Dear community,
I am struggling with the weather APIs available out there. It is not very easy to get accurate and local weather data for my town. Well, I am planing to buy an Ecowitt WS90 weather station.
The integration seems to be working well, as far as I have seen in the forum.
Is it correct that I need some kind of gateway? What is your recommendation? I found these two…
thank you
Hi schneich,
You do need a gateway. There is also a 7" display that would work as a GW and display, but it’s as much as that sensor unit…
Check around for pricing,though. Those go on sale in Amazon with the gateway regularly, and there is an actual Ecowitt store on AliExpress that has most of the things.
You should also be able to receive this without the need for any proprietary gateways, just with an appropriate frequency version of a LILYGO LoRa32 V2.1_1.6.1 board brand and the lilygo-rtl_433-fsk binary of OpenMQTTGateway, via MQTT with auto-discovery.
I have the GW1100, and it was great and rock solid. I say was because I replaced all my Ecowitt sensors with custom built ESPHome devices mostly because I wanted another project, not because of any issues with the Ecowitt stuff. So now the GW1100 is in a box somewhere. Someday I will post all my unused smart home stuff and see if anyone wants it, but today is not that day. 
The GW1100 is pretty small and can be powered off a USB port you often find on a power strip, so you don’t even need a power brick for it.
Thanks for that hint. I will have a closer look on those shops.
I did all my indoor sensors myself (D1mini or some ESP32 board, ESPhome, etc.), but outdoor sensors should be more robust. Here in central Europe, in spring, autumn and winter, outside humidity is killing all DIY-boards in no time… 
Doing the weather station myself, I could probably get it at half the price, but then I would have to buy another Access Point to strengthen WLAN in the garden.
On the other side: you got me interested. 
have you got a documentation for a DIY weather station? I would like to use a rain-drop-sensor to protect the shadings on our winter garden.
At least with the LilyGo and OpenMQTTGateway on it, it is ment as a receiving station for the WS90, not a weather station to build yourself it basically receives the RF signals from the WS90, connects via WiFi to your Home Assistant instance with an MQTT broker and through the MQTT integration create auto-discovered entries, similar to my weather station which is also a FineOffset rebrand, as is your Ecowitt. On top you’d also be able to receive any other rtl_433 devices,.as listed at
You can roll your own, but trust me. I have 2 addresses and 2 weather stations. The Ecowitt is turn it on, it works. I have since added plant water sensors, inside temp sensors, lightning detector. Every time it’s turn it on and it works…
I have a Vevor station at my other property. I have to build the rf433 hardware or install the man-in-the-middle attack proxy thing to get the data then create all the sensors manually for them. Yes, you can do it, but I wish now I’d have bought another Ecowitt up there for the extra hundred bucks…
I have made YT videos on both installations, if you are interested, I’ll pass the links. The Vevor 433 project is not complete yet, so I have no local data for it. Probability this summer when I can get up there for some time.
Why not also use a LilyGo and the rtl_433 firmware of OpernMQTTGateway for that, with its nice auto-discovery? Assuming it is the Vevor station at the end of the FSL devices kist I posted above.
I have the hardware, yes. It is a vacation home, need time up there.
The Ecowitt HA core integration is pretty epic, though. Power it, tell the hub ans HA how to find each other, and you have 50 sensors.
The other in install the Vevor Stuff, then print a case for the lilygo, load the firmware, get the set-up installed, then the sensor part I’m not sure how that goes. I used the lillygo to play with at home, I need to re-flash it for a new WIFI and whatever else.
It was very noisy here in the city. I didn’t have the thing locked down so it kept finding sensors, had to clean up a couple hundred of them. I was monitoring 1 device, but when I chqanged the battery for it it came back with a different id.
So Yes, possible. I like tinkering but I want to tinker then leave it alone until I want to change.
Not the polished experience available with a gateway.
As most Ecowitt stations are just rebranded FineOffset devices, much the same as for Acurite, Ambient, Froggit etc. all the rtl_433 FineOffset decoders will work with these rebrands like Ecowitt, Acurite, ambient, Froggit …
So the Vevor is also easily detected by the Ecowitt integration? That’s great then and an seay one for all setup
Well I will try, that’s for sure… Never thought to try, actually.
I’ll be there in about a week.
But the integration uses the gateway, so are you saying with the lilygo in the middle or what?
The only integration required is the MQTT integration and the Mosquito MQTT broker, no other brand specific integrations at all. The LilyGo received the RF signals from the weather stations or any of the other many rtl_433 compatible devices listed, and as long as discovery is activated in the also auto-discovered OpenMQTTGateway UI any newly discovered devices will be added to the MQTT discoveries. Also firmware updates are also automated in the HA discovered Gateway UI and/or through the available WebUI, while even the received devices’ properties are available to be viewed on the small OLED screen on the LilyGo, if the display is turned on in the UI.
So the LilyGo is not really in the middle, but acts as a receiver and MQTT publisher, including the MQTT published MQTT discovery entries. Here is an example,e of my FineOffset Froggit clone, automatically discovered with just Mosquito and the MQTT integration - no additional definition fussing or whatever
Not being too sure if your Vevor has been one of the decoders which has only been added recently to rtl_433_ESP, it might be safest to install the latest dev version when trying this out, just in case the Vevor decoder was not included in the last 1.8.0 build already.
and make sure you upload the lilygo-rtl_433-fsk binary, as your Vevor broadcasts with FSK modulation.
Case printing option
Well you said that, kind of crossed each other up.
We’ll see next week, I need that data and not just thru WU…
Actually, just realised, there seem to be some small issues left with the Vevor, in that not every single transmission is being picked up, not too sure as to why yet, and that there seems to be a humidity issue - possibly due to a decoder issue upstream with rtl_433. So it would actually be very interesting to see what your experience is, as only very little feedback has come in for the Vevor yet, on ly this auto-discovered screenshot
with its unrealistic humidity value. Unfortunately without a corresponding MQTT message, which likely indicates that the issue lies with the rtl_433 decoder, which also has only recently;y been added and might need some tweaking.
I will report and add to the project wherever I can there.
Sorry, no. The only outdoor sensor I have is a temp/humdity one, and it’s in a covered space. For a full on weather station, I would definitely just go the commercial route, and the Ecowitt is one I’ve considered.
In the pictures of the WS90, there is a “heating power cord” mentioned. What would I need this for?
The WS90 has a little solar panel on top, but there is a battery compartment as well. Can I use two 1.2v rechargeable batteries?
Most likely for the precipitation sensor, to dry it off quickly after rainfall and/or to melt any snow build up oil the sensor.
Best to read the manual about this, but my station also has a solar panel, but it only charges an internal capacitor, and the standard AA batteries are there for backup if and when the capacitor is empty after several days without enough sunshine to keep it charged up, but the solar panel would not charge and rechargeable batteries. Best to use good Litium batteries for any outside station/sensor.
I am also looking at an eccowit. At the beginning of this topic it is mentioned that a display can also perform the gateway function. I also read that on other forums, but it seems that this function via the screen is more limited. Does anyone have experience with this?
