WXforum.net

Miscellaneous Debris => Tech Corner => Topic started by: Manos on August 20, 2021, 01:19:01 AM

Title: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 20, 2021, 01:19:01 AM
Hi all,
We are  Weather ex Machina (https://exm.gr/), a startup working on a mechanism that pays weather station owners for sharing their local weather data and monetizes on the data by providing advanced weather services to weather-sensitive enterprises. Being weather enthusiasts and station owners our ourselves, we believe that the work that weather enthusiasts put in to sharing their local data is both underutilized and unappreciated, and we want to make this right.

To achieve this ambitious goal, we are creating a number of new open-source hardware and software components as well as new concepts, that I hope you will find interesting. This posting aims to get your feedback, so we can better adjust our solution.

We are introducing a new cryptocurrency (Ethereum ERC20 token) that is used as the reward currency for weather station owners. This is kinda of “mining weather data” if you are familiar with bitcoin or blockchain technology in general.  Token will be available in popular crypto exchanges, thus can be easily converted to fiat currency. Token is needed to ensure transparency and fair value transfer from customers to station owners using a burn and mint equilibrium. https://weatherxm.com/token/

In order to support as many as possible existing weather stations, we came up with a hardware device that is based on a linux single board computer with software defined radio that can receive and decode virtually any wireless protocol of RF based external weather station sensors or connect via cable or IP to any weather station console. This weather data miner also uses a GPS to validate location of station and a special crypto chip that ensures device can not be spoofed.

To cater for new weather station deployments we are using a different kind of hardware, based on Espressif ESP32 microcontroller with GPS, LoRa, WiFi, Ethernet and Crypto capabilities. We bundle this weather data miner with all-in-one external RF weather sensors (fine offset).

Our ultimate goal is to deploy large numbers of weather stations in rural areas where no WiFi or power is available, thus we have created an energy and communications autonomous station. It is  PV solar panel powered and utilizes 4G/NBIoT/LTE/WiFi/BLE/GPS/LoRa communications. Can be combined with RF sensors or SDI-12/MODBUS485 to approach WMO compliance (e.g. via metergroup Atmos 41)

More info on the miners can be found in our shop https://weatherxm.com/shop/ and technical details in our github repo http://github.com/exmgr/

(https://weatherxm.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/atmos41exm-IoT-node.jpg)
EXM's open source autonomous weather station - IoT node (https://github.com/exmgr/EXM-IoT-Node)

What do you think?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 20, 2021, 03:39:23 AM
Interesting concept, however a couple of questions. While it states that there are "mining rewards", it's not clear to me what that *actually* entails. For example, let's say that I join, spending $200 on extra hardware to send my data you system, what is the projected time-frame for the "mining rewards" to get to stage where I break even from the purchase of the hardware?

Until the return exceeds the extra cost, there is no reward, apart from interest which people might get from sending to another site without buying anything extra.

Also if I read the blurb correctly, the returns accrued can only be spent at your company store. Is that correct?

Is there any weird tax implications about getting a "fee-for-service" for "selling" weather observations? I know that this will vary between jurisdictions, so just curious what you 3expect in this area.





Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 20, 2021, 05:38:10 AM
Interesting concept, however a couple of questions. While it states that there are "mining rewards", it's not clear to me what that *actually* entails. For example, let's say that I join, spending $200 on extra hardware to send my data you system, what is the projected time-frame for the "mining rewards" to get to stage where I break even from the purchase of the hardware?

Until the return exceeds the extra cost, there is no reward, apart from interest which people might get from sending to another site without buying anything extra.

Also if I read the blurb correctly, the returns accrued can only be spent at your company store. Is that correct?

Is there any weird tax implications about getting a "fee-for-service" for "selling" weather observations? I know that this will vary between jurisdictions, so just curious what you 3expect in this area.

Interesting but I do wonder why you need a data collection device when our data is already available on the internet in the majority of cases although it would cater for non mainstream stations

Surely we just need to point it at your servers?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 20, 2021, 07:21:17 AM
Excellent points! Thank you.
I will try to answer as concise as I can.

1) what is the projected time-frame for the "mining rewards" to get to stage where I break even from the purchase of the hardware?

Based on our tokenomics, every day we will “mint” a fixed amount of tokens and distribute them to community members. In the beginning stations will be few, tokens will be many, so early adopters will accumulate many tokens fast. For the token to have any value, a number of things need to happen, we (WeatherXM)  need to convert our own fiat money to cryptocurrency and use them as liquidity for our token in a DEX (e.g. uniswap)

As soon as this happens, our token can be exchanged and its price will fluctuate based on demand and supply. Some people might see the token as a form of investment and will trade it, because that's how crypto works, so this adds more volatility. Therefore it is impossible to predict return on investment at this point. There is a possibility that the token will go to zero, one will never get his hardware investment back and we will lose all money put in the liquidation pool. There is also a possibility of high returns, if you look what has happened with similar crypto projects. Our mission is to make this mechanism work for the benefit of all of us, but it might take some time.

Our intention is to deliver value to station owners in addition to the token, by creating a custom, hyper local, more accurate weather forecast for the exact station location, using model output statistics and machine learning. We will essentially “correct” 3rd party forecasts for that location based on the actual data. We do this for our B2B customers already, so we think the community will appreciate and benefit from this service too.

2)  returns accrued can only be spent at your company store. Is that correct?

No, its actually the opposite, our tokens can be exchanged thus spent anywhere. It is the “weather data credit” that can only be purchased on our store. This is how we will sell weather data and services to other enterprises. That's essentially our revenue, and we have connected this revenue with the token price, using the burn-and-mint equilibrium, so the more weather data we sell, the more tokens we “burn”, so the token price increases since less tokens circulate, thus we are passing on the value to the community.

3) weird tax implications about getting a "fee-for-service"?
Station rewards are in cryptocurrency. Taxes apply when you convert crypto tokens to fiat, and depends on how, when and where you do it. Keep in mind, many retail sites worldwide receive crypto coins as payment and crypto is replacing traditional finance more and more every day.

4) why you need a data collection device when our data is already available on the internet

Wish we didn’t and we are open to discuss ways to overcome it, but there are too many obstacles using PWS data for commercial purposes with current status quo.
Most networks that weather enthusiasts send their data for free, apply licence terms that forces everyone else to either buy the data, or forbid use altogether, even though data are visible to the public.
Current PWS weather data have no proof of location or quality. In the blockchain / web3 world this is a major problem. If we were to reward any weather station owner by pointing at his/her server then it would be very easy for one to spoof thousands of fake stations.Thats why we use a GPS and a special crypto chip (ATCC608) in our devices as well as multiple validation mechanisms.
Overall, we see a “trustless” future, with weather related services made more efficient and accessible to new markets. For example, to automate a parametric weather crop insurance using data from a weather station that it is deployed on the actual crop one can not use today's traditional weather services, cloud infrastructure or hardware.

I understand that all these sound overcomplicated and like a ponzi scheme to anyone not familiar with crypto, but it does not get more transparent than this.

We are just getting started with this ambitious goal, so many things are been decided as we progress.  We already have early adopters from the crypto world, and this great for expanding weather knowledge and community, but we would really benefit if we have some weather enthusiasts on board too, to get expert feedback and healthy scepticism :-).

Thanks again for the questions/feedback, and I am happy to continue the discussion and answer/clarify any concerns or brainstorm on requirements.

Btw, what do you think about our autonomous hardware?
https://weatherxm.com/shop/wxm-miner-bundle-4g-lte/

How would you address the need for a weather station in a crop, what’s your recommended / typical approach and equipment + cloud platform of choice?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 20, 2021, 09:22:29 AM


4) why you need a data collection device when our data is already available on the internet

Wish we didn’t and we are open to discuss ways to overcome it, but there are too many obstacles using PWS data for commercial purposes with current status quo.
Most networks that weather enthusiasts send their data for free, apply licence terms that forces everyone else to either buy the data, or forbid use altogether, even though data are visible to the public.
Current PWS weather data have no proof of location or quality. In the blockchain / web3 world this is a major problem. If we were to reward any weather station owner by pointing at his/her server then it would be very easy for one to spoof thousands of fake stations.Thats why we use a GPS and a special crypto chip (ATCC608) in our devices as well as multiple validation mechanisms.
Overall, we see a “trustless” future, with weather related services made more efficient and accessible to new markets. For example, to automate a parametric weather crop insurance using data from a weather station that it is deployed on the actual crop one can not use today's traditional weather services, cloud infrastructure or hardware.

I understand that all these sound overcomplicated and like a ponzi scheme to anyone not familiar with crypto, but it does not get more transparent than this.



Thanks for the explanation. Like always there's more to this than meets the eye

Of course we are all honest!! :-P
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 20, 2021, 09:37:05 AM
On the standalone station you linked to I think you may have issues with the all in one approach

Integrated sensor suites force a siting compromise which is pretty difficult to reconcile, especially when allowances have to be made for the site itself (trees, buildings, shade, ground cover etc)

Seems a little pricey when a standard Fine Offset station is around $200 but the cellular connectivity can't be cheap, it says subscription included, is that a perpetual one?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 20, 2021, 10:18:46 AM
Excellent points! Thank you.
I will try to answer as concise as I can.

1) what is the projected time-frame for the "mining rewards" to get to stage where I break even from the purchase of the hardware?

Your response did not answer my question. In case I wasn't clear what I was asking about, valid answers would have been something like this (1) We have no idea, or  (2) Based on our projections, we think that people will earn $2.00 per week in the steady state, so it would take 100 weeks.

No doubt if the projected return was equivalent to $10 per week, it would be truly attractive. If that return was only the equivalent of 20 cents per week not so much unless you provided better storage and result graphing like the sites that don't make payments to the data uploaders.

Putting the question to myself. "Would you pay out a few hundred dollars for additional hardware  so that you can go on a site that 'pays' you to upload observations, if they can't/won't give a projection of what you will likely get in return for your outlay?"

Answer: Absolutely Not!
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 20, 2021, 12:59:15 PM
I appreciate the honest feedback @sky_watcher :-)

If I must choose between these two options, then I will go with (1) but...
We have many ideas on how the token is going to roll out and we will publish some aspects in a white paper soon, but honestly no one can predict how a new market/token will evolve, so I would be lying if I gave you token pricing estimates. Keep in mind that price will also be effected by our ability to sell / monetize on the weather data. That is our end goal, and not to sell you hardware (!). That's why one of the "miners" (SDR) is designed to integrate to existing weather stations.

In any way, I would suggest doing your research on similar projects and new token lunches in sites like https://coingecko.com/ before you buy anything crypto related and still be very skeptical :-)

unless you provided better storage and result graphing like the sites that don't make payments to the data uploaders.
of cource this is part of the plan too, but I don't expect people to migrate just for this.

Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: the beteljuice on August 20, 2021, 06:50:21 PM
I'm not so sure about your 'buyer' philosophy.

One of your 'flagship' products is the cellular stand-alone 5-in-1 solution.
Suggested market 'crop'.

So ... having paid out for the kit, is the farmer a 'seller' or a 'buyer' (for detailed forecast) or both ?
Presumably it would it be worthwhile becoming a seller rather than a buyer, unless you plan to restrict access to sellers about their own data ?

Indeed, there is little mention of what access a seller may have.

... part of your reward algorithm is (quite rightly) rareness of location, but what sort of distances are we talking about, and does local topography play a part ?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 20, 2021, 11:03:01 PM
I appreciate the honest feedback @sky_watcher :-)

If I must choose between these two options, then its (1).
A "pig in a poke" sale for the data up-loader.

Quote
We have many ideas on how the token is going to roll out. We will publish some aspects in a white paper soon, but honestly no one can predict how a new market/token will evolve, so I would be lying if I gave you token pricing estimates.
You appear to have a total focus on the potential crypt-currency speculation gains, rather that the base projections of cash flows generated by the weather data and products.

Quote
Keep it in mind, that the price will also be effected by our ability to sell / monetize on the weather data. That is our end goal, and not to sell you hardware (!). That's why one of the "miners" (SDR) is designed to integrate to existing weather stations.
Hmm. So, you want the weather station owners to carry a lot of the capital and maintenance cost of setting up your network hardware, but you have no idea of what they will likely get in return. It is one thing to have a sound prediction that fails - life has risks. It is quite another not to even have a prediction that shows that the scheme is even potentially practical - that's stupidity if you get involved.

As a matter of interest, if a firm said to you "We want you to pay to set up equipment so that you can send your data to us so we can sell out products. We can't tell you how much you will be paid for doing that, but we will give you an undefined amount of a crypto-currency for doing it, and you might make more money (that this undefined amount) if there is crypto-inflation."

Would you company be interested in such a deal? If not, it is probably not realistic to expect large numbers of other people to do what you will not.

Quote
In any way, I would suggest doing your research on similar projects and new token lunches in sites like https://coingecko.com/ before you buy anything crypto related and still be very skeptical :-)
You are presupposing that my comment was that I did not think that crypto-currency represents a viable transaction method. As you look again, my question was nothing to do with the currency method, rather whether you have modeled the potential supplier/customer numbers and the resulting cash flows and project returns, so estimates of likely payments to up-loaders can be made.

Quote
unless you provided better storage and result graphing like the sites that don't make payments to the data uploaders.
of cource this is part of the plan too, but I don't expect people to migrate just for this.
Why, "of course"? Your post makes no mention of this. One might also assume with the focus on monetizing the product that it is not even clear if accessing the data you uploaded would be free or require a transaction, or whether visualisation of one's uploaded data incurs a transaction fee as well.

I am alsointerested in your question "How would you address the need for a weather station in a crop, what’s your recommended / typical approach and equipment + cloud platform of choice?"
My question in return is "Why would you expect a response other than questions about the existing networks (MesoNets, etc), terrain, crop, parameters to be measured (frost risk, over-spray, spraying efficiency), data update rates, accuracy requirements?" Looking at the website, it makes no mention that there are consulting services that would provide the information about making these decisions which are essentially independent of the products that you have for sale. What as the point of that question?

I suggest you need to rethink your strategy and demonstrate that buying the hardware is value for money in terms of fees for upload, and additional services provided by the device. Obsessing about the crypt-currency for what is an unknown, but likely small, amount of money doesn't do much for the project's credibility.

I shudder that I am saying this, because when I was in industry, I hated most marketing people, but I think that you may get benefit from having a chat with one about selling your idea in a more effective manner.

Good luck

Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: vreihen on August 21, 2021, 09:44:25 AM
I stopped reading the moment that I concluded that this was a 21st century MLM pyramid marketing scheme.....
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 26, 2021, 12:58:04 AM
On the standalone station you linked to I think you may have issues with the all in one approach

Integrated sensor suites force a siting compromise which is pretty difficult to reconcile, especially when allowances have to be made for the site itself (trees, buildings, shade, ground cover etc)

Seems a little pricey when a standard Fine Offset station is around $200 but the cellular connectivity can't be cheap, it says subscription included, is that a perpetual one?

Integrated sensor suites force a siting compromise
In my experience, most of the time, separate sensors are placed all together. Wouldn't you agree?
To keep cost down and simplify deployment, I believe all-in-one make more sense, as it will cover most of the common use-cases, but I am open to feedback in case I have the stats completely wrong. Also, I am assuming the person who wants to make a perfect deployment it is likely that already has more expensive equipment.
That's why we have created the "SDR Miner" version that allows integration with existing weather stations via RF.

subscription included, is that a perpetual one?
Yes, we believe the rewards will supersede the SIM data plan cost.

Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 26, 2021, 01:25:23 AM
So ... having paid out for the kit, is the farmer a 'seller' or a 'buyer' (for detailed forecast) or both ?
Presumably it would it be worthwhile becoming a seller rather than a buyer, unless you plan to restrict access to sellers about their own data ?
No restriction on own data. Farmer, like all other station owners, is:
a) buyer of equipment and basic services
b) data seller and will be rewarded
c) potential buyer of future added value services

The custom forecast that is based on station data will be part of the basic services, so all station owners will get it, but we believe this is (more) valuable to professionals in weather-sensitive industries e.g. farmers.

... part of your reward algorithm is (quite rightly) rareness of location, but what sort of distances are we talking about, and does local topography play a part ?

Good question, we are still researching on this part.
One approach is splitting earth to hex cells following https://eng.uber.com/h3/ aiming e.g. at resolution 8 hexagons (area of 0.7373276 km², and edge length of 0.461354684 km)
If two weather stations are in the same hex, rewards will split.
In addition, distance from nearest stations will create some kind of index "near/far/very far" that will affect rewards, to incentivize rural deployments.
We probably need to start with something very simple, don't want to bring topography in the mix but might modify in future based on potential problems, added value services and demand.
Again, I am open to suggestions. What do you think?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 26, 2021, 02:18:07 AM
@sky_watcher thank you for elaborating!

A "pig in a poke" sale for the data up-loader.
well, today's networks provide no pig and no poke :-)

You appear to have a total focus on the potential crypt-currency speculation gains, rather that the base projections of cash flows generated by the weather data and products.
Thats how current thread discussion evolved, but fact is that team has a few years of experience delivering weather IoT solutions to enterprise customers, so we are less worried about demand at this point.

As a matter of interest, if a firm said to you "We want you to pay to set up equipment so that you can send your data to us so we can sell out products. We can't tell you how much you will be paid for doing that, but we will give you an undefined amount of a crypto-currency for doing it, and you might make more money (that this undefined amount) if there is crypto-inflation."
Would you company be interested in such a deal? If not, it is probably not realistic to expect large numbers of other people to do what you will not.

Today most "free" consumer services are doing something worse than what you describe without people realizing it. The entire internet economy is build on the concept of "you buy the equipment, and we make even more money from the data we collect because you are using it". Dont you agree?
We are trying to break this model and give value back to the ones who are creating it in the first place. This can not magically happen, it needs multiple assumptions to prove right, steps to be executed correct and will take time to reach sustainability / supply-demand equilibrium. Crypto token is acting as a safe buffer. Token price increase due to speculation is not required, but if it happens, it will benefit the community as much as it will benefit us.

Why, "of course"? Your post makes no mention of this. One might also assume with the focus on monetizing the product that it is not even clear if accessing the data you uploaded would be free or require a transaction, or whether visualisation of one's uploaded data incurs a transaction fee as well.
Yes, you are right, we are missing important info in our website, we will correct this asap.

My question in return is "Why would you expect a response other than questions about the existing networks (MesoNets, etc), terrain, crop, parameters to be measured (frost risk, over-spray, spraying efficiency), data update rates, accuracy requirements?" Looking at the website, it makes no mention that there are consulting services that would provide the information about making these decisions which are essentially independent of the products that you have for sale. What as the point of that question?
Point of my question was not to collect requirements about a smart farming solution, but to validate with you if our 4G autonomous station has the benefits / advantages we believe.

I suggest you need to rethink your strategy and demonstrate that buying the hardware is value for money in terms of fees for upload, and additional services provided by the device. Obsessing about the crypt-currency for what is an unknown, but likely small, amount of money doesn't do much for the project's credibility.
I shudder that I am saying this, because when I was in industry, I hated most marketing people, but I think that you may get benefit from having a chat with one about selling your idea in a more effective manner.
Good luck
lol  :grin:
team is all engineers, so yes, some marketing wouldn't hurt. Your points are valid, and we will improve our narrative without marketing people :-)
Thanks again!
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 26, 2021, 02:27:52 AM
I stopped reading the moment that I concluded that this was a 21st century MLM pyramid marketing scheme.....
Did I say you will quit your job and become rich?  :-P
MLM pyramid schemes are not this transparent, neither produce novel open-source technology in the IoT and Web3 space.
...but we are guilty of making a pyramid shaped weather station a few years ago!

(https://exm.gr/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/pyramid-1200x900.png)
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 26, 2021, 04:22:08 AM
On the standalone station you linked to I think you may have issues with the all in one approach

Integrated sensor suites force a siting compromise which is pretty difficult to reconcile, especially when allowances have to be made for the site itself (trees, buildings, shade, ground cover etc)

Seems a little pricey when a standard Fine Offset station is around $200 but the cellular connectivity can't be cheap, it says subscription included, is that a perpetual one?

Integrated sensor suites force a siting compromise
In my experience, most of the time, separate sensors are placed all together. Wouldn't you agree?
To keep cost down and simplify deployment, I believe all-in-one make more sense, as it will cover most of the common use-cases, but I am open to feedback in case I have the stats completely wrong. Also, I am assuming the person who wants to make a perfect deployment it is likely that already has more expensive equipment.
That's why we have created the "SDR Miner" version that allows integration with existing weather stations via RF.

subscription included, is that a perpetual one?
Yes, we believe the rewards will supersede the SIM data plan cost.

Depends what you mean by all together, my sensors are separated by around 200 feet horizontally and 30 feet vertically


Some might regard that as in the same place, some might say they are quite separated

How do you define it?
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 26, 2021, 06:29:28 AM
Depends what you mean by all together, my sensors are separated by around 200 feet horizontally and 30 feet vertically
Some might regard that as in the same place, some might say they are quite separated
How do you define it?

By "together" I had a "same pole scenario" in mind. Your setup sounds way better than typical :-)
Cost wise, I estimate separate parts would mean ~ 3x price increase and at least 3x deployment effort, so it would be a shame to have this option only to see most users deploy the sensors together.

Having said that, we plan to have various classes of weather stations anyway, so an existing good setup with high accuracy equipment should be rewarded extra. Problem is who decides that. So this is another issue that will be addressed in the future with transparency and community discussions
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 26, 2021, 08:09:31 AM
Depends what you mean by all together, my sensors are separated by around 200 feet horizontally and 30 feet vertically
Some might regard that as in the same place, some might say they are quite separated
How do you define it?

By "together" I had a "same pole scenario" in mind. Your setup sounds way better than typical :-)
Cost wise, I estimate separate parts would mean ~ 3x price increase and at least 3x deployment effort, so it would be a shame to have this option only to see most users deploy the sensors together.

Having said that, we plan to have various classes of weather stations anyway, so an existing good setup with high accuracy equipment should be rewarded extra. Problem is who decides that. So this is another issue that will be addressed in the future with transparency and community discussions
a bit like the way WOW assesses stations
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 26, 2021, 08:15:29 AM
well, today's networks provide no pig and no poke :-)

Today most "free" consumer services are doing something worse than what you describe without people realizing it. The entire internet economy is build on the concept of "you buy the equipment, and we make even more money from the data we collect because you are using it". Dont you agree?
That is, of course, utter nonsense.

Retail consumers have a weather station because of their interests. They may then decide to upload the data.

Some are commercial like WU, some are governmental like WOW. These organisations do not mandate additional hardware to connect to their specific system. Your proposal does require an additional purchase to access your system. This makes your proposal the one saying "you buy the equipment" if you want to connect me - and it appears you are attempting to make out that it is the others that are doing this.

So, we know that WU, WOW and the like DO NOT pay people for uploading their observations. Now, let's look at what your proposal pays. Well, its NOTHING, by your own admission. However, "at some stage", you might (but not definitely) give an unspecified payment under unspecified conditions.

So, looking at all the systems YOUR PROPOSAL is the ONLY ONE that now requires a purchase for a basic connection. Oh, those other systems you claim are so naughty - they ARE NOT charging to allow a connection.

But, you say, they make money out of the data they receive. True, and that is exactly the same objective for your proposal. No difference there,

In their free service these others provide data visualisation and some data storage. Although not mentioned on your website, you say that this will be free in your proposal as well. No difference here.

So in summary.
(1) Your proposal REQUIRES additional hardware to join, the others do not require that.
(2) The others do not pay for the data uploaded. Your proposal does not pay for uploaded data, but there is a claim that at some undefined time, an undefined payment system will provide an undefined payment.
(3) The other provide some basic level of data visualisation and storage for free. Your proposal will provide an equivalent free system.

Now, from your statements all being engineers and about having "Enterprise Customers", this isn't a just a bunch of hobbyists getting together over a few beers kicking around a project, where we might expect that the people don't have experience in project planning and bid estimating. Being professionals as you have indicated it is unbelievable that your group is looking to set up a business without having any modelling of the costs involved and ballpark payments for data uploading. What is left is a suspicion that you do have estimates and you know that it would be an unpalatable amount.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I would suspect that the upload payment in equivalent hard cash would not (and I think I'm being extravagant) exceed 7 cents a day ($25.57 per annum) for a standard urban domestic weather station that is not calibrated - that is, the vast majority. Looking at the cost of $199 for the interface box, this is 7.8 years to break even.

Perhaps I'm way off and it is 50 cents per day, then it only takes 1.1 years to break even. Perhaps I'm still too low?

Of course, the date when these payments are likely to start is undefined and therefore just vaporware at this stage. That of course makes your proposal the one that would rip the majority of people off by charging for access to services that are no better than the ones that make it clear that there is no payment for uploading.




Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 27, 2021, 07:41:47 AM
@sky_watcher I am afraid you are missing the entire point here.

On-chain parametric weather insurance is not possible with today's weather hardware.
The equipment and platforms that are currently used from weather enthusiasts to met offices, are unsecure, do not provide proof of location and the data are stored in mutable databases. These are deal-breakers for the web3, blockchain, trustless, decentralized world that is coming.

We are creating the first web3 open hardware to address this, and we are building a web3 native weather network. We are in the early days, we don't have all the answers.
We will figure out everything as we progress together with our community, which will be rewarded in a cryptocurrency that its price is not entirely controlled by us.

p.s. the computer/smartphone you currently use to write to this forum generates profits to large enterprises without giving anything back to you - thats the internet economy I was referring to.
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 27, 2021, 07:44:42 AM
a bit like the way WOW assesses stations
yes, spot on!
We are working on a simplified version of this: https://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/support/siteratings
but open to suggestions if there are other systems worth considering.
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: box on August 27, 2021, 08:39:50 AM
Can I just say that I am really enjoying the debate between Manos and sky_watcher

As an interested observer I find the way you are both testing each others assumptions and opinions is impressive and entirely in the spirit of this forum

 [tup]

Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: weather34 on August 27, 2021, 08:53:04 AM
@sky_watcher I am afraid you are missing the entire point here.

On-chain parametric weather insurance is not possible with today's weather hardware.
The equipment and platforms that are currently used from weather enthusiasts to met offices, are unsecure, do not provide proof of location and the data are stored in mutable databases. These are deal-breakers for the web3, blockchain, trustless, decentralized world that is coming.

We are creating the first web3 open hardware to address this, and we are building a web3 native weather network. We are in the early days, we don't have all the answers.
We will figure out everything as we progress together with our community, which will be rewarded in a cryptocurrency that its price is not entirely controlled by us.

p.s. the computer/smartphone you currently use to write to this forum generates profits to large enterprises without giving anything back to you - thats the internet economy I was referring to.

i love the future and often digest new ways of the web probably spend an hour week digesting developments often don’t pursue it unless i can see some benefit.but in all honesty talking about web3 at present you may as well type your posts in chinese .you need simplify how your trying market this on this weather enthusiasts forums.break it down and spell it out ,show an example, what are the real benefits to this weather enthusiasts forum? .whenever ive read about web3 somewhere along the line crypto currency comes into it as we can see your beginning to touch on it . but the benefits of that wont push your product package your just spend time defending your idea be it good or bad .

as I alway say develop a thick skin and take the constructive wont always be what you want to hear .



Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 27, 2021, 12:21:53 PM
@sky_watcher I am afraid you are missing the entire point here.
Oh, I don't think so. It is emblazoned in the title "get paid for sharing your weather data". Check back. you will find that this is exactly what I'm asking about. I've checked back and you have never said when the payments are expected to start or how much that payment is expected to be. Indeed, it is clear to me that you are actively avoiding having to give any meaningful  answer.

From your answers, it appears that you are making this project up as you go along. This makes it too risky a proposition to buy your hardware, since it is not clear that you will ever get to the point of paying anyone, and there is no indication that the hardware would have any useful purpose (other than as a doorstop), when the project folds.

Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: Manos on August 27, 2021, 01:53:58 PM
and there is no indication that the hardware would have any useful purpose (other than as a doorstop), when the project folds.

lol! ok, at least our hardware is open source, so once we fold, the community can surely turn it in to something more useful than a doorstep, maybe a T-Rex Chrome Dinosaur game or something ? :-)
Title: Re: WeatherXM.com - get paid for sharing your weather data
Post by: sky_watcher on August 27, 2021, 09:29:22 PM
and there is no indication that the hardware would have any useful purpose (other than as a doorstop), when the project folds.
lol! ok, at least our hardware is open source, so once we fold, the community can surely turn it in to something more useful than a doorstep, maybe a T-Rex Chrome Dinosaur game or something ? :-)
:lol: A better selling point than your claims about payment.

Your website says "WeatherXM is a community powered weather network, that rewards weather station owners and provides accurate weather services to Web3 enterprises." I find it rather incredible that you are actively avoiding the slightest indication of what the payments (your primary selling point) might be, when it is claimed that you are currently rewarding owners.

Not a mindset I think I can understand, so this is enough for me.