Topic: Software Defined Radio with the WS-2902A

[RdRocket16]

Hey All,
Im 'reopening' this as Im having stability issues with my 2902 array in RTL433.
Here are my settings.
cmd = rtl_433 -M utc -F json -R 78 -R 113 -f 914890000
It works GREAT for all of my WH31 and WH25 devices. but Im having a hard time keeping my WH65 reporting. Its unfortunately sporadic, as the last 2 days its been really good. Im using a home made full loop antenna and it was solid. then this AM i checked and somewhere after midnight it just stopped reporting. I havent been able to get it back. I can see all 9 of my WH31/32 sensors but the WH65 isnt there. My 2 consoles (2902a and 2000) both see it fine, and are reporting to ambientweather.net so i know its up..
any suggestions on maybe how to fine tune my frequency or parameters to get better stability?
You can see my others are reporting solidly.
 [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]

And then this one just stopped last night after 2 solid days
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[StephenR0]

I see that you're using my value for -f.  I determined that experimentally for my situation.  Unless you have some reason to use a different value, I would use -f 915000000.  Now, if you're using one of the cheap SDR dongles, you probably should figure out a -p value to compensate for how far off your dongle is from the actual frequency.  I did that with a gui program (HDSDR) and my closest NOAA weather radio station.  You need to let your dongle warm up so the frequency can stabilize.  You can find yours here:

https://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/coverage/station_listing.html

I do have a couple of questions.  How far from your antenna is your WH65B?  Did the outage coincide with rain and wet weather by any chance?

Edit:  Never mind about the rain.  If your consoles see the WH65B, it can't be that.

[RdRocket16]

yeah i did that based on some responses here, and just experimentally, finding that the 914.88 was fairly solid, and found blips around there with GSPX.
one thing im wondering is if the WH65 is more sensitive to time drift, than the WH31? ie: runs well when its been just started, but after 72, 96 hours the clock drifts enough that it starts missing the wh65 somehow?
I dont have a hard clock which i know was one of the things the SDRs like and and yet lack on Pi.

[RdRocket16]

someone else mentioned to use the -M level to get the center frequency its picking up which was this :
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Exact sample rate is: 250000.000414 Hz
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sample rate set to 250000 S/s.
Tuner gain set to Auto.
Tuned to 914.900MHz.
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:38:54", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 47, "channel" : 5, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 27.000, "humidity" : 53, "data" : "b500000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.956, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -0.106, "snr" : 34.257, "noise" : -34.363}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:38:54", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 47, "channel" : 5, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 27.000, "humidity" : 53, "data" : "b500000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.956, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -0.106, "snr" : 34.257, "noise" : -34.363}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:07", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 94, "channel" : 8, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : -15.300, "humidity" : 69, "data" : "8700000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.969, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -5.777, "snr" : 26.824, "noise" : -32.602}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:07", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 94, "channel" : 8, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : -15.300, "humidity" : 69, "data" : "8700000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.969, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -5.777, "snr" : 26.824, "noise" : -32.602}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:15", "model" : "Fine Offset Electronics, WH25", "id" : 224, "temperature_C" : 25.400, "humidity" : 65, "pressure_hPa" : 996.500, "battery" : "OK", "mic" : "CHECKSUM", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.956, "freq2" : 914.837, "rssi" : -0.129, "snr" : 35.025, "noise" : -35.154}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:29", "model" : "Fine Offset WH65B", "id" : 10, "temperature_C" : 28.200, "humidity" : 51, "wind_dir_deg" : 296, "wind_speed_ms" : 0.319, "gust_speed_ms" : 0.510, "rainfall_mm" : 717.804, "uv" : 3110, "uvi" : 8, "light_lux" : 103323.000, "battery" : "OK", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.949, "freq2" : 914.884, "rssi" : -12.144, "snr" : 14.685, "noise" : -26.829}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:32", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 232, "channel" : 3, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 25.700, "humidity" : 67, "data" : "9c00000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.954, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -10.787, "snr" : 21.815, "noise" : -32.602}
{"time" : "2019-06-06 18:39:32", "model" : "AmbientWeather-WH31E", "id" : 232, "channel" : 3, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 25.700, "humidity" : 67, "data" : "9c00000000", "mic" : "CRC", "mod" : "FSK", "freq1" : 914.954, "freq2" : 914.886, "rssi" : -10.787, "snr" : 21.815, "noise" : -32.602}

[StephenR0]

You mentioned that you're using a full wave loop antenna.  You might want to play around with orientation of that antenna.  I think it has nulls from the center of the loop in each direction.  You may find an angle that helps.

[RdRocket16]

Thats what i was doing, but once i found a direction that worked well, i left it there, then 2 days later, in the same spot, it just stops receiving?
I switched out my SDR to my 'better' one - "NooElec NESDR Smart - Premium RTL-SDR w/Aluminum Enclosure, 0.5PPM TCXO, SMA Input."
I bought it thinking it would work better but i couldnt find my frequency. Turns out its much close to true than the plastic encased one. So now that i dialed that one in, with the single pole antenna, ill leave it for a couple days and see how it does. Hopefully itll help. now Im at 914.950mhz and picking up almost everything.

[StephenR0]

Another thing that I've read is to put an extender cable between the dongle and the pi.  The theory is that the pi is noisy and getting the dongle away from the pi can help.  I have not tested this, however.

[RdRocket16]

Strangely with my fight aware sdr I had to add an extender. Hmm

[bthoven]

This works well with my 433Mhz misol wh24 wh25. WH24 is 20+ meters away through walls.

Sent from my POCOPHONE F1 using Tapatalk

[RdRocket16]

I do have a couple of questions.  How far from your antenna is your WH65B?  Did the outage coincide with rain and wet weather by any chance?

Edit:  Never mind about the rain.  If your consoles see the WH65B, it can't be that.

Soooooo
Rained today.
about 2 hours after it started to rain... weewx / rtl_433 no longer sees (or sees very sporadically) my WH65. All the WH31 i have are fine.
whats about the rain i should know?
Batteries in the WH65 are just alkalines from Dec, think i should upgrade to lithiums? Consoles both still see the array though.

[StephenR0]

The key question is can your consoles see the WH65B?

It seems that some WH65B units in the past have had some trouble in wet weather.  I believe it's related to condensation on the main circuit board in the unit.  My first one couldn't transmit whenever it rained.  Since it was in the first 30 days, they graciously sent me a second WH65B.  This one has been quite reliable.  However, I did have one instance where the weather was very wet and cold.  A mixture of rain and snow was falling.  My unit quit transmitting for about three hours.  I wrote to them about it and they mentioned that I had a year warranty.  Since it's only happened once, I'm not sure that I'm going to bother with it.  Apparently, they have addressed this problem in later units.  There's something called conformal coating that is used to water proof boards.  I have something called liquid electrical tape that I might try, as well.  In any case, this can only be the problem if your consoles lose the WH65B at the same time.  And I think you should definitely use lithiums instead of alkalines, although at this time of year I would think the super capacitor is getting enough charge to carry things.

[RdRocket16]

so i remade my full loop antenna, and use solder this time instead of 12g copper wire. Much easier to measure and cut to length. I also used the SMA connector antenna i had instead of the mcx, and that allowed me to use the SMART SDR instead of the plastic one.
As soon as I ran RTL_433 i started to pick up the station again. its angled @ 90 degrees to my old one, so its horizontal instead of vertical. been solidly collecting for 36 hours (last one went for 96 so Im still hesitant to say its better but...).

[StephenR0]

I'm glad you're experimenting with the full wave loop antenna.  I hadn't really considered horizontal, but larger versions do seem to be mainly horizontal, maybe because of room to install it.  I should try that.  You haven't yet answered my question about how far from your antenna your WH65B is.  Mine is really close, about ten feet.  So, as long as the WH65B is transmitting, my antenna is going to receive it.  The WH25 is another story.  The other thing that I ran into is that the WH25 seemed to go through its batteries kind of quickly.  I'll have to see how long this set lasts.  Let the experiments continue! 

[Royce]

Thanks for this thread. Its gotten me up and running fairly quickly. I'm having RTL_433 pump straight into my MQTT server. I then process it with NodeRED and display it via their Dashboard blocks along side my other home automation stuff.

I wanted to ask a few questions. I get that everything is not necessarily known.

• Rainfall is a straight accumulator, right? Straight out of the station, it never resets?
• My Wifi LCD display shows barometric pressure but that info is not in the packets coming out of RTL_433. The sensor is in the display itself?
• Right now my display shows a UV Index of 1 while the station uv field shows about 230 and the uvi field reads 0. Is it known how the display comes up with its number?

Thanks again!

[StephenR0]

1.  Rainfall is a straight accumulator, right? Straight out of the station, it never resets?

At some point it will roll over.  I'm not sure when that is, but I'm sure it will.

2.  My Wifi LCD display shows barometric pressure but that info is not in the packets coming out of RTL_433. The sensor is in the display itself?

Yes, the barometric sensor is in the console.  You can use a WH25 or a WH32B to get barometric and inside temperature and humidity into rtl_433.

3.  Right now my display shows a UV Index of 1 while the station uv field shows about 230 and the uvi field reads 0. Is it known how the display comes up with its number?

Here is our current understanding about how this data is calculated.

Code: [Select]

UV value        UVI
0 -> 432        0
433 -> 851      1
852 -> 1210 2
1211 -> 1570 3
1571 -> 2017 4
2018 -> 2450 5
2451 -> 2761 6
2762 -> 3100 7
3101 -> 3512 8
3513 -> 3918 9
3919 -> 4277 10
4278 -> 4650 11
4651 -> 5029 12
>=5230         13

This calculation is done by the console.  It would be possible to correct it for a particular console by observation, but it would take a while. 

Actually, I'm not using this setup anymore.  I'm using a GW1000 to send the data to a modified interceptor driver for weewx.  If you haven't noticed that thread here it is.

https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=37471.0

Others are using a similar configuration with php rather than python.  The GW1000 functions like a console for these calculations and also has barometric and indoor temperature and humidity sensors.  Just another option you might consider.

[GHammer]

For anyone who is using this SDR method with a 2902A or 2000 console, the Ecowitt WH32 offered on Amazon is actually a WH32E and works perfectly with the 2000 console.
As soon as it is powered up, it replaces the outdoor Temp and Humidity sensors on the WH65B. I did this to get closer to recommended mounting heights for sensors.

[galfert]

For anyone who is using this SDR method with a 2902A or 2000 console, the Ecowitt WH32 offered on Amazon is actually a WH32E and works perfectly with the 2000 console.
As soon as it is powered up, it replaces the outdoor Temp and Humidity sensors on the WH65B. I did this to get closer to recommended mounting heights for sensors.

Good to know thanks! This means that there are currently only two known Ecowitt branded sensors to work with the Ambient WS-2000 console. These are the WH32E outdoor temp/hum and the WH40 rain gauge. Any other sensors used with the Ambient branded WS-2000 console need to also be Ambient branded sensors to be recognized. Remember to match the frequency when attempting to use different branded sensors.

[RdRocket16]

bing! Me again. More issues with my antenna / SDR

I just changed my batteries in the array and now its weird, instead of my WH65.10 im getting it decoded as WH24.10
not sure what changed. I did 'update' RTL_433, WeeWx SDR and anything else but i guess if itll work, im ok with that. wonder how it decided if its one vs the other.
Actually looks like its bouncing between them :
Dec  2 14:51:14 raspberrypi weewx[2298]: sdr: MainThread: lines=[u'{"time" : "2019-12-02 19:51:11", "model" : "Fine Offset WH65B", "id" : 10, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 0.500, "humidity" : 97, "wind_dir_deg" : 19, "wind_speed_ms" : 0.000, "gust_speed_ms" : 0.000, "rainfall_mm" : 1515.618, "uv" : 28, "uvi" : 0, "light_lux" : 3239.000, "mic" : "CRC"}\n']
Dec  2 14:51:46 raspberrypi weewx[2298]: sdr: MainThread: lines=[u'{"time" : "2019-12-02 19:51:43", "model" : "Fine Offset WH24", "id" : 10, "battery" : "OK", "temperature_C" : 0.500, "humidity" : 97, "wind_dir_deg" : 342, "wind_speed_ms" : 0.000, "gust_speed_ms" : 0.000, "rainfall_mm" : 1790.100, "uv" : 28, "uvi" : 0, "light_lux" : 3394.000, "mic" : "CRC"}\n']

Can I just double the Sensor_Map? Then which ever it decides is added?  like this?
outTemp = temperature.10.FOWH24Packet
outTemp = temperature.10.FOWH65Packet

[StephenR0]

It looks like rtl_433 is having trouble distinguishing what sensor array you have.  That's going to be a problem because certain values are calculated differently between the WH24 and the WH65B.  The wind speed factor is quite different and the rain cup size is slightly different.  I think you're going to need to get the data consistent.  I think the id changes too when you change the batteries, so you'll need to account for that.  I believe the syntax in weewx.conf supports a wild card.  You could use an asterisk for the id.  Maybe you could use an asterisk for the packet type too, but that won't solve the problems I described earlier.

[RdRocket16]

The ID is still the same 10, so not that unfortunately.

[RdRocket16]

I brought it up with the RTL_433 repo and they're looking into it on their side, but i still cant get a good signal from my antenna. It comes and goes. It worked pretty well for so long... just frustrating that it cant even pick up the signal much any more.
then today i noticed it WAS picking up the signal but wasnt parsing it for some reason. really annoying. Ive reinstalled basically everything. not sure wtf is going on

[GHammer]

I realize this thread is quite old, but thought I'd give it a try.

Does anyone have the WS68, WH40, WH32(E), WH32B working with SDR/rtl_433

I'm having a heck of a time finding the sensors and if I do, they are not decoded well. My WH32(E) isn't even seen.

Attaching some output from various ways of running both rtl_433 or WeeWX.

[galfert]

Since you already have a GW1000 and WeeWX works with the Interceptor driver, why are you needing to go the SDR route? Just for fun?

[steepleian]

If you are using a later version of rtl_433 you must use the switch -M oldmodel

[GHammer]

If you are using a later version of rtl_433 you must use the switch -M oldmodel

Do you have these sensors working with WeeWX via SDR?
If so, kindly share your SDR stanza