The device looks nice. Their kickstarter and indiegogo campaings both look pretty slick. But they also appear to be a real weather data company that's been around for like 20 years?
I actually have more of a general question about personal weather stations that I probably could've asked in the previous thread .
I live in NYC, there aren't any tall buildings near me, but to put a weather station outdoors, it would still be relatively close to the side of my building, which is four stories tall.
Anyone know if I could still hope to get reliable measurements for things like wind and rain from a device like this if it's about 8-10 feet above street level, relatively unobstructed on all sides except the one that faces the wall of the building (say 5 feet away)?
Placing some equipment on the roof might be possible, though more complicated (building rules, liability insurance and whatnot ).
Might be better to ask them directly on their Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns... but I would have to imagine the better placement would be the roof. Even if it is relatively unobstructed, that obstruction can really botch up rain readings.
As for wind... is it even POSSIBLE to get accurate wind in a city? You may get a reading at the top of the building (but how valuable is that for your needs)... but at street level the wind will have been moving around buildings and other obstacles so much I would think it would not be very accurate for direction. Might be better for speed...
When I bought my Weatherflow (think of it as v1.0, and Tempest as v2.0) I tried it about 5ft from my house and had horrible results with rain accuracy and wind. Temperature, UV/illuminance, lightning, humidity were all fine.
I moved it ~30 ft from my house and get great results.
So based on my data point of 1, I would say that your mounting would have a low chance of especially accurate results.
But, the Tempest is a little more sophisticated than the weatherflow v1.0, so maybe it would fare better that close to a wall?
Thanks guys. My guess is it might work ok if wind or rain is coming in from the unobstructed directions the station would face. Presumably not so well when coming from the direction that the four-story building is facing. Maybe I need to check out the Ecowitt sensors also mentioned in that thread. Looks like different sensors can go in different locations, since minimizing a footprint on the roof would make the task more manageable.
What does everyone think of the company Weatherflow? I'm always a little suspicious of crowdfunding, but they claim to be about ready to ship in North America at least.
I've had awesome luck dealing with weatherflow as a company. I had issues where the sky unit was draining batteries like crazy (weeks instead of year+).
After 7 or 8 months I contacted support, they looked at the data on the device (the data does go to the cloud...), and based on what they saw they sent me a new one with the solar panel adder (it was originally an option on the v1.0 device, which I didn't purchase).
Fixed everything right up. I did have to send the old one back, which I was happy to do.
So my experience with them has been very positive.
Thanks for the new thread @snell. Looking forward to hearing what their reply is to the mail you sent them
@JasonJoel glad to hear that they are a reputable company with good service. I had a similar thing happen to the Bloomsky I owned before, got a replacement which was equally bad. Ended up throwing the thing in the garbage. Was going to go with the Acurite, but they are North America only (I live in Iceland).
They have already come back to me about it. I will take a look at the API tonight...
UPDATE:
They have both a UDP broadcast method for keeping the data in your network as well as an external API. I will see about making a driver that supports both methods but initial focus will be on the UDP.
I now have a WeatherFlow driver that works with their API (which covers the Tempest devices and their existing Air and Sky devices). It can be set to work with your station but they have not made an API Key available yet for users... You will need to get the dev API Key (try a google search, it is not really hidden).
They are supposed to start shipping out in 2 days and i know that several of us have one on order.. So I don't think you'll have very long before one of us have one
That works, if one of you would be willing to get a snapshot of the data. I will have to make a temporary driver that just captures and spits it all to the log. Then that willing guinea pig... I mean volunteer can send me the log and hopefully it will go smoothly from there.
At the very least people should be able to use the API... if they open it up in time.
I don't know if this is still true (the thread talking about it doesn't confirm it was actually reolved in the api), but at one point there was data you could only get from the udp broadcast, and was not available in the API calls.
@JasonJoel:
I would say that is true still. From what I can see so far, the UDP would provide you with more "this happened/is happening" type of things like rain and such that you cannot get from the API. There are specific things like "Rain Start Event" that have no equivalent in the API.
FYI, for anyone interested in getting a Tempest, there are 13 hours left to purchase one on the Weatherflow Indiegogo site, as of the time this is posting. You'll otherwise have to wait til they "go retail' in the fall of this year.
I was seriously tempted... (no pun intended) but I already have 2 different weather stations outside so I thought a third might be pushing it. But, still happy to help people out, so as soon as someone has one, let me know and we can see about getting the UPD brought in. Or when WeatherFlow opens the API for general use.
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can send me the log and hopefully it will go smoothly from there.
