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Comment by rcdemski | Hacker News Reader

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/

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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.

+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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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