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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any suggestions for a personal weather station? Especially one for a beginner?

I’ve had a Weatherflow Tempest [1] for a few years and love its simplicity. No moving parts, solar and rechargeable battery powered. Their platform is primarily mobile app based but they have a comprehensive API should you want to play around.

[1] https://tempest.earth/

Second this; I love mine. And the base station has a UDP port you can listen to for all the real-time data, making integration with Home Assistant and the like pretty straight forward and 100% local.

Is there an integration for it? And can you set it up completely offline, without needing to create an account or install an app?

There is a local push integration. I don’t know if you can setup without internet though.

Thirded. I connected my stations' local UDP broadcasts to Prometheus push/VictoriaMetrics:

https://github.com/willglynn/tempest_exporter

Their central web API is nice too (and the tool above can extract metrics from it) but the local, offline data access is what got me in the door. Tempest could shut down their services tomorrow without breaking my setup.

Just did a quick search, looks great; easy to set up, and cost <$500. What's the maintenance like? I see it's solar powered, provided not in complete shade https://help.tempest.earth/hc/en-us/articles/4414460312603-P...

Put mine up in January 2021, zero maintenance, and it's been working great the whole time. Hopefully I haven't jinxed it. :)

What's your weather like?

Cyclonic (Hurricanes), baking heat, extended sub zero cold .. ?

I have an interest in stations that can last a long time in bad weather.

Los Angeles area, so the only issue here is heat, and even that is usually only a few bad weeks a year. The Tempest app tells me the hottest day was when it hit 109F the first week of September 2022, and that whole week had highs above 100F.

Cheers for that.

It can get a little warmer here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/202402/html/IDCJDW6136.202... and even more so in other parts of the state: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/202402/html/IDCJDW6079.202...

( 100F == 37.7C , 109F == 42.7C )

None. I’m three years in with mine in Denver so it deals with hot summer, frigid winter, random hail, occasional high winds. I’ve never had to touch it.

I wish more home technology was so painless.

From Dec to Feb mine is shaded by trees (sun doesn't get to high altitude here in Winter at 42N). The battery got pretty far down, but the unit went into low power mode and kept working fine, as far as I can tell. It's back up to full battery since March. I may move it up to a higher and sunnier location.

Hmmm, at first glance Tempest isn't currently compatible with CWOP.

Edit: Nevermind. It looks like Tempest themselves sends the data to NOAA, so it's already taken care of. Nice.

+1. I have Tempest devices at a couple of sites. They were easy to set up, and they've worked well. The API is straightforward, too, so it was easy to write a Python script to sync my data to a local SQLite database and keep it up to date. (If you're interested: https://github.com/tmoertel/tempest-personal-weather.)

is it accurate? the rain and wind sensors with no moving parts seem like they'd be a significant compromise over transitional moving anemometers, etc.

Ultrasonic anemometers are generally better than cup anemometers, especially if regular maintenance is not guaranteed.

I’m not sure about ran sensors.

But moving parts are generally bad for reliability.

I have a Davis Vantage Vue. It's a nice station, but requires a proprietary data logger to get a serial connection which I loathe. There's tons of good weather station nerd info on wxforums[0].

weewx[1] software supports sending data to CWOP and has drivers for the Davis station among others.

Bonus: you can also send data to CWOP over the ham bands via aprs, and all your data shows up on aprs.fi[2]

[0]: <https://www.wxforum.net/>

[1]: <https://weewx.com/>

[2]: <https://aprs.fi/>

It's been a while, but with a little bit of solder and a slightly-janky connector, you don't need the proprietary dongle to connect to a serial connection (at least with a Vantage Vue from ~2010).

The Vantage Vue hardware is solid; much better than the cheaper kits out there.

I spent some time building a data logger when I first got my vue, but they updated hardware circa 2012 specifically to thwart this, it seems[0]. It was a frustrating discovery: had to spend an extra $100 for something that can be made with $2 worth of parts :(

[0]: <https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=10721.275>

That's really unfortunate.

I have a Vantage Pro2 with the WeatherLink Live. I'm really happy with it. It has a pretty simple API you can hit on the local network, and it can push to weatherlink.com. It's a bit on the pricey side, but I live in a fairly rural area, so it's nice to have my own data. Plus, I'm on a private airstrip, so other pilots can use see it.

Maybe work backwards from

Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) Information: http://www.wxqa.com/cwop_info.htm

If you're going digital, there are several suggested backbones, eg:

Legacy (oops): https://controlbyweb.com/legacy/x320m/

Current model ($450 US): https://controlbyweb.com/accessories/davis-suite-controller

which is a hub that uploads data from attached sensors, which in turn has details of compatable sensors:

Legacy manual: https://controlbyweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/X-320_um...

Current Integrated bunch of sensors on a stick ( $595 US ): https://controlbyweb.com/accessories/sensor-suite

The CWOP community likely has forums and users experienced in matching suggestions to new member questions.

Depends a lot on your skill | interest levels - the controlbyweb path is one option, and that's $450 pluse extra for sensors ( tempreture, wind speed | direction ), air pressure, etc.

All in ~ $1,100 (US) - controller + base sensors + shipping + some wiring and fitting at your site.

There are likely other products and various levels of kit build, solder your own, etc.

The Complete Tempest Weather System https://shop.tempest.earth/collections/featured/products/tem...

comes in at $339 (US) which is cheaper to get started and promises much - build quality, robustness, etc would have to be compared | asked about.

The San Diego Rowing Club has an Ambient Weather WS-2902 weather station and live camera feed [1] and the details of how we collect, process, and present the data. [2] If one clicks on the static image you'll get a live feed. The static image is updated frequently and is a better mobile experience. The AW API can be problematic at times so later this summer I'll reconfigure the station to do a GET request to a local device and process the data without a cloud dependency.

1. https://www.sandiegorowing.org/weather/

2. https://www.sandiegorowing.org/weather/tech/

I have Ambient Weather equipment at multiple locations and it works great. Ambient’s own site and software is also very good lately.

My dad and I both have Davis Vantage Pro 2s.

https://www.davisinstruments.com/pages/vantage-pro2

His has been working for 20 years now with no problems. There are cheaper ones no doubt, but the ability to add senors like a UV and solar wattage are nice. They also have sensors for soil moisture, and leaf transpiration, but it doesn't rain enough in norcal for those.

At some point, Davis changed the data logger, so I had to buy some USB adapter from some guy in Australia to unlock it, but it works fine. I don't remember the guy's name, or if it's still needed.

I use weewx and a raspberry pi to log everything. Integrated my PurpleAir into weewx and calculate AQIs as well.

http://weewx.com/

I have an Ambient Weather WS-2902C feeding to CWOP out of the box. It also lets you configure custom endpoints (REST based), so I have the data feeding into my own system and logging into a db that I can use however I want.

Inside its esp8266 based. Currently sells for less than $200.

I have a WS-2902D and wasn’t aware it could do either of those things! Do you have a link you could share on how to set it up?

You have to use their WeatherBridge app to configure it. They have some info for CWOP on their FAQ site [1]. I believe that same app is where you set up your custom endpoints (it's been a few years since I did it).

[1] https://ambientweather.com/support/ws-2902-weather-station-s...

I also have a WS-2902, and years ago I tried to publish to CWOP. It was not easy without installing a number of Python dependencies and running your own process to constantly poll the weather station and then publish to CWOP. If I remember correctly, Ambient would publish direct to Weather Underground at the click of a button. Alas, WU has sort of deteriorated over the years. My information here is 4-5 years old.

Check the FAQ, mine definitely is sending to AmbientWeather and CWOP without the use of another computer.

https://ambientweather.com/support/ws-2902-weather-station-s...

Thanks, will do.

I have two KestrelMet 6000s, build quality seems very nice and I’ve been happy with them. The one stopped connecting for some reason for a little bit, but it’s been fine since, think the battery just got drained with so many cloudy days.

Something from Davis Intruments or Kestrel would very good. But they are not cheap.

Weatherflow Tempest hands down is the best consumer station out there today.

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