Author Topic: Alternatives to Weather Underground?  (Read 8888 times)

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Offline zroger73

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Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« on: January 08, 2018, 12:13:42 PM »
Two years ago, I'd heard of Weather Underground, but never took them as a serious player. I relied on other weather sources. Then, I purchased an Ambient Weather weather station that uploaded its data to WU. I quickly began to appreciate the functionality and WU became my primary weather source for historic data, current data, and forecasts.

Over time WU has become broken. Lately, it's been all but useless.

I don't mind paying a more for a better quality weather station, such as one by Davis, but are there other services that work similar to (how) WU (is supposed to work)?

Offline waiukuweather

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2018, 12:20:12 PM »
www.pwsweather.com

but your station will not send data to them

Offline zroger73

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2018, 12:57:10 PM »
Thanks! I have an Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP. It appears they sell a device called a Weatherbridge that will allow it to upload to PWS among others. I really hate to spend another $210 on an additional device for such a cheaply-built weather station. I may just put my old rain gauge back up. It worked for decades. :)

Offline bchwdlks

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2018, 01:49:56 PM »
Thanks! I have an Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP. It appears they sell a device called a Weatherbridge that will allow it to upload to PWS among others. I really hate to spend another $210 on an additional device for such a cheaply-built weather station. I may just put my old rain gauge back up. It worked for decades. :)

If you decide to keep the Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP active, the Meteobridge is a much cheaper way to go instead of Weatherbridge. I have not checked prices lately but it should be less than $100 USD. And if you decide in the future to change stations, the Meteobridge will talk to almost all current stations. And it connects to many on-line weather networks in addition to Weather Underground.

If you really get into the weather hobby and get your Davis station and start your own web page, Meteobridge will also feed data to almost all of the software packages.

Offline PaulMy

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2018, 03:30:13 PM »
Quote
I don't mind paying a more for a better quality weather station, such as one by Davis, but are there other services that work similar to (how) WU (is supposed to work)?

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=33527.msg340625#msg340625

Enjoy,
Paul

Offline dupreezd

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2018, 03:49:56 PM »
Quote
If you decide to keep the Ambient Weather WS-1400-IP active, the Meteobridge is a much cheaper way to go instead of Weatherbridge
I have a WS-1200 with an ObseverIP. I bought the TL-MR3020, flashed it myself and been running like that for about a year with no issues.
Check the warning about V3 of the TL-MR3020 on the Meteobridge website.
Davis VP2 6163 | WiFi Logger
CWOP - FW0717
Blitzortung 2100

Offline theslydog

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2018, 04:17:33 PM »
Over time WU has become broken. Lately, it's been all but useless.

Maybe give https://weathercloud.net/ a go seems to work ok and support a lot of station types natively.

They are probably getting a lot of new accounts lately with Weather Underground going to the dogs.




Offline NanoWx

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2018, 05:37:15 PM »

 Meteobridge is a much cheaper way to go instead of Weatherbridge. I have not checked prices lately but it should be less than $100 USD. And if you decide in the future to change stations, the Meteobridge will talk to almost all current stations. And it connects to many on-line weather networks in addition to Weather Underground.

If you really get into the weather hobby and get your Davis station and start your own web page, Meteobridge will also feed data to almost all of the software packages.

WeatherBridge is apparently one of a few possible TP-Link routers, with MeteoBridge sw. Looking at the release history, it looks like the MeteoBridge firmware/sw too often has problems adapting when TP-Link changes router versions. That may lead a person back to the WeatherBridge ...

Offline dolfs

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2018, 06:27:19 PM »
One possible advantage of WeatherBridge over MeteoBridge is that (if Ambient does its job; and I am pretty sure they do) ensures you will not receive a TP-LINK device that is not supported. Other than that, MeteoBridge is equivalent and buying HW yourself and licensing MB is lots cheaper (and is what I have done over 2 years ago). It should not be that hard to buy a correct version of hardware.

Once you have it setup, these issues do not exist, so the Ambient benefit mentioned above is marginal.

Having said all that, it is quite unfair to blame MeteoBridge for incompatible HW versions in TP-LINK. It is TP-LINK that releases substantially different hardware under (mostly) the exact same product name/version. Of course TP-LINK never sells these devices with MB in mind, but rather sells them as a self-contained router. As such the changes should not, and do not, matter. I also suspect this is one of the reasons why Boris introduced MB PRO, because it gives complete hardware control. It is, however, substantially more expensive and does not necessarily offer much additional value (depending on your needs) beyond basic intermediary between your weather station and various services.
--dolf

Ambient WS-1400-IP + MeteoBridge

Offline Mattk

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2018, 07:44:24 PM »
One possible advantage of WeatherBridge over MeteoBridge is that (if Ambient does its job; and I am pretty sure they do) ensures you will not receive a TP-LINK device that is not supported. Other than that, MeteoBridge is equivalent and buying HW yourself and licensing MB is lots cheaper (and is what I have done over 2 years ago). It should not be that hard to buy a correct version of hardware.

Once you have it setup, these issues do not exist, so the Ambient benefit mentioned above is marginal.

Having said all that, it is quite unfair to blame MeteoBridge for incompatible HW versions in TP-LINK. It is TP-LINK that releases substantially different hardware under (mostly) the exact same product name/version. Of course TP-LINK never sells these devices with MB in mind, but rather sells them as a self-contained router. As such the changes should not, and do not, matter. I also suspect this is one of the reasons why Boris introduced MB PRO, because it gives complete hardware control. It is, however, substantially more expensive and does not necessarily offer much additional value (depending on your needs) beyond basic intermediary between your weather station and various services.

Yes the TP-Link issue is nothing MB can control.  It has also been interesting watching the responses in regard WU, don't know how many times MB has been questioned because no data is showing on WU #-o 

Offline ambientweather

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Re: Alternatives to Weather Underground?
« Reply #10 on: November 08, 2019, 03:29:24 PM »
Consider AmbientWeather.net.  We are building out Wunderground.com capability.

 

anything