Author Topic: Aercus and weewx  (Read 1407 times)

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Offline wolwx

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Aercus and weewx
« on: January 07, 2019, 07:44:08 PM »
Hello Everyone and happy new year.

I received a weather station present for Christmas. The station, an Aercus which looks identical to an Ambient 1001, with the sensors all contained in one single unit, works well as intended and publishes all the acquired data, including temperatures, pressure, wind and gusts, solar radiation and UV index to Wunderground.

As you probably guessed the reason I am posting this message is that I intend to use an external software instead (I'd like to publish the data on APRS via CWOP).

I started going through the weewx wiki and documents and I have a few questions which I hope someone with knowledge of my type of station and weewx can help me with:

1. I haven't found any notes suggesting that the computer can download the data through the WiFi network. If so, I conclude that a USB cable and relevant driver (for which I found relevant info on the wiki) are needed. Is this correct?

2. This station looks similar (or shall I say identical) to the Ambient and others. In particular, the weewx wiki refers to FineOffset. By looking at the start screen, I think the firmware was customised by the distributor (Aercus). Is there a preferred alternative firmware that could be loaded onto this station? If I swap firmware, what advantages or drawback can I potentially face?

3. From your experience, is weewx a good match for this station or would you choose something else to run on a Rasberry Pi, possibly headless? Would weewx be able to read all the data collected by this station (I found some conflicting info on the wiki).

Thanks for your help.

Offline Storm017

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Re: Aercus and weewx
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2019, 11:21:35 PM »
Welcome to the forum. I did a quick search on the weewx user forum and found information pertaining to Aercus and weewx.

Offline mwall

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Re: Aercus and weewx
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2019, 12:42:29 AM »
1. I haven't found any notes suggesting that the computer can download the data through the WiFi network. If so, I conclude that a USB cable and relevant driver (for which I found relevant info on the wiki) are needed. Is this correct?

afaik, no one has figured out how to use the usb connection to collect data, so use wifi.

2. This station looks similar (or shall I say identical) to the Ambient and others. In particular, the weewx wiki refers to FineOffset. By looking at the start screen, I think the firmware was customised by the distributor (Aercus). Is there a preferred alternative firmware that could be loaded onto this station? If I swap firmware, what advantages or drawback can I potentially face?

the station is manufactured by fineoffset, then branded by various vendors.

3. From your experience, is weewx a good match for this station or would you choose something else to run on a Rasberry Pi, possibly headless? Would weewx be able to read all the data collected by this station (I found some conflicting info on the wiki).

weewx can read data from these stations using a few different mechanisms:

1) direct queries to the station using the weewx-hp1000 driver

https://github.com/AussieSusan/HP1000

2) sniff or listen to network traffic using the weewx-interceptor driver

https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-interceptor

3) capture radio signals from the sensors using a US$25 SDR dongle, rtl_433, and the weewx-sdr driver

https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr


the weewx wiki has some guidance (although it is looking a bit dated now):

https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/observer

https://github.com/weewx/weewx/wiki/weathersleuth

m

Offline wolwx

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Re: Aercus and weewx
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2019, 04:53:23 AM »

weewx can read data from these stations using a few different mechanisms:

1) direct queries to the station using the weewx-hp1000 driver

https://github.com/AussieSusan/HP1000

2) sniff or listen to network traffic using the weewx-interceptor driver

https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-interceptor

3) capture radio signals from the sensors using a US$25 SDR dongle, rtl_433, and the weewx-sdr driver

https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr


Thank you very much, this is very helpful!

If the system can, through an SDR, just collect the broadcast sensor data from the UHF link, am I correct by saying that weewx can pretty much replace (or be added to) the station's console? I think this is ultimately the configuration I will want to achieve, so that I can use weewx to publish the data on CWOP. I will still want to use the console as a quick monitor and to publish the data on Wunderground (though weewx can probably do both Wunderground and CWOP simultaneously).

However as I don't have an SDR at hand I will try sometimes today an installation on a Raspberry Pi in "listen" mode and will post updates on how it goes. It looks promising so far, thank you again you have been great help.

Offline vreihen

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Re: Aercus and weewx
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2019, 06:15:56 AM »
I'm not familiar with your station hardware, but the general gotcha with using an SDR to replace a traditional console is that many station manufacturers put the barometer sensor into the console itself...so it is never sent by radio to sniff.  Nothing that adding a BMP-280 to the i2c bus in the Pi can't easily fix for a few quid, but you will need to write some quick software to import it as an additional sensor.

It would be neat if @mwall could add i2c barometer support for the common Bosch modules into the SDR driver at some point, so that it could be referenced in the sensor_map just like stuff coming over the SDR.....
WU Gold Stars for everyone! :lol: