Weather Stations

End Devices (Nodes)
1

Hello all,

I’ve seen maybe two other posts on this so was hoping to get more up to date feedback.

[1] Would anyone be able to recommend a good weather station? “Good” is a bit vague I know but the main things I’m interested in are: wind speed, rainfall and temperature.

[2] I’m a bit perplexed as to the cost of the Lora-enabled ones. Why for instance is this SenseCAP version ~150 yet this one almost a thousand more?

[3] Similarly is there’s a reason why the wifi versions of weather stations seem to be so much cheaper?

[4] Apologies if this is very obvious but with devices such as this that list Radio frequency: 868.0 - 868.6 MHz, 869.4 - 869.65 MHz a …would it be possible for me to somehow render this Lora-enabled? Really would love to understand this point as I feel it’s something I’m lacking.

Many thanks again guys for any help,
C

2

Non LoRaWAN enabled stations are much cheaper because of economy of scale. Millions of them are sold around the world. Only a hand full of LoRaWAN stations will be sold so all development and research cost will need to be recovered from selling these small numbers,

3

Thanks Jac, it was something I was wondering about. Would you know it if were then possible to do something like described in point [4] as a somewhat cheap workaround?

Best,
C

4

There are a lot of weather stations available which are using these frquencies - but that does not mean that they are lora compatible. They use their own protocols which are closed source usually.

So you will end up buying an expensive station which is supporting lora or build one by yourself with an simple node and some sensors attached.

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5

Thank you again

6

Are you planning on building your own weather station or are you looking for a fully aftermarket weatherstation?

If you are building your own i can recommend u the Sparkfun weather station kit. This kit comes with a wind speed and direction meter and a rainfall meter. This way u already have the mechanical parts. There also is a light sensor hidden in the rain meter. there also is a big knowledgebase on how to integrate these sensors in to your coding.
They also sell the electronics but these are not lora based. i’d say attach a esp32 lora board, a battery, and a solar panel to the pole in a waterproof box and be done with it!

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7

“Ultrasonic wind speed & direction sensors without moving parts” on any weather station comes with a heavy price.

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8

The price being both $$$ and power consumption

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9

Certainly not ruling out building. In fact I’ll probably do that anyway for my own uses now that you highlight this one. But yeah if there was any feedback on a Lora, commercial ready one and costs associated I’d be interested in that too.
Cheers for the help again man.

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10

Thanks, that’s good to know. Is there a particular reason? I’ve seen them on the wifi stations and they can still come in below 200 Eur mark

11

please show me examples of Ultrasonic wind speed & direction sensors in complete weather station setups for anything lower than $1000, its a neat solution to having moving parts but I’ve never found a cheap working example - I suspect there is a lot of IP/coding involved too

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12

No IP but you need at least three decent ultrasonic transducers (ie, not HC-SR04’s) and the coding is “interesting” - way way more than counting pulses from an anemometer, tip bucket or a the reed switch combo in the vane.

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13

Does WeatherFlow Tempest count?

Using for about a year, my readings available here

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14

Very cool. I like it: what do you use it for? Hobby or something else? Is it Lora though?

15

Did you have a look at this one?

16

Very cool. I like it: what do you use it for? Hobby or something else?

The former.

I’ve linked with Home Assistant, no specific application yet - but I’m looking into LoRa-based bee hives montioring so I want to correlate weather data in the future.

Other than that, I’m thinking about exposing my robotic mower Bluetooth interface over LoRa so I can control its operation programtically, but that’s just an idea at this point…

Is it Lora though?

Nope, comes with own 2.4 GHz Hub (which also does some data processing on the fly) and is publishing to their MQTT server, AFAIK.

17

Interesting, very professional, lots of extras for services and apps too - you have to buy into their eco system and pay the subs

18

IMHO, main technical aspect ruling the application of Lora for Meteo-application is the data-rate and data-volume.
Some setups exist which from start apply Lora (or similar SigFox) like Barani-systems.
The alternative is using a conventional PWS and linking it to LoraWAN just for the communication, means that you have to repack the data for fitting in the Lora-packaging and Lora-refresh-rate.
If you consider that PWSes quite often apply a refreshinterval of 5 minutes (or lower) and whitin that interval shipment of current data plus derived data, it puts a heavy burden on Lora-functionality.
Limitation of the payload to current data puts shifts demands to the receiving end to generate the derivative values.
Solution seen for a setup with Davis-PWS, is to significantly reduce the refresrate, ‘buying’ time for volume-transport.
[To find more, use Google with ‘Davis Lora Meteo’]

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19

Using Tempest since 2020.
The 868MHz of Tempest is not Lora, but ‘private-channel’ between sensor<>hub, and hub<>internet segment of the flow is WiFi-UDP, with high data_volume (relative to other PWSes):

  • not suitable for long-range-communication, and
  • ‘not easy’ to squeeze into a Lora-communication channel
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20

A project in Flanders (dutch language):

vlinder

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