Weather station recommendations (With cloud sensor!)

Hardware
1

Dear Home Assistant users,

I’m an astrophotographer, which basically means my telescope is taking pictures outside of nebulae and galaxies while I’m sleeping ;). One of my big fears is that some day a sudden unpredicted rainshower comes and ruins al my equipment.

Now there’s a couple of ways I could avoid this:

  • Stay up (not an option, I love sleeping!)
  • Use rain sensors (Already doing this, but obviously, it has to already rain for them to get triggered)
  • Get notified when there’s clouds.

Now for this last option, I’ve found a 'Lunatico AAG cloudwatcher', pretty expensive piece of equipment but well worth it if it saves my expensive telescope. However, I can’t find ANY Home Assistant user that’s using this piece of equipment, and I can’t find anything about compatibility.

Are there HA-compatible alternatives? I’d love to know about them!

2

I have an AmbientWeather WS-29092C - there is a well written Ambient integraton for HA which gives all of the CURRENT conditions but not a forecast of course. I use it to set light levels in the home for certain rooms with alot of windows depending upon how bright it is outside, give me reminders to close windows that are sensed as open when the unit senses rain, etc. I also use Accuweather which seems to be pretty accurate for my location and has a good integration as well. That also has a cloud ceiling sensor which might be of use to you. If you have a weather cam you might want consider pointing it directrly somewhere which would allow you to analyze the image coming in with regards to the % of the image that is blue rather than white (taking into account the time of day and sun angle)? Any weather station integration would also allow you to analyze the pattern of falling atmosheric pressure and also trends in humidity…

1 Like
3

I have this one Ambient Weather WS-2000 Smart Weather Station with WiFi Remote Monitoring and Alerts Amazon.com and I love it. I have 5 soil sensors that wirelessly transmit data to it and into home assistant.

1 Like
4

I use Ecowitt. Very inexpensive, battery run, each sensor is independent, though you have to buy the Ecowitt GW1100 Wi-Fi Weather Station Sensor Gateway first (~ $35.00). You add on the sensors you want one at a time. Has a cloud interface, works well with the Ecowitt integration, seems to connect to Weather Underground easily, though I haven’t tried it.

1 Like
5

My wife has recently received the Cloudwatcher/Solo and Hydreon Sensor for her astrophotography. As you say, it’s worth it if it saves the astro equipment from weather damage. The near instantaneous detection of rain was a key feature, and the cloudwatcher for the detection of possible rain. It also has sensors for atmospheric pressure, light, temperature, humidity, and dewpoint.

We don’t yet have it set up, but I’ve been investigating it today indoors.
Despite it having Pushbullet notification integration, in the config it can also connect to MQTT. I’m thinking this will be my route to get the data into HA, so I can announce an alert through my Google Homes if the weather turns bad.

It’s not going to predict rain right before it happens, but I figure this will give the fastest call to action if it does, particularly for very light rain which we can’t hear while indoors.