Hacker News Reader

Comment by czhu12 | Hacker News Reader

This may be a dumb question but: What is a weather station exactly? How much does the hardware cost to install and then set up an interface to send data to this system?

View on HN

I own this* one and it is set up on a pole off of my deck. I connect it to wunderground.com and anyone can look up data from my station. I'll be sharing with this service as well now that I know about it.

* https://ambientweather.com/ws-5000-ultrasonic-smart-weather-...

There are much cheaper options than that one if you're interested in hosting a weather station. I decided to install it since I live in a relatively rural area and there is a fairly large gap in coverage where I live. Now I can get more local data and my neighbors can benefit as well. If you live in an urban area odds are a lot of the stations you see on the coverage map are just like this. When I lived in Austin I had a lot nearby readings and if you dig into the info tab for each one you'll see they're personal stations people are sharing.

I run an Ambient WS 5000, and I run two Weatherflow Tempests as well.

With the Ambient Weather WS-5000, the little console panel is also the hub, so you'll have to have it within signal range. You can put their new "Weather Window" elsewhere in the home:

https://ambientweather.com/awn-weather-window

It also supports indoor and outdoor sensors for room, soil, lightning, etc.:

https://ambientweather.com/wh31e-wireless-temperature-humidi...

As a simpler device but remarkably rich start, I'd recommend people try the Tempest to get started:

https://shop.tempest.earth/products/tempest

The API is incredibly easy to work with, both as local devices and as a station:

https://weatherflow.github.io/Tempest/api/

I'm using both brands in a hostile environment, and find the Tempests last better.

I'm also very interested in Weatherflow's network:

https://business.tempest.earth/tempest-network

And as discussed here, Weatherflow Networks collabs with unis and NOAA:

http://weatherflownetworks.com/noaa-national-mesonet-program

On Android and iOS, you can use an app called SmartMixin to commingle and compare readings across multiple brands of weather device.

https://smartmixin.io/

I have some forest land that is remote and I'd like to set up weather sensors on.

I've been stuck on what to purchase, especially since there's no dedicated power or network connections (the site does have cellular access).

The biggest hurdle I have is "here's the full kit of shit you need to buy in that case", any suggestions?

I had some luck with ChatGPT. The model numbers are out of date but the general descriptions and capabilities of each brand aren't. And in general ChatGPT is good with prompts like "I want to do X, tell me all the things I should consider" - it has been trained on Q&A sites after all.

Any good options for bare weather stations with zigbee or wifi connectivity, then let something like HomeAssistant do the monitoring and display?

I'm the wrong person to ask, as I'm fairly new to this. This is my first foray into home automation in general, but this platform has a Home Assistant integration that I'm playing around with. But the included base station is what is aggregating all of the data from the sensors and sending it out to the cloud when connected to wifi. HA is able to poll that base station for the data as well, and I think you can do that purely on the local network. You can keep all of the data local to only the base station and not use their cloud service.

I picked this platform because it has a lot of out-of-the-box functionality as I'm just getting started. It looked like I can still play around outside their walled garden as I do more home automation stuff. Beyond the outdoor weather data a site like WU wants, it has sensors for indoor temp and air quality so I can set up some HVAC routines or monitor if my chest freezer for getting too warm. It has a soil moisture sensor and one day I'd like to set up an automatic irrigation system for my garden. I can expand the connected sensors as I think of more things I want to try.

I think I could have accomplished a lot of the same with bare sensors like you're suggesting but I wasn't ready to take that on. That was too much learning curve for me right now.

That's cool of you to share, particularly in a data drought area. I recently upgraded my sprinkler controller to a Rachio because it could use aggregated weather data, then during setup found out it could use individual weather stations, and not only that, but apparently my neighborhood HOA runs one already. Many weather apps can pull from personal weather stations, like CARROT Weather (my favorite), and it's really nice to know the actual temperature as of roughly 100 yards from my door when I take my dog for a walk.

Are there any tools so see what predication models are most accurate for your personal station?

Nothing out-of-the-box that I'm aware of from the manufacturer. But all of the data is stored locally on the base station and you can try putting into a model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com