Hello all - I have gone through previous posts related to adding a pool/water temperature sensor. Much of the information is dated and products are no longer available. Just dropping this to see if there are any updates/new ideas for how this may be accomplished. Thanks for any replies.
Floating or Probe?
It is hard to say what you have looked at in past posts. I use one of these with my Ecowitt gateway:
Then there are these as well:
Yes, I am only recommending RF Ecowitt/Ambient. Not much else really has the range, assuming your pool is not right next to your house. These will all integrate locally with Hubitat with the Ecowitt/Ambient Weather community integration, using the inexpensive RF wifi gateway.
Hi Chris, so it seems that you like/recommend this product and it can integrate into Hubitat?
Not directly. You’d need an Ecowitt gateway device as well.
Sensor talks to gateway over a proprietary RF connection, gateway connects to WiFi or Ethernet (depending on the model of gateway) and then there is a community-developed integration with Hubitat that can talk to the gateway over the LAN and bring the sensor data into Hubitat.
For some additional info, see here:
There’s also at least one zigbee temp sensor with probe that’s available on Amazon.
Haven’t used it myself, though.
I have a couple of the Sonoff temperature sensors. I use them to monitor freezer temperature. It is a Zigbee device that connects directly with Hubitat. The waterproof probe could be installed in a pool overflow with the sensor mounted nearby.
Yes, I tried Zigbee sensors, they just couldn't reach out to the pool. The Ecowitt gateways are only like $20.
The gateway is accessed through the Ecowitt app. You can set a custom server in settings, and set it to send data to your Hubitat IP address locally. The integration parses the files dropped by the gateway, and automatically creates devices for anything connected to the gateway, as soon as it reports data.
There are many devices that can be connected to that gateway, including soil moisture sensors, temp/humid sensors, fill level meters, irrigation valves, and leaf moisture sensors, as well as the full weather stations that come with rain meters, wind meters, lux sensors, lighting sensors.. If you buy a weather station, it comes with a gateway. The gateway itself is also an indoor temp/humid/pressure sensor. That device will be created just by adding the gateway to Hubitat.
The add on devices are fairly inexpensive, all you do is turn on the new device, the RF gateway starts getting data from it, and then when that data goes to Hubitat a new device is created in Hubitat.
Great information - I will explore the options and let you all know what I decide on and how it was implemented.
Thanks!
The solution I settled on was to purchase a Ecowitt GW1100 Wi-Fi Weather Station Sensor Gateway with the WN34BL Digital Pool Thermometer. The only information I could find regarding ECOWITT & Hubitat was outdated by several years and no longer accurate. I am simply using the Ecowitt App to monitor without any Hubitat integration.
I use a Sonoff TH unit, converted to Tasmota. I have a temperature probe in the Botton of my pump and one in the outdoor box. It provides me outdoor temperature, and pool temperature hardwired into Tasmota. The same unit controlled my pump for years, but this year, I'm switching it to a Zigbee breaker for higher current capacity.
Thanks for the info - I installed my Ecowitt about 2 weeks ago and all is fine. The tiny (16cmx30cm) base is on my patio and reports the patio temperature, and the wireless pool thermometer is in my skimmer basket to report water temp. They both provide plenty of data and historical graphing. All is well as we approach swimming season here in South Florida.
What information isn’t accurate?
There are two ecowitt integrations, both of which are stable and work perfectly. One integration is developed and maintained by @snell. The other integration is maintained by @sburke781.
I've linked to both below:
Humm - my device is spot-on. Of course I am using the native Ecowitt environment and not using Hubitat at all at this point.
I'm glad it is, and it is good that you have a solution that works for you.
The purpose of my post was to ensure that anyone else who wishes to integrate their ecowitt gateway with Hubitat isn't misled by this the following statement.
I use the Ambient weather sensor for my hot tub and it's perfect. And there's a third party app written for it so you can feed the data from Ambient right in. It's slick and consistent.
I'm using (and wrote) this $25 pool temp sensor. I've had it for 2 years now and no issues. The driver is new though. The reason the driver is necessary is - at least at the time of this writing is - govee API doesn't expose the pool temp sensor. If/when that changes this is a more generic app to use instead