[RE-RELEASE] EcoWitt and Wittboy Weather Stations And Sensors (Local)

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers
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If you are considering venturing into weather sensors and including them in your home automation setup, EcoWitt offer a range of relatively inexpensive weather sensors that can be integrated into Hubitat using a local data feed (no Internet needed).

Thanks:
This is the re-release of the excellent EcoWitt Gateway and Sensor drivers developed Mirco, a previous member of the HE Community. Beyond my own support of these drivers, you will also find and incredibly helpful sub-group of the HE Community here happy to help get you started and troubleshoot and issues you may come across.

How Does It Work?
EcoWitt develop various weather sensors and weather stations, which can be linked to one of their gateway devices, including LCD displays. Many of these gateway devices provide the option to send sensor readings to both their web site for recording and display, as well as the option to send the data to a third-party destination. This is where these custom Hubitat drivers come in, capable of receiving the data feed from the EcoWitt gateway, interpret the various sensor readings and capture these in HE devices. These are then available to use in automations and for display on HE Dashboards. Sensors can include indoor / outdoor temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall and rain rate, UV, air pressure and air quality.

Getting Started:
For those who have not used these drivers before, please look through the Readme section on the GitHub repository used to host the drivers.

For those who have previously used Mirco's version of these drivers, please see the post below for more details on transitioning to the new version.

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2023-12-03 - Added GitHub Driver Version Monitoring setting for gateway device
2023-10-22 - Added option to forward custom data feed to additional target
2023-10-22 - (Dated 25-09 in the comments) Fix for Lighting Distance reporting in kilometers instead of miles
2023-09-24 - New runtime attribute, dateutc state variable and detection of gain30_piezo
2023-09-24 - Updates for Wittboy battery readings and firmware (made by @xcguy)
2023-07-02 - Fix for Dew Point in Celsius
2023-02-18 - Added driver version check to data parse method
2023-02-05 - Added Wittboy Battery Voltage reading (ws90cap_volt)
2023-01-01 - Fixed detection of WittBoy PWS as a PWS using WH90batt reading
2022-12-15 - Updated sensor (child) driver to process Wittboy (WS90) rain sensor "piezo" readings
2022-11-06 - Wittboy (WS90) support
2022-10-22 - (No driver code change) Added Template 10A to the list of tile templates, to include slight variation on template 10, with Yearly rainfall rather than total rainfall. Thanks @kahn-hubitat
2022-07-09 - Adjusted the formatting of the Dynamic DNS Preference settings when displayed on the Device Edit page
2022-07-04 - Fix for WH31 battery readings not being picked up correctly
2022-06-17 - Added Leaf Sensor (WN35), thanks to @JustinL
2022-02-03 - Fixed bug where Air Quality would only be set if HTML Enabled setting was turned on
2022-02-02 - Added Air Quality capability and associated attribute - thanks @kahn-hubitat
2021-12-04 - Added option for Dynamic DNS Lookup for remote Gateway devices
2021-12-04 - Replaced time attribute with lastUpdate
2021-08-28 - Re-Release of drivers under my sburke781 HPM repository

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What did I miss?? Where did microline go??

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He chose to move off the HE platform, but did provide the code for us to continue using.

I am going through the exercise of setting it up in a repository of my own. It is looking likely we will each need to recreate the ecowitt devices on our hubs and associated links in rules / apps, etc. So it may take a little longer to get this back up and running for any updates or fixes people may need

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It’s still on my hub or if I run an update on my HSM will it remove it?

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The update won't work, but trying to do an update won't remove the drivers.

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Ok, thanks.

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Much appreciated

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I now have the drivers available in my Hubitat Package Manager repository. I have some steps listed below to transition to my copies of the EcoWitt drivers, so feel free to take a look and let me know if you have any questions or feedback. I'll be getting the notes on earlier posts here up to date over the next few days / week.

NOTE - THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE ONLY FOR EXISTING USERS OF ECOWITT TRANSITIONING TO THESE UPDATED DRIVERS

New users should refer to the Readme section of the GitHub repository for setting up their gateway on HE.

PLEASE READ - Things to consider / take note of before starting

The process is essentially:

  • Install a new copy of the drivers
  • Setup a fresh set of devices in HE
  • Switch the feed of data from the old HE devices to the new
  • Update HE rules and apps with references to the old HE devices
  • Remove the old HE devices

Understand where you're existing devices are being used, such as in rules or other apps, and what may be involved in transitioning these references to a new device. The reason for pressing this point is that there will be a period of time between switching the feed of data from the old to new devices and having updated any rules or apps, where those rules or apps will not be receiving any updates. There are some alternatives that could be used if this is a problem, so get in touch if you have any concerns.

Including my HPM Repository

If you don't already have my repository configured in HPM:

  • On the HPM Main Menu select "Package Manager Settings"
  • Open the "Available repositories" list and select my "Simon Burke (sburke781)" repository
  • Click Next
Re-Installing EcoWitt WiFi Gateway Drivers
  • On the HPM Main Menu select Install -> Browse By Tags
  • Open the "Choose tag(s)" list and select the "Weather" tag
  • From the packages displayed, click the "EcoWitt WiFi Gateway by Simon Burke (sburke781)" package
  • When prompted, click Next twice to start the installation
  • When the installation is complete, click Next to return to the Main Menu
Creating a new EcoWitt WiFi Gateway Virtual Device
  • Navigate to the Devices page and click Add Virtual Device
  • Give the new device a name (keep this different to the existing gateway device for the moment to make identification easier, then change the name later if needed)
  • In the Type select the first EcoWitt WiFi Gateway driver listed
    Note - In testing the new driver was always the first one listed, but we can correct this later if it is not correct
  • Click Save Device
Capturing Configuration Settings and Turning off the data feed

NOTE THIS WILL STOP DATA FROM BEING CAPTURED IN CHILD DEVICES

  • Open the existing EcoWitt WiFi Gateway virtual device
  • Note down the MAC / IP address and any other settings from the Preferences section
  • Open each of the child devices linked at the bottom of the page and do the same, note down any settings configured for each device
  • Adjust the MAC / IP address setting slightly, for example, changing one number or character, and click Save Preferences
Configuring the New EcoWitt WiFi Gateway Device
  • Enter the Gateway MAC/IP Address and update any other Preferences noted earlier
    Click Save Preferences
  • Wait until updated data is sent through from the physical gateway device (the timing of this would have been configured in the WS View app on your phone / tablet). Attributes such as passkey, firmware and others will be displayed when this has happened
  • To confirm the right driver was selected earlier, the driver attribute should be "1.30.29". If this is not the case, change the driver selected (Type) under the Device Information section, click Save Device, wait for the page to reload and click Save Preferences.
  • Reload the Device page and confirm child devices (sensors) have been created. These are displayed in the Device Details table at the bottom of the page, listed under Component Devices
  • Open some of the child devices to confirm data is coming through as expected
Migrating to the New Gateway Device
  • Look back at the old gateway virtual device, and in particular it's child devices, looking for the In Use By listing at the bottom of the Device Edit Page.
  • Update any references to the old gateway and child devices, in rules, apps, dashboards, etc, transitioning those references to the equivalent devices created as part of this installation
Cleanup
  • Remove the old EcoWitt WiFi Gateway virtual device from HE
  • Rename the new gateway device, if required
  • Uninstall the old EcoWitt drivers from HPM (note, you will receive an error message if you select the new drivers, so don't stress....)

EDIT: I noticed the old drivers still appeared in my listed under Drivers Code, even after having chosen to remove them via HPM. So you may need to remove the copies under mircolino manually. To do this, In the Drivers Code listing, click on the driver name, once the driver code opens, click the red "Delete" button, click Ok to confirm the delete. Do this for both the Ecowitt Gateway and Ecowitt RF Sensor drivers listed under the mircolino Namespace.

EcoWitt Drivers
EcoWitt Drivers1552×340 80.3 KB

Dashboards

For those who have made use of templates and icons for a html tile, you will need to update the CSS file import line in the Advanced -> CSS section of your dashboard, to now read:

@import url("https://sburke781.github.io/ecowitt/html/ecowitt.css");

See step two from the templates section of the Readme.

Simon

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Great instructions Simon. Easily followed. Many thanks.

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No worries.

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Added an update to the cleanup step for transitioning to the new copy of these drivers. I had to manually delete the old ones in the Drivers Code section. See my notes in the Cleanup step from my earlier post.

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Awesome @sburke781! I will see if I can switch over to your drivers, but also let me know if you need any help.

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Does anyone know why? I received a lot of help from mircolino, and would have loved to have let him know of the status.

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He didn't go into all the details (from memory), only that he was not enjoying development on the HE platform as much as he used to. He wasn't happy with the html sanitisation that was recently brought in, which tipped the scales for him.

He did make a post on the old EcoWitt topic / thread to explain this and to offer the code for anyone to take it on, but did not expect the thread would be removed when he asked for his account to be closed, I can only assume that is how the system works.

I agree, he's a good bloke, was always very open to requests and responsive to people's questions. He's also been happy to help me get this back up and running.

Simon

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Thanks @sburke781 for doing this :+1: :+1: :+1:. Is it only on HPM (which I still haven't made the transition to) or is the code available on github? I see he's also pulled his github account. (oops NVM found the fork on your github page)

Too bad mircolino has left - he was a super helpful guy with his drivers, I wish him well.

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Thanks.

Was literally just responding to a similar private question🙂. I'd suggest moving to HPM, but if you want, the two drivers are available here:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sburke781/ecowitt/main/ecowitt_gateway.groovy

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sburke781/ecowitt/main/ecowitt_sensor.groovy

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Prob should but I just prefer to update code manually. :smiley:

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Yes. That’s how Discourse works.

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That's too bad, it was full of useful info for his drivers.

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