Topic: I don't want fancy screens, I just want raw data - what should I buy?

[ollybear]

Hi,

I bought my first weather station 3 and a half years ago - an Aercus WeatherSleuth.  It was cheap (~£140) but it got me interested in the subject.  It has no screen or display, rather the "base station" is a little box with a radio interface to talk to the internal and external sensor units, and an ethernet port.  It can publish data to WU, but I just use a script that runs every 30 seconds on a computer which pulls the current sensor values and then puts them into a database.  Then I use Grafana to display the data.

https://burchettsgreen.com/index.php/information/13-weather

That design works for me.  I don't want any fancy screens.  However the Aercus unit has started to get a bit flaky.  The radio-ethernet unit has always been buggy and I had to build a little device which automatically reboots it when it locks up.  Then the pressure sensor became unreliable, so I now use a little temp/baro unit that I have connected to a Raspberry Pi.  Now the UV sensor has failed and the sunlight sensor seems to be close behind.

So, I would like to get some new kit.  But from looking around it seems that the cost of many weather stations is due to fancy units for displaying data, which I'm not bothered with at all.  I just want to be able  to poll for all of the sensor data every 30 seconds via some protocol over TCP/IP (ideally HTTP). 

Happy to spend a  bit more money to get something more accurate and reliable, and would be grateful for advice.  Looking for "standard" measures - Temp, pressure, UV, sunlight, humidity, wind dir and speed etc.

Thanks in advance!

Olly.

[PaulMy]

You can't go wrong with Davis... VP2 ISS and Weatherlink Live.


Enjoy,
Paul

[ollybear]

Thanks Paul, I'll have a look...

You can't go wrong with Davis... VP2 ISS and Weatherlink Live.


Enjoy,
Paul

[Mandrake]

I would highly recommend that you take a look at the Ecowitt products.
They sell some headless weather stations and have the massive advantage of being modular so that you can add sensors as you need or want.
The systems are also highly repairable.

High end headless is the GW1003 ($260) but not available in the USA
https://www.ecowitt.com/shop/goodsDetail/34

or the easy option is to build a station around the GW1000 which is the headless receiver (you interrogate this via TCP/IP and can hook up all sorts of software to monitor the weather sensors)
https://www.ecowitt.com/shop/goodsDetail/107  ($35)
and then add the various sensors you want like anemometer.
You can find this all here:
https://www.ecowitt.com/shop/homePage

I would highly recommend that you take a look unless you have very deep pockets for the Davis kit

[davidefa]

In the UK you can find ecowitt products rebranded watson at incredible price ( see watson 8686 )

P.S.
By the way I have this version ( without console ) but rebranded Waldbeck

[ollybear]

Thanks very much.  The Davis kit looks great, but is ~10x the cost of what I have now.  I will definitely look at the Ecowitt/Watson gear as I was hoping not to spend quite as much as the Davis will cost me once I have added solar and UV sensors.  So "headless" is the term I'm looking for in terms of looking for something I can query over IP and stick in my own time series database..  Thanks again.

[Mandrake]

Be aware that Ecowitt is now available in the UK direct from Amazon UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/ecowitt/page/9F91BBDF-74D9-43C2-8DCE-A779B5E4DEB7?store_ref=BLP_HW_69279E7A-8FAE-4E67-B04A-A4EE18B80FD5

You can get the GW1000 there and add the sensors as you need

[Mattk]

These comments tend to be a little contradictory, "Happy to spend a  bit more money to get something more accurate and reliable" and "The Davis kit looks great, but is ~10x the cost of what I have now." which to me makes any recommendations rather difficult?

[jbroome]

I'll add another plug for the Ecowitt ecosystem, as it were. I got started in it because I was looking for water leak sensors (which they have), and then of course I was drawn into the weather sensors and such. I really like that you can get started small with the gateway device (GW1000 or GW1100) and a sensor or two, then grow as you wish.  In US dollars, the entry is about $50 for the gateway with a single external sensor, and the sensors range from $15 up to about $80.  The GW1000 and GW1100 gateway devices are tiny boxes that gather the data from the sensors, and can push it to a number of online services.  The GW devices also support an API so that you can pull the data directly and use it as you choose (like putting it into a time series database  )

   ---Jonathan

[ollybear]

Thanks very much for your input guys.

I have ordered an Ecowitt GW1101 (wifi gw and 7 in 1 outdoor sensor), a WH51 soil moisture sensor, a WH57 lightning detector and a WH41 air quality sensor.

In case others in the UK are interested, I ordered from weatherspares.co.uk as they had a wider range of Ecowitt products than Amazon.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Olly
.