Minus 10 Degrees - Recommendations Please

[Monk]

So - my ELK temp sensors are notoriously unreliable. Today  I am again reminded by the fact that I have a sensor stating 8 degrees when 2 stand-alone thermometers I trust show minus 10.
 
Yes - I am aware the ELK's can be adjusted but find that to be more trouble that it is worth by making other temperature ranges inaccurate. That is to say - if I adjusted it right now - it would be way off when it is 70 outside. Been through this a couple of few times.
 
Please recommend any accurate sensor I can integrate via ELK or HomeSeer?
 
Maybe even a weather station setup where I can pull the values into HomeSeer.

 

[pete_c]

Here utilize three types of sensors.
 
1 - Leviton Omni temperature sensors which talk to Homeseer
2 - Weather station / console temperature sensors connected to Cumulus which connects to Homeseer
3 - 1-Wire network(s) of temperature sensors.
 
Most accurate are the 1-Wire and Weather station temperature sensors.
 
Oldest today is the 1-Wire stuff.  I am using many combo temperature and humidity sensors purchased in the 1990's.
 
Way back wired catXX for the 1-wire stuff in a star topology.  Later went to a hub and spoke topology.  Note that the temperature sensors need no power and will work fine with two wires.
 
This morning's outdoor temperature was - 5 °F and currently it is 1 ° F  here in the midwest.
 
Old 1-wire networks used Temp-05's, Temp-08's and Maxim 9097's.  Testing out a small RPi2 combo Maxim 9097 hub with Homeseer and it is doing fine.  The hub writes a text file every minute and Homeseer reads the text file and converts the sensors over to variables via a VB script.
 
You can purchase the EDS system and incorporate it in to Homeseer via a 3rd party plugin.  (Randy - ELK plugin author).
 
EDS is using the first 1-Wire OWFS OS and embedded it in firmware. 
 
Here running a OWFS server concurrent with using Digitemp on my test RPi.
 

 
A few months back was testing Randy's plugin to see if it worked with a generic OWFS server versus the EDS OWFS server.  Verde folks did it using LUA. 
 
 

 

[Monk]

Pete -
The Leviton Omni Sensor sounds easy - what would I need besides the actual sensor?

 

[wuench]

I have an ambient weather weather station.   Totally wireless, solar powered.   Data is pushed to weather underground and then pulled down from there to home automation.   The outdoor sensor registered -8 today so seems to  be accurrate even in these temps.   The one I have  comes with a wireless indoor sensor as well, but the indoor sensors only  display on the panel,  it doesn't to push to WU.   The station usually maintains a WU gold star rating.   Its nice to get real time info for HA, but what's really great about this setup is you also have  WU keeping all your historical data, graphing, etc all available from anywhere.   
 
I have had good support with ambient weather as well.   At one point I had some issues with daylight savings time not being reliable on the panel, they sent me a new one for free.  Have had the station for over  two years and have yet to have to replace the rechargeable batteries.

 

[pete_c]

The Leviton Omni Sensor sounds easy - what would I need besides the actual sensor?
 
An Omni panel.  Note that the Omni sensors are wired.
 
Another option would be to utilize the RFXCom RX device / Homeseer plugin and utilize Wireless sensors like the Ambient ones mentioned above by Wuench.

 

[Monk]

I have an ambient weather weather station.   Totally wireless, solar powered.   Data is pushed to weather underground and then pulled down from there to home automation.   The outdoor sensor registered -8 today so seems to  be accurrate even in these temps.   The one I have  comes with a wireless indoor sensor as well, but the indoor sensors only  display on the panel,  it doesn't to push to WU.   The station usually maintains a WU gold star rating.   Its nice to get real time info for HA, but what's really great about this setup is you also have  WU keeping all your historical data, graphing, etc all available from anywhere.   
 
I have had good support with ambient weather as well.   At one point I had some issues with daylight savings time not being reliable on the panel, they sent me a new one for free.  Have had the station for over  two years and have yet to have to replace the rechargeable batteries.

 
Thanks Wuench - sounds like we are (sort of) neighbors.
Can you comment  on the brands / models of your setup?
Thanks1

 

[wuench]

It's an Ambient Weather WS-1002-WIFI.  It's an outdoor solar unit fully contained, a display, and an indoor wireless temp/humidity sensor.    You configure everything on the display, it collects the data and then beams it up to WU using a free WU account via Wifi.   It can also store/cache data on SD card if wifi isn't available.    Screen is about 25' from outdoor unit, old screen is about 75' away from outdoor unit.  Software is upgradeable via SD card. 

 

[Monk]

It's an Ambient Weather WS-1002-WIFI.  It's an outdoor solar unit fully contained, a display, and an indoor wireless temp/humidity sensor.    You configure everything on the display, it collects the data and then beams it up to WU using a free WU account via Wifi.   It can also store/cache data on SD card if wifi isn't available.    Screen is about 25' from outdoor unit, old screen is about 75' away from outdoor unit.  Software is upgradeable via SD card. 

 
I might give it a whirl. No wiring & "self contained" are cool. Checking to see which HomeSeer apps would work best with it.

 

[pete_c]

Today many / most of the Weather Stations are proprietary wireless.  Old was wired.
 
IE: the Davis ISS weather station uses a solar panel to charge a rechargeable battery in the ISS.
 
The old way of Homeseer connectivity was to connect to the Console via USB or Serial.  (this is the way I use Cumulus)
 
I updated this methodology by running CumulusMX on a RPi2 and Velcroing the RPi2 to the back of the Davis Console. 
 
The other weather station used a tablet with a USB cable to Cumulus.
 
The use of WLAN 802.11X for weather station connectivity is relatively new.  One of the Homeseer users with same said weather station is pulling down the WU data from his updating to the WU site.  Weather station to the cloud stuff is what I am seeing that many weather stations are starting to do automatically and pushing Android / iOS clients on the smartphones that connect to your cloud connection.
 
Here like to keep my data local and while I do upload to WU and NOAA...do not really use my own data in the cloud.  IE: slowly switching over to just utilizing NOAA to upload stuff and starting to consider not updating WU (just a commercial endeavor these days).
 
Tinkering with a new wireless way to get NOAA weather maps these days using an RPi2, cheap SDR dongle and a tiny V shaped antenna in the attic.  It is automated and just downloads hi resolution weather maps from Noaa 15, 18 and 19 satellites.  Really just goofing with this to see if it works with a $10 SDR radio receiver.  From this testing will be tinkering with wireless temperature sensors as there are now some basic programs that run on the RPi2 that will get this information to your RPi2 and or Homeseer 3 in the near future. 
 
A new Gizmo I am using is called the MeteoStick.  The is an RF multiple weather station / instruments wireless stick.  It works with Davis and concurrently with other wireless weather sensors such that I can see data on my consoles and concurrently post the data to HS3.  There are no interdependencies between the meteostick and the Davis consoles.  The language of communications used for the Davis weather consoles has been reversed engineered such that there are new weather stations base stuff today that incorporates the use of different wireless weather instruments and talks using Davis formatting. 
 
Some of the issues with outdoor wireless sensors are the cold killing  the batteries.  Personally not sure how they would work in our little chill these last couple of weeks (midwest) where temps have been from -5 °F to 12 °F.  Historically with similar temperatures here have lost some of the outdoor year around plants.

 

[vc1234]

Some of the issues with outdoor wireless sensors are the cold killing  the batteries.  Personally not sure how they would work in our little chill these last couple of weeks (midwest) where temps have been from -5 °F to 12 °F.  Historically with similar temperatures here have lost some of the outdoor year around plants.

 
I have a CC2650 SensorTag that I reprogrammed to use as and Eddistone BLE temp/humidity sensor outdoors.   When the temperature goes below 2-3F, the sensor stops working because the battery (CR2032 ) voltage falls down to about 2.4V while the minimum for the sensor is about 2.7V.  The rest of the circuitry seem to be working ok because I do receive packets but with incorrect temperature/humidity readings (like -28F when the actual temperature is anything below 2-3F).

 

[pete_c]

For hardware tinkerers this guy has a device built and selling called WeatherArduino Pro2.
 
- Easy to build hardware
- Easy to find components
- Flexible and expandable

The WeatherDuino Pro2 emulates a Davis VP weather station and is fully compatible with Cumulus 1,  CumulusMX or any other software that is compatible to a Davis Vantage Pro weather station.
 


The WeatherDuino Pro2 system is developed with flexibility in mind.
It can use a wide range of sensors and measuring instruments, making of it an universal system.
From low cost to high end weather instruments, you are free to decide, what instruments and brands you want to use, and the ones that most fit your requirements or budget.

Here is a list of the currently supported weather instruments.
 
It is a very long list and allows for use of non Davis hardware and produces Davis Weatherstation output.
 
I do not work for this company.  What he has done is created an emulated Davis VP weather station Pro but allows for non Davis weather instruments connectivity.  IE: you can connect 1-wire sensors, wireless environment sensors and do a mix and match and output using the established Davis communication protocals.
 
What a great idea.

 

[Monk]

Very interesting. I pulled the trigger on a real weather station - same one mentioned earlier by @wuench. It had some negative reviews on Amazon, but not near enough to dissuade me. 
How did yours hold up through the really cold weather, Wuench? Batteries are a real concern for outdoor devices but I believe these get some solar-assistance.