. You wouldn't expect to be able to upload to myAcurite.com if you didn't have an Acurite hardware. Same for Weatherlink.com if you didn't have a Davis station. Ambientweather.net is more like these companies than like Weather Underground.

What are the different ways or requirements to upload to Ambientweather.net?

Your options to upload to Ambientweather.net are (pick one):

* Buy an Ambient branded weather station that support this feature. For example: WS-2000, WS-5000, WS-2902A...and others. But not WS-1900 because that doesn't connect to the Internet. But you can add an ObserverIP to some models to add this capability, or add a second display with the capability.
* Buy a WeatherBridge from Ambient (this what they call a Meteobridge, it is the same thing it just has a different name). The Ambient WeatherBridge has the required license built-in. Tip: add a GW1000 to gain Meteobridge/WeatherBridge compatibility for your Fine Offset clone station. Davis stations can support various versions of the Meteobridge depedning on their logger: USB, IP, or the new WLL, or they can use the NANO version.
* Buy a Meteobridge elsewhere or make your own and then add the $100 license from Ambient (new lower price, previously it was $160). You only need to buy this one time license if your Meteobridge didn't come from Ambient.
https://www.ambientweather.com/amwevwamweac.html
* Make sure your station has the latest firmware. Updating which you should do anyway may gain you this ability.
* Your Meteobridge/WeatherBridge can be the standard, NANO, or PRO model. Ambient currently only sells the standard and the NANO. But if you bought the PRO from Ambient back when the used to sell it then you are all set.

galfert:
Some of the benefits of uploading to Ambientweather.net

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of benefits of using Ambientweather.net. Perhaps if you find a new use you can share as a followup to this thread. Also the service is evolving and new features are coming.

Some benefits:

* Data is accessible via Internet API. Many software and 3rd party scripts have been written to take advantage of this data.
* You can connect Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant to integrate with your station data.
* Integrate with IFTTT
* Available for anyone to use without a station and without a login. Although there are extra features if you create a free login.
* Get not just live weather but also forecasts that are source from Dark Sky (one of the best forecasting resources available)
* See your weather station data updated up to every 1 minute.
* Large weather station network of personal and NWS MADIS stations, making up 80,000 stations and growing

cheeroip:

--- Quote from: galfert on March 27, 2020, 01:42:39 PM ---
Uploading to Ambientweather.net is limited because to run this service requires resource expenditure. The more stations and data the costlier it is to run, maintain and support. Ambient does not make any money off your data.


--- End quote ---

I don't really agree about that. The cost  of receiving 1 million stations data (they wish) is probably not much different than receiving 10 thousands (I have no idea how many Ambient weather stations are actually actives. Having a service with a million station data would be way more "valuable" than the cost of running the service. Not that they risk to ever be able to have those numbers anyway. If the cost was the problem why don't offer different services for official stations and a showing ads and limited services to people that upload from clones?

I believe the issue could be more about trying to keep garbage free data as much as possible.

galfert:
Are you going to make the same argument for Weatherlink.com and myAcurite.com?

cheeroip:

--- Quote from: galfert on June 17, 2020, 01:16:21 PM ---Are you going to make the same argument for Weatherlink.com and myAcurite.com?

--- End quote ---
I don't know anything about them but of course is the same for everybody. I'm speaking from my pragmatic technical uninformed user pov.
Im sure their business model justify whatever they are doing. Just suggesting that there could be different approaches. 

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