Really just the same experience as John. Started with the La Crosse 5-in-1 from Costco. Stumbled across weewx and the mwall driver while looking to ditch the windows laptop. "Upgraded" to the Costco Acurite 5n1. Tried the dual solar panel "pro" fan cover. Went down the road with Acurite support, inaccurate outdoor temperatures, and broken aspirating fans. Now I use the SDR driver to collect the data. This allows me to use a different outdoor temperature sensor than the inaccurate one in the 5-n-1.
Just bought the Tempest for $263 plus tax. Code BLACKFRIDAY still works. Thanks John. Andy On Friday, December 3, 2021 at 1:44:20 AM UTC-8 [email protected] wrote: > I ran LaCrosse Costco grade krappe for years. Believe me, its not worth > the bother, its horribly inaccurate, its highly subject to UV plastic rot > such that the weather instruments start crumbling in 12 months,. and the > radio protocols and stuff are *awful*. the last one I had involved > like 4 pieces that connected wireless (432MHz? I forget) to each other. > > > 1) indoor display panel, which was USB to a computer. > 2) outdoor radio hub + temp/barometer/humidity > 3) outdoor wind speed+direction > 4) outdoor rain bucket > > each of these pieces had alkaline batteries that needed at least annual > replacement, and each time you replaced batteries, you had to put ALL those > pieces together on a table, and go through this awful RF sync procedure 2-3 > times before it stuck. > > I replaced that mess with an Accurite "5-in-1" which was also Costco and > also really cheap, and also really inacurate, and also had annoying quirks, > but at least it was only two pieces, the instrument pod that you had to put > up on a tall pole to get decent wind readings, and the indoor panel that > was USB to the computer (I used a raspberry pi3 for this one). It too is > subject to UV plastic rot, but it lasts 2-3 years. it has a solar charged > odd AA batt (it wasn't NiCad or NiMH, but I forget what it actually was, > not something normal) in the instrument head that lasts a couple years > before going crusty enough to waste the whole weather station, without any > warning. the Accurite software protocols are ugly as sin, unoducmented, > and had to be reverse engineered to work with WeeWX. its REALLY slow > reporting wind and rain, and the wind does NOT do 'gust' readings properly > at ALL. > > I just replaced it with a Weatherflow Tempest. wow, night and day > better. Two pieces, outdoor instrument, that has a Lithium Titanium > Oxide (LTO) battery that's lifetime, and is solar charged, and a little > indoor radio hub that is USB Micro powerred, talks to the instrument via > ??? radio magic, and talks to your network via wifi. The wonderful > thing is, it broadcasts the complete instrument readings every minute as a > UDP broadcast packet in a simple JSON format, and the wind readings update > continously, and both the rain and wind gauges are 'haptic' and use NO > MOVING PARTS. Now, I've only had this online for a ocuple days, but I'm > loving it. I moved weewx from a dedicated raspberry pi to a 'jail' on > my FreeNAS/TrueNAS home file server, copying the same mysql database I've > been using for the last 5 years, the wind updates every *SECOND*. I'm > still waiting for some rain, but I'm expecting *WAY* better results from > what I've seen and read. > > Weatherflow just had a Black Friday or Cyber Monday or some suck deal on > the Tempest, it was like $250. > > oh. you do need a smartphone for the initial configuration of the > Tempest, but it was so easy, your grandma could do it, and yes, it does > automatically report your weather to the weatherflow network, like here's > mine: > https://tempestwx.com/station/63574/ > (click on the temp to drill down to the 'card' view, then click on any > card to get a time graph) > > here's the same station on WeeWX "Seasons" > https://freescruz.com/weewx/ > (any historical data before about noon on December 1st was from the > AccuCrap). > > > if I didn't get this Weatherflow, I probably would have gone down the > Davis Instruments bunny trail, but thats 2-3X the cost for the instrument > I'd want, and a way more complicated install. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weewx-user" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/weewx-user/531948fc-b465-4449-bcec-1aa1f2ca80d1n%40googlegroups.com.
