"Smart" Gadgets - Ecowitt Wittboy Weather station integration

[paulca]

Why can't they all be like this?   

I plugged it in, turned it on and it registered on DHCP, accepted a hostname/dns and was immediately available on it's IP.

After wasting an hour I won't get back reading the home assistant integration code and forums, I was no closer to getting data out of it.

So, I stuck a local IP into the data publish address under "Custom" and ran an HTTP POST sniffer on it.  It was literally sending all values in a key-value URL encoded list.  I would struggle to find a way for them to make it more simple, honestly.

So I hit ChatGPT up to generate me a Flask app to produce a python dictionary of the data and then manually added the MQTT client.

Boom integrated.

Another 5 minutes I added the topic to the "InfluxDB bridge" and Boom Data and graphs.

In fairness... it's PoC quality code.  There is a lot to do.  Dumping all values in the same blob on the same topic is ... undesirable.  Different data should have different cadence, different "on change" mechanics and minimum event freuency etc.  tldr, they need split up into individual topics placed in better hierarcies with related values.

Of note, they even provide the C++ code for the binary communications with the remote over RF.  No need for them to do so.  But they did.

More of this please!  Stop making it difficult for people to use your products without your help!

https://www.ecowitt.com/shop/goodsDetail/245

[paulca]

Oh... and other than the QRCode on the box which led to a video on youtube.... I was never forced to install any app and never had to sign up to any terms or conditions or privacy policy, nor even give out my email address....    it doesn't even use or need an internet connection.  I can give it a black hole gateway and it wont care.

[50ShadesOfDirt]

Looks nice ... good features, and I do like the ability to get at the data yourself, vs thru other weather stations' apps & cloud junk.

I had bailed on the cheesy crop of weather machines, and had finally settled on the Tempest system as a replacement, but they also push the app & cloud crud. I just want the data, as simply as possible.

Now I'll dig into the Ecowitt line deeper ... thanks for the tip!

[paulca]

No problem.  Co-incidence:  I opened the forum to ask a question about weather station wind direction results and your reply to this headed me off.

The unit is working great.  I would post images, but it's still slightly tedious to do so here.

The issues, which fall into the categories "minor" and "not it's fault" are...

Rain.  The sensor is based on "impact" of water drops.  This is scientifically considered the most accurate way of determining not just if it's raining or how much, but also how heavy, down to the size of the drops.  The trouble with the implementation however seems to be that once the top of the unit is saturated in water it seemingly outputs a dropping intensity of rain, when in fact rain has continued at the same intensity for hours.  It tends instead to show a high spike and then decay out within 30 mins.

Wind direction.  I presently have it mounted at 5ft mid garden on a brush shaft stuck through a garden table parasol hole.  It has a house one side, a garage the next, fence the next and massive hedge.  Wind direction is almost completely back to front from the "reported conditions".  I believe this is just to be expected.  I will not be able to measure "true" atmospheric wind direction from a garden.  The wind direction IN my garden is of little imporance to me and pointless for weather predictions.  I was hoping to mount it up on the garage roof just proud of the peek, but even then it will be effected by all the houses around.  Paying a roofer to mount it on the chimney might get me somewhere closer, but cost a few dollars everytime it needs "direct access maintenance" for batteries etc.

Wind speed.  Mostly the same as above, however, it does seem to correlate much better with the "reported conditions", just ... at the wrong magnitude.  If it's actually blowing 30km/h gusting 50km/h the station reports 10km gusting 15.  There is a gain setting I can increase to adjust this.  However, I am restrained by the fact it IS measuring the windspeed in my garden, which IS important to me, regardless of it's correlation to the "reported conditions".  So the question becomes... should I not calibrate it such that the wind speed it shows alerts me to ... say ... take down an awning or put bricks on top of the bins... before they start wandering.

On both.  I don't think I can make a "true atmospheric" weather station within a residensial "sub-urban" area.  So I should just adjust the gains and stuff to make it "functional" for "awareness" of the garden only.