Regardless of their finest efforts, all climate apps will ultimately lie.
Climate is usually hyper-local. For instance, attempting to suss out the
temperature this morning:
| Accuweather | 41°F (5°C) |
| Carrot | 36°F (2°C) |
| Ventusky | 22°F (-5°C) |
| Garmin Working watch | 48°F (8.8°C) |
So, in 2013, I arrange a Davis Vantage Vue built-in sensor suite
(ISS) and mounted it on a pole hooked up to my storage.
Precise temperature (in my yard): 47°F
(8°C)
Climate station {hardware} 🖥️
In 2013, the DIY climate station route wasn’t for me.
A DIY station was:
- 🙃 Past my skillset (on the time)
- 🏴 Constructed with fragile, general-purpose components that will fail when
tasked with standing as much as the cruel Colorado sunshine yr after
yr
So, over time, I cobbled collectively an off-the-shelf answer:
Climate station software program 🌐
WeeWX is free
and open-source climate station software program written in Python. And it’s
the center of my system.
It has out-of-the-box assist for every thing I would like:
- Nice docs
- Native SQLite storage for climate knowledge
- Assist for sending your knowledge over MQTT
- Uploads to PWSWeather.com,
CWOP, WOW, AWEKAS, and even WUnderground (when you’re
considering gifting your knowledge to IBM and getting bupkis for it) - Static HTML/plain textual content studies, together with:
Frustrations 🤬
![XKCD 2737 by Randall Monroe (Licensed: (CC-by-NC 2.5)[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/])](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/weather_station.png "'Pour one out for precipitation data integrity,' I say, solemnly upending the glass into the rain gauge.")
Raspberry Pi
In 2023, utilizing a Raspberry Pi is a mistake.
Any of the cheapo x86 mini-pcs that retail for about $150 can be a
nicer possibility than a Raspberry Pi.
Working WeeWX on a Raspberry Pi has some issues (all of that are
well-document on their wiki):
- No {hardware} clock – this causes screwy date/time
knowledge following a reboot. I added an RTC module to thwart this
drawback. - Write-heavy vs. SD-Playing cards – WeeWX is a write-heavy
utility, corrupting even the perfect sd-cards over time. I’m writing
most knowledge to a tmpfs and counting on backup and MQTT for knowledge
persistence. - Unobtainium – Within the mid-2010s, Pis had been ~$40. Now,
Pis are $150 for outdated fashions and infinity costly for newer fashions
(since you’ll be able to’t discover them anyplace).
Davis Vantage Vue
I’m unreasonably offended about Davis forcing me to purchase a USB
knowledge logger.
Why is there no USB-out within the $275 console? It looks like punishment
for eschewing open-source {hardware}.
Possibly one thing just like the Meteostick
would obviate the necessity for the console+knowledge logger combo, however I’ve by no means
tried it.
However the built-in sensor suite has been nice: the one upkeep
I do is swapping out the CR123A battery each few years (it’s principally
photo voltaic powered).
Climate knowledge in every single place 🚀
Now that I personal my very own climate knowledge: I spew it all over.
I publish knowledge to:
There are climate widgets throughout my home:
- My desktop’s taskbar (XMobar) reveals the present
outside and indoor temperatures - Grafana dashboards present me the present circumstances (as proven within the
image of my PocketCHIP
above) - I also have a small eink show in my toilet to examine the climate
earlier than my morning run
And if eink climate shows within the toilet are unappealing to you,
I simply don’t perceive what you’re doing right here.
