4 ms·

This is kinda neat, just the other day I was reading about Weewx[1], a FOSS project to allow "roll-your-own" weather stations. My in-laws have a pretty fancy w

This is kinda neat, just the other day I was reading about Weewx[1], a FOSS project to allow "roll-your-own" weather stations. My in-laws have a pretty fancy weather station in their backyard, but its tied to a proprietary LCD weather screen in their living room. I've admired it for a while but daydreamed about building my own more flexible system when I get a house. [1] https://weewx.com/ https://weewx.com/

tzs 3y ago
Why wait? Those fancy weather stations often transmit to the indoor LCD display using fairly simply messages sent in the 433 MHz band or the 915 MHz band. For many those message formats have been reverse engineered and decoders for them added to open source SDR software such as rtl_433 [1]. With a $30 USB RTL-SDR and rtl_433 you can then use the sensor units from many of those fancy units as inputs to your own display and analysis software. And you can often use your neighbors' sensors too. One of my neighbors--I still haven't figured out which--has an AcuRite 5-in-1 system and I can see its readings using my RTL-SDR and rtl_433. If you build your own sensors it is cheap and easy to add a 433 MHz transmitter and define your own message format. Rtl_433 can be extended to cover new message formats by giving it a config file that describes the formats. There's a driver for Weewx to let it use rtl_433 [3]. You can get an RTL-SDR and rtl_433 now, and start playing around with whatever sensors others in your neighborhood happen to have. [1] https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 [2] https://www.acurite.com/shop-all/weather-instruments/weather-stations/acurite-iris-personal-weather-stations/5-in-1-color-weather-station-temperature-humidity-wind-rain.html https://www.acurite.com/shop-all/weather-instruments/weather... [3] https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr
- heresie-dabord 3y ago
  I have found the BIOS Jumbo Weather Station (https://biosmedical.com/products/bios-weather-jumbo-weather-station https://biosmedical.com/products/bios-weather-jumbo-weather-...) to be reliable and easy to read. I am just a satisfied customer. But it could be fun to reverse engineer the data for use with an R.Pi.
- vvanders 3y ago
  Strong +1, RTL-SDR + rpi makes a great little platform. We have a couple weather/temp sensors from various brands and rtl_433 picks them in with no issues, throw all the data into Grafana/Influx and then visualize/export however you want.
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  >Why wait? Because I live in an apartment and don't have a place to put one, but that's my own thing Thank you for all that info!! This is why I love commenting on HN

tzs 3y ago

Why wait? Those fancy weather stations often transmit to the indoor LCD display using fairly simply messages sent in the 433 MHz band or the 915 MHz band. For many those message formats have been reverse engineered and decoders for them added to open source SDR software such as rtl_433 [1]. With a $30 USB RTL-SDR and rtl_433 you can then use the sensor units from many of those fancy units as inputs to your own display and analysis software. And you can often use your neighbors' sensors too. One of my neighbors--I still haven't figured out which--has an AcuRite 5-in-1 system and I can see its readings using my RTL-SDR and rtl_433. If you build your own sensors it is cheap and easy to add a 433 MHz transmitter and define your own message format. Rtl_433 can be extended to cover new message formats by giving it a config file that describes the formats. There's a driver for Weewx to let it use rtl_433 [3]. You can get an RTL-SDR and rtl_433 now, and start playing around with whatever sensors others in your neighborhood happen to have. [1] https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 [2] https://www.acurite.com/shop-all/weather-instruments/weather-stations/acurite-iris-personal-weather-stations/5-in-1-color-weather-station-temperature-humidity-wind-rain.html https://www.acurite.com/shop-all/weather-instruments/weather... [3] https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-sdr

heresie-dabord 3y ago
I have found the BIOS Jumbo Weather Station (https://biosmedical.com/products/bios-weather-jumbo-weather-station https://biosmedical.com/products/bios-weather-jumbo-weather-...) to be reliable and easy to read. I am just a satisfied customer. But it could be fun to reverse engineer the data for use with an R.Pi.
vvanders 3y ago
Strong +1, RTL-SDR + rpi makes a great little platform. We have a couple weather/temp sensors from various brands and rtl_433 picks them in with no issues, throw all the data into Grafana/Influx and then visualize/export however you want.
dabluecaboose 3y ago
>Why wait? Because I live in an apartment and don't have a place to put one, but that's my own thing Thank you for all that info!! This is why I love commenting on HN