Weather for PC?

[jwilson56]

I was looking around and found this. La Crosse Technology WS-2315AL Wireless Weather Station. It has a PC interface. Anyone play with these or something like it? Is it a POS or pretty good?

http://www.ambientweather.com/lacrtewswiwe10.html

http://www.lacrossetechnology.com/2315/manual.pdf

 

[Rupp]

These are a good starter system but don't expect it to last over a couple of years and the accuracy isn't the greatest.

 

[JohnWPB]

I thought about setting up a weather station here some time ago, and eventually talked myself out of it. It is great to get the temperature, and wind speed at your location, but thats about it.

I currently use Road Runner as the GUI for my system, and it uses the weather channel info. You can get a free key from the weather channel to use their information on your system, and no "screen scraping" required. The info is simply in XML format to parse and display. It is quite simple to parse out the info, here is an example from the XML:

<lsup>12/3/08 2:53 AM EST</lsup>
<obst>West Palm Beach, FL</obst>
<tmp>49</tmp>
<flik>45</flik>


There are many advantages to using the Internet as a weather source:

- Firstly, Its FREE
- what the high / low is expected to be
- what the forecast is, such as rain, snow ect. (Weather station can't tell you it is partly cloudy with a 40% chance of rain for instance)
- It gives you the ability to see what the next 4 days is going to be like
- A host of other information like Humidity, Visibility, Sunrise & set times, "Feels Like" temperature ect ect..
- multiple locations (Friends and family's weather,

If you do want temperature at your exact location, you can do that very cheaply with the Dallas one wire sensors and then augment the other information from the net.

Here are a couple screen captures from my weather screen using the weather channels info:

Lastly, here is a applet from the weather channel that embeds nicely into Road Runner It displays a radar image that you can drag around with your finger, double tap to zoom in (all the way to street level) and is animated. Sure, its a matter of perference, but I personally prefer the Internet to a weather station any day, as there is just so much more information available.

I did a quick video some time back to show Road Runner being used to control Home Seer. It touches a bit on the weather features.

 

[roussell]

I was looking around and found this. La Crosse Technology WS-2315AL Wireless Weather Station. It has a PC interface. Anyone play with these or something like it? Is it a POS or pretty good?

It's not bad, keep the rain gauge somewhere you can clean it out and make sure the little tipping bucket is working properly, mine likes to stop tipping from time to time and it takes a periodic shot of graphite lubricant to keep it happy. Forget the software that comes with it, just throw it away. If you're using Linux (I know you're not but for others that may come along ), or if you want command-line apps in windows; then Open2300 (free) is about the only game in town. Open 2300 is a collection of apps to pull data from and manipulate the 23xx series of weather stations. If you want a GUI, then check out WUHU Weather (free). With it you can fire events on changes coming in from the 23xx and it logs data to several different weather sites. Open2300 once worked with Weather Underground, but apparently the format changed and it no longer works.

I switched from Open2300 to WUHU about a month or so ago and it works really well for me. When a weather event changes, I can fire off a notice to HouseBot with the changed data with a lot less scripting/custom work than before when I used Open2300 on Linux. BTW, if you're thinking of rolling your own software, or integrating it with a generic serial controller in your HA app, think again. The LaCrosse stations send data by pulsing the DTR line, they don't use the TX/RX lines for communication. Seems like a bone-headed move to me and they probably did it to lock people into their software... Anyway, it's surely easier to stick with the work of others to get the data out.

As far as the reliability issues that others mentioned - other than the aforementioned sticky rain gauge - I've had no problems. The outside temp/humidity seems to keep in line with the 1-wire stuff I have, the wind vane/gauge also seems to be doing it's thing as well but I haven't checked it's accuracy. I live in Central Alabama so we don't get huge climatic swings like others do so that may be the reason that mine is still working relatively well after 4 years. By the way; you can see my weather station's output here, but if you look too far back in the history you'll see a big gap. That's where Open2300 quit talking to Weather Underground and I eventually switched to WUHU.

Terry

EDIT: Also, you'll get better reliability and more frequent updates from the station if you use the wired connections over the wireless. It connects with flat, four wire telephone-style cable that's probable included.

 

[Skibum]

I think your overall satisfaction will me a lot higher if you go Davis.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

FYI, adding to what JohnWPB said, if you are interested in just wind speed and temperature, Davis offers a Weather Wizard station that includes those measurements and is a lot cheaper than their full blown systems.

 

[sic0048]

While getting internet weather is great (and I do that as well), I can also see the benefit to having some personal weather equipment.

- Having a rain gauge so I can turn off the sprinklers when it is raining, or even for a couple days if it rains XX amount, etc
- Having a local outside temp reading so I can turn my pool pump on if it drops below freezing.

Those are the two that I would love to implement into my system. I just need a sprinkler system and a lighting control system and I'll be golden

 

[Rupp]

John,
Do you have a link for the WeatherChannel applet?

 

[123]

Do you have a link for the WeatherChannel applet?

Rupp,
There's a thread on CQC about the WeatherChannel app. The URL is a bit long-winded because it can take many parameters. You'll also find JavaScript/HTML code to obscure parts of the map.

John,
Where can I get the attractive weather icons? The stuff I've found from TWC isn't nearly as pretty. Their thundercloud icon reminds me of a sweaty Cheech Wizard.

 

[batwater]

I had a variant of the La Crosse a 2310 that lasted 4 years, average to below average accuracy. 3 of the 4 years I was wireless, got tired of missing wind gusts and replacing batteries so hooked the external unit up to the console. Having read a few horror stories about lighting surge I tried to run the wiring through an APC ups phone line surge protector, no worky, gave up (and forgot about it) and just ran it straight through and rolled the dice, we've never had a strike or close call. Lucky me, this May I had a lightning strike near my house, a ground discharge the electrician called it, the surge came in through the the weather station low voltage, camera low voltage, deck ac 110 circuit and the phone line (opposite side of the house). Net end result complete network fry, 8 of the 10 computers in the house destroyed, lightning discharged through the network from the camera server and automation server (where the weather station was hooked up) and a whole lot of automation equipment went "pop" thank heavens for insurance! Of course you can purchase separately or make your own lightning arrestor, it was on my to-do list, lesson learned...

For a starter/economy weather station with a PC interface if you are not interested in reliable accuracy the La Crosse is a good choice, otherwise if you are a weather geek wannabe and have the funds go with a Davis Instruments, you can find great prices at places like Provantage and I believe Ambient weather (MFG of software mentioned below) will match any internet price.

With the 2310 I had wonky swings with pressure, humidity, rain guage readings, temperature, essentially everything coming off the external sensors. I have seen a number of posts on weather related forums that my experience was fairly consistent.

For software I highly recommend Virtual Weather Station. The pro package allows you to publish to the internet, auto gen web pages, etc with only a few key clicks. I have run it on XP, W2003 server, Vista 64 as a service without a hitch.

-Ben

 

[jlehnert]

You get what you pay for. Two of my neighbors have had wireless units, and they both died before they were 3 years old. I had a (IIRC) Oregon Scientific wireless unit, and I started losing sensors after 2 years. I upgraded to a wired unit from Peet Bros. and it's been going strong now for 4 years. My late father's wired Texas Instruments unit is approaching 20 years now, and other than replacing the anemometer once when the bearings went out, it's still going strong.

Besides the reliability issues, I'm also in favor of wired units for the greater accuracy of the wind gauge. Wireless units only broadcast every 30-60 seconds. That's okay for precipitation, temperatures, wind direction and AVERAGE wind speed, but it's useless for wind gusts. From my perspective, I'm less concerned about the 30 mph average wind speed, than I am about the 60 mpg gust that just blew over a 100' pine in my front yard.

I think the internet weather question depends on where you are located. I'm on the waterfront on a large lake, and the nearest "official" station at the airport 4 miles away might as well be on the moon for how accurate it reflects conditions at my location. Get a half mile away from the water though, and things probably would match up pretty well.

 

[electron]

What do you guys do about snow? I would love one of these, especially for wind, but it would work for 6 months while it isn't freezing/snowing.

 

[Waynedb]

I have a WS2310, I bought to play with because it was available at the best buy. I have had a few errors with temp readings and wind speed but it is far better than using internet weather for me. I live in an area where it could be raining and 40 degrees 10 miles from here and snowing and 25 degrees at my house. Lots of variation in elevation around here, about 1700 ft. difference in elevation from one end of my town to the other. I plan to by a Davis when I get caught up on my other projects. I also use Virtual Weather Station to interface with my HA app and would highly recommend it.

 

[JohnWPB]

John,
Do you have a link for the WeatherChannel applet?

I just downloaded the .swf from HERE

Here is the DIRECT LINK to the swf applet, so you can just right click and "save as"

 

[Rupp]

John,
Do you have a link for the WeatherChannel applet?

I just downloaded the .swf from HERE

Here is the DIRECT LINK to the swf applet, so you can just right click and "save as"

I appreciate it. Thanks.

Greg