Topic: What Ambient Stations work with Virtual Weather Station by Ambient?

[DaleKramer]

Does the 'Virtual Weather Station Software by Ambient'  work with the Ambient WS-2000?

It is strange that the list of compatible stations here https://www.ambientweather.com/cowest.html does NOT INCLUDE ANY Ambient stations ??????

And it is also strange that Ambient named a station WS-2000, when there is a Rainwise WS-2000 in the PDF manual 

Thanks
Dale

[galfert]

You are correct. No Ambient branded station works with VWS by Ambient. It isn't so strange when you consider the following:

• Virtual Weather Station was developed a long time ago before the current and prior generation of Ambient branded weather stations. It works with very old weather station models only. Yes it works with the Davis VP2 but that station although still current is very long in the tooth and is a sore subject for some as they believe Davis should now long have had the VP3 for sale.
• Ambient decided that instead of updating Virtual Weather Station to support the newest generation of weather station branded by them that they would instead focus on developing a Cloud solution. That cloud solution is Ambientweather.net
• Virtual Weather Station is a discontinued product.
• Yes very strange that WS-2000 became a model number when Rainwise had it first years ago. Before the WS-2000 was released I alerted Ambient about this and they just didn't care or think it was a big deal.

There are way better alternatives than Virtual Weather Station. Just to name of a few of the most popular ones in no particular order: Meteobridge, WeeWx, Weather-Display, Cumulus.

From that list you can make Meteobridge work rather easily (various ways). You can also get WeeWx work with either of two available drivers: Interceptor and ObserverIP drivers. You can also make Weather-Display work if you have a Meteobridge. I also suspect that all of these will work much better soon with the release of the GW1000 API....which for now is only available if you have a Meteobridge.

[DaleKramer]

Thanks for quick reply, I think I had guessed that 

However, I am already using my Ambient WS-2000 on ambientweather.net.

I am disappointed that I only have access to 5 minute data.

I have my WS-2000 logging at 1 minute.

Ideally, what I want is to be able to go to either of my desktops, Mac or Win10 PC and view all of my 1 minute weather data from my Ambient WS-2000, at any time, and for any period, all the way back to when I installed my station.

Right now I do not think I can get there easily without pushing buttons, then sneaker netting the MicroSD card to a PC and then having my own software (or other Mega$ software ) that will stitch that latest log file with my previous ones and then have that same software create and show graphs of any period I want....

I can not even find info on how long the 5 minute ambientweather.net stays on the cloud, I think it gets converted to some, almost random, periods of ~30 minutes at some point.

Right now I made a program that, at 11:59 pm every night, it automatically downloads the 5 minute csv files for the day from ambientweather.net , but then I still have to make my program to join the csvs and view the data in them (I can do that but I prefer not too)

Any ideas how I can achieve my nirvana or close to it?

Thanks,
Dale

EDIT: I am even more concerned now that I need to download the AmbientWeather.net data daily since I found out this, about ambientweather.net:

"Data is stored at AmbientWeather.net at a rate of once per 5 minutes.

After one month, data is stored at a rate of once per 30 minutes.

Archived data is stored for one year. All data is removed after one year."
 

[galfert]

Yes several ways you can get to nirvana. As I mentioned. Meteobridge, Weather-Display, WeeWx. Then it is all done automatically. Adding a GW1000 and a Meteobridge is a very very elegant solution.

Ambientweather.net stores only 1 year of data.

You can post to Weather Underground and that seems to be unlimited. Under the old horizon interface you can still do custom date ranges.  But that is only 5 minute data. I think 5 minute data should for most reasons be sufficient. I store to my SQL only every 5 minutes on my local network. I could just as easily store every 1 minute or every 5 seconds....but that would just get crazy large and I don't feel it is necessary. Perhaps what you are doing requires 1 minute so you can do that if you want.

You can also use the Ambientweather.net API to publish to your own website.

Whichever of these solutions you end up with I highly recommend to also save data to SQL database. This way you'll be able to in the future export the data into any other future software or even cloud service if they allow historical importing.

[DaleKramer]

I am using some of my Ambient 8 multichannel sensors for monitoring the duty cycle of some ON/OFF devices I have here, the first is to monitor to duty cycle (or total ON time in a day) of my electric pool heater.

I simply put the Temp/Humidity sensor in the heater enclosure with 230VAC across a 1206 size SMD 180kohm resistor.  The sensor sees ~140 degF whenever the heater is on, works great.  1 minute data would be perfect for that use (5 min sorta OK) but I have other things where 5 min would not be OK.

Here is pic of resistor in place on temp sensor:


I will check out the software you mentioned for use with my WS-2000.

"I store to my SQL only every 5 minutes on my local network. I could just as easily store every 1 minute or every 5 seconds.."
Could I do that with my Ambient WS-2000 somehow ?

[galfert]

"I store to my SQL only every 5 minutes on my local network. I could just as easily store every 1 minute or every 5 seconds.."

Could I do that with my Ambient WS-2000 somehow ?

Yes you could send to SQL using any of the software applications I mentioned.

You just need to decide what method of data acquisition you want to implement. Each of the different software applications I mentioned will have a slightly different requirement on how to get the data from your station to them.

Since you are using extra sensors then the WeeWx solution will not work. As that only gets the main sensors because what it does is capture data being sent to Weather Underground so that it can have a copy of the data. Since the Weather Underground upload does not include these extra sensors that method of data acquisition would not be good for you.

Therefore I recommend getting an Ecowitt GW1000 and a Meteobridge (or WeatherBridge). This way you'll be able to capture the extra data sensors and send it to SQL.   

[DaleKramer]

Soooo, please correct me if I am wrong:
 

• Purchase the Ecowitt GW1000 ($40) and a Meteobridge (65 Euro), this means I will be able to use my resistor trick for up to 8 WH31 ($12 each on amazon)  sensors.
• Then I will be able to get 5 second (doesn't WH31 only send every minute?) repeating real time data by capturing it, sending it to SQL, saving that sql to my PC somehow and view any period range of data at any time with Meteobridge on my PC.

[graculus]

230VAC across a 1206 size SMD 180kohm resistor.

Hmmm, neat idea but it's probably exceeding the safe working voltage of that tiny resistor.

[DaleKramer]

In my case working voltage is sortof a myth, most resistor failures are due to heat, at 150 degF the life is very long
I am a limits pusher... besides, it was on the shelf in front of me....

[galfert]

Soooo, please correct me if I am wrong:
 

• Purchase the Ecowitt GW1000 ($40) and a Meteobridge (65 Euro), this means I will be able to use my resistor trick for up to 8 WH31 ($12 each on amazon)  sensors.
• Then I will be able to get 5 second (doesn't WH31 only send every minute?) repeating real time data by capturing it, sending it to SQL, saving that sql to my PC somehow and view any period range of data at any time with Metobridge on my PC.

Meteobridge software license is 65 Euro, but you need a supporting hardware to run it. It doesn't run on a PC. See here for supported hardware:
https://www.meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware

But that isn't the only way to get a Meteobridge. You can also purchase a WeatherBridge which includes the hardware and the software license. It is a bit more expensive this way but the work is done for you. Plus there is the added benefit of an Ambientweather.net license (worth $150 if you build your own Meteobridge) already included. You won't need this if you have a WS-2000 that already publishes to Ambientweather.net. But if you ever decide to upgrade to a different station like a Davis then maybe having a Ambientweather.net Meteobridge might come in handy. Other benefits is to get alerts from Ambientweahter.net regarding the status of the Meteobridge. If you factor this into account it is cheaper to get the WeatherBridge only if you are interested in this added license. But for others as I've said just the ease of having it already built is an added benefit for those less techie.

* UPDATE - March 2020 - Ambientweather.net license for Meteobridge has new lower price, now just $100

So yes if you use the combination of GW1000 with a Meteobridge you can have the Meteobridge see your extra sensors with your resister trick. The Meteobridge not only sends to SQL but it also can send to many many online services, including sending to your own website using various weather templates. If that is not enough for you then you can even then connect Wether-Display to the Meteobridge for even more analysis tools....but I'm not all that will be available for Weather-Display and if that would or not include the extra sensors.

Yes the WH31 only sends a broadcast every 1 minute. The GW1000 will capture this every instance. Then the Meteobridge will have this data live as it is checking every 4 seconds for new data from the GW1000.

[DaleKramer]

Excellent information!

So, since I already have ambientweather.net subscription OR if I do not want to send data to any online service, it looks like I would need to spend ~$165 and ~$12 per sensor (8 sensors max) to get 1 minute data stored and accessible on my PC at any time). 

But, I already wrote my VB6 program that gets my ambientweather.net daily data at 11:59 pm (5 minute data).

It will only take me a short while to write the extra VB6 code to combine the csv's daily and tell me how many hours the heater had volts on it in, for each day in a table...

I can live with this for now but, thanks to you, I have a good upgrade path for the future 

Thanks again,
Dale