Weather station recommendation?

Hardware
68

I’m sure most here know this already, but for any new users looking at this, I wanted to point out that adding lots of entities can have a down side. If you don’t manage your Recorder settings (purge_keep_days, exclude, etc.) then you can seriously impact the size of the database. Excessive database I/O and size can kill a lower-end implementation, like on a Raspberry Pi with an SD card.

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69

Thanks for that idea, bought it as well; a lot cheaper as the Ecowitt and works perfectly. Combined with my Woox water valve, Gardena sprinklers, the SmartIrrigation integration and my Worx Landroid, my lawn now needs no attention anymore and looks perfect.

All of these different systems working seamlessly together, all thanks to Homeassistant…

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70

Another possibility…I’ve integrated a couple of ecowitt wh-51 soil moisture sensors and wh-40 rain gauge using an inexpensive RDL_433 radio (eg. RTL-SDR blue radio receiver with RTL2832U + R820T2 (improved) chipset / antenna | eBay and the home assistant rdl and mqtt addons.

I don’t get (or need) wind velocity or direction. The soil moisture sensors are a far better way to determine when to water an area.

71

I was seaching for this and came across the Waldbeck Huygens 6-in-1: https://moltos.co.uk/product/933807
Is this the exact same device but cheaper?

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It looks to be the same… Guessing similar devices get sold under different brand names. This will probably work with the same integration.

73

Hey,
as @Remko said, there are indeed many products with the same device(s) underneath. I believe I have the exact same weather station, and there are more product names to it:

Fun fact: The box my weather station came in had yet another name on it :slight_smile:

There is one single difference. The Waldbeck display seems to have a colored overlay sticker :smiley: the design is the same but mine is simply white on black.

I use my weather station in combination with weewx plus entities defined here: WeeWX, MQTT and how to import Data - #9 by ThomDietrich

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74

Interesting integration you use to get the data. I use the Ecowitt integration. You can configure the weather station to use this protocol to push the information directly to Homeassistant and it works beautifully. I get the below sensors out of this, without further manual configuration

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75

I seem to get the same measurements, except for the aggregated numbers.

Weewx is it’s own software with database and long-term statistics. It generates nice views like the below. However! With a lack of continued development and some issues I had while setting everything up (including unanswered Pull Requests by me) it’s nothing I would recommend to just everyone. It’s also a shame that there is no integration for Home Assistant for it. You have to define entities yourself, which is an annoyance.

I always liked the fact that Weewx comes with a bunch of preconfigured UIs. If there were a clever and tested dashboard configuration for Grafana, I would jump ship immediately.

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Nowadays I use the weewx web frontend for general insights and I have selected measurements in specific places of my home assistant setup, e.g. solar intensity on the solar energy production dashboard or outside temperature next to my heating system controls. Quite happy with the setup overall.

76

Hello, can you please describe how you did it, which port etc.

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hi there! can you query the devices locally? how accurate and what level of sensitivity would you say has the rain sensor?

thanks

78

Does this mean that you can query the sensors locally?

thanks

79

Correct, everything is fully local that way.

And to the rain sensor, the values are pretty accurate but it measures the rain amount and that is not an immediate response. So in addition to the weather station I build a rain detection sensor myself using a door sensor and a capacitive plate; this reacts to the first rain drop and I use that to control some actions. The rain amount from the weather station is used in the automation for my irrigation.

2 Likes
80

Nice one!! I did not think of that yet but can immediately see the value. Might copy&paste your idea :slight_smile:

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That is the kind of guide I used to build this extra direct rain sensor.

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Slight addition to what @Remko said. There are multiple ways to get the data from the weather station. You can however not query a sensor. The station sends regular updates (e.g. every 15 seconds) and your counterpart processes and presents the data. Slight difference, very marginal effect.

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83

Yeah, I have been on a mission to reduce any cloud dependency and am very close to have it all without cloud now. Just my Worx Robot left…

84

Absolutely,
my weewx setup is hosted on my own server and the data is only sent there (instead of e.g. wunderground). The remaining cloud service is Alexa.

Question: You say “it measures the rain amount” but my weewx setup has a few other rain related sensors as well. E.g. there is a rain rate, which changes immediately as soon as the first few drops made the thingy go “click”. The delay between first drop and sensor update is probably within 30 seconds. That’s not enough for you? Cheers

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Hi there @Remko and thanks for the clarification!

Do you know by any chance if those customized sensors can be purchased from some community member?

thanks

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It does measures rain rate etc. you are correct.

That is true as well, but I did notice some delay there. There needs to be some reasonable amount of rain and since I also use the information to close my awning for example I want an immediate response.

I did notice yesterday that my funnel was a bit clogged with some dirt, so maybe that also was a problem. We just did not have much rain lately so my checks are with using the garden hose…:wink:

Oh well…I have both things now and all works fine

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87

I don’t know, but it is really, really easy to build. Took me 15 minutes total.