So, I hear people doing this alot. However what exactly does this help with? Like, is the extra information really more useful than just the standard old TV weather forecast?
I do find it interesting to see the differences in temperature (and humidity, etc.) in the microclimate around my house compared to the city and greater metro area.
I also use the data to measure the performance of my home's HVAC system. Doing this _does_ require real-time local temperature and humidity data. But again, this is all for fun.
I just enjoy it.
Adafruit has a bunch of sensors that work over the i2c bus; they’ve included python code for accessing the data as well, which makes it easy to get started.
There are sensors out there for everything. Absolutely everything.
That is as good a reason as any!
I'm really benchmarking the system against itself, year on year, by comparing the weather outside vs. performance (output temperature of the HVAC unit, average temperature inside the house).
I'm not trying to find an objective efficiency rating so much as monitor performance over time to see if it's changing.