Wind Speed

I would like to have a windspeed sensor on my greenhouse so it will close the windows if the wind gets up to a certain speed so they will not get damaged. I have it working now with the national weather service info but I need to use local data because I have notice a huge difference between wind speed here and the reporting app. I don't want to spend a fortune to get this technology. Is there anything that has been integrated into hubitat yet?

Have you considered:

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Have you considered something like this:

It has no moving parts, like the Weatherflow Tempest linked to by @nh.schottfam. But it has an advantage in that integrates locally with Hubitat using an integration maintained by @sburke781, so there's no cloud dependence.

There's also a separate integration written by @snell

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Or Ecowitt. @sburke781 has done a great job of porting drivers for ecowitt into hubitat, and very responsive to problems or special requests.

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I was considering this:

Do you need a ecowitt hub or will it connect directly to hubitat? Are there instructions and Drivers for it? Thank you guys so much for your input!

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Need this with it

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That hub makes it REALLY easy to go down a rabbit hole. Now I have sensors in three potted plants, temp/humidity sensors in 2 rooms soon to be 5, outdoor temp/ humidity, lightning, soil temp, and i'm planning to replace my actual weather station. All working with hubitat.

There are so many sensor options with ecowit, its insane!

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You will need the GW1100 linked by @kahn-hubitat. And then use @sburke781's ecowitt integration that I linked to in my earlier post.

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Yup. I initially got the hub just for soil moisture sensors, because I already have a full-featured weather station (WeatherFlow Tempest). But I've added loads of additional sensors - mostly temp/humidity because they even work well from inside a safe or the freezer.

@sburke781 (and @kahn-hubitat helps him quite a bit) has some very good community drivers and is really responsive and helpful. He has some basic instructions and they are pretty easy to follow and execute. It only took me a few minutes to set it up, and adding new devices is pretty simple.

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Amusingly, I have made both WeatherFlow Tempest AND Ambient/Ecowitt weather drivers... so hopefully you can find whatever hardware you need at a reasonable price. There is probably something out there to work with it regardless.

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I updated the Topic title for the EcoWitt drivers to include the fact it includes Wittboy as well... funny it does not update the links in the posts above... Maybe that's an overnight thing...

Anyway, like @snell said, there's plenty of options around between EcoWitt, Wittboy, Tempest and others that should give you a local solution, probably depends more on the other elements of the different platforms as to what is better value or will provide more options to expand in the future. That said, for my limited knowledge if things outside the Ecowitt Gateways, I expect they are mostly the same (more than happy to be corrected...). Do you have any plans or interest in expanding beyond the wind sensor into other weather-related metrics? Perhaps a rain gauge?

A couple of things that may be worth considering when looking at the various options could be:

  • Mounting options, both in terms of what hardware may be provided with the sensor / station, but also how you will then use that (or some other hardware) to mount the sensor. Case in point, my PWS is mounted on a powder-coated fence post with a now rusted Vacuum cleaner pipe with some fading flexible straps.... :slight_smile:
  • Do you want to look at the data? If so, how / where? Personally I am happy to just open up the EcoWitt cloud-hosted dashboard to look at current / recent conditions. Some like a pre-canned tablet which you can buy in place of the match-box-sized gateway, some find this useful when other family members want to look at the data, i.e. no need to setup a dashboard yourself. Others are happy to serve up the data in a dashboard in HE. Some don't care, and are happy to setup automations and leave them to run.

I've probably over-complicated the decision now.... or at least I would if I continued :slight_smile:

As you can see, plenty of people here happy to help with well used solutions.

Simon

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A quick +1 for the Ecowitt devices and the driver from @sburke781 . Here's my story.

I have had a Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station, which is incredibly expensive, for years. Frankly, I looked at most other weather devices as "toys". But I wanted to monitor approximate wind speed at another property we own but have not yet built on, so I thought I'd try an inexpensive Ecowitt there, connected to a hotspot, battery, and solar power. So, I ordered one and had it sitting here but not yet installed. Well, the anemometer on my Davis, mounted way up above a second story eave, went kaput, with winter just around the corner here. I had a very agile and much younger friend here right then, doing some work on the place with a long ladder, so I asked him to install the Ecowitt, just to get me through until spring. I may never go back!

It has only been a week, but so far the Ecowitt devices appear to be as accurate as my Davis. And unlike the Davis, I can easily get LOCAL data into Hubitat at one-minute intervals, thanks to @sburke781 driver. I even like the Ecowitt app!

If you combine the above-mentioned driver with the excellent Weather Underground driver from @dJOS , which has forecast data, you end up with a very useful weather monitoring system that can be viewed as a customized dashboard while also enabling variables that can be used for automation.

If I can repair my Davis anemometer, which did last for about 15 years, I may put it back on service as well, but a replacement costs 7x-10x what the Ecowitt devices cost, and that's a huge delta. I'm not monitoring weather at the south pole, so I don't need something built for that. The Ecowitt stuff therefore looks just fine!

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Did I mention the fee....? :wink: Thanks @Madcodger

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Nice! I’m tempted to get one to measure UV radiation* which if the one thing my Netatmo doesn’t measure.

Amusingly, I rediscovered that my first ever weather station (present from the wife a long long time ago), is an Ecowitt and it’s still going strong.

It’s just a basic unit with a colour indoor display and simple outdoor temp / humidity / pressure module, but it’s been rock solid for over a decade now.

*handy data for a nerd who owns a solar system.

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I've been watching the solar radiation numbers on the Ecowitt's wind sensor (built-in UV sensor) with much interest over the past week, Derek @dJOS . I built a solar-powered, off-grid exercise studio and nearby wood-fired sauna here over the past few months, as an experiment and fun project (sort of a practice round for the next residence, which will be off-grid). I used Victron equipment (the Davis of solar?), NewPowa cells (necessary to fit the small roof area available), and an AmpereTime LiFePo4 battery. The latter two brands are considered a bit less expensive, sort of like the Ecowitt compared to a Davis, but so far it's all working beautifully together. And that little UV sensor seems very accurate!

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Just to throw my two cents in, I recently picked up this Ambient PWS and have found it works quite well with the Ambient/Ecowitt driver. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N5TEHLI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I was concerned with its range relative to my hub since any locations near the house have enough tree coverage that would make the rain gauge unreliable at best, but it seems to retain a strong connection from everywhere on my property. I've only got it tied to a handful of automations so far, but the included display (which runs on a radio signal separate from the wifi on the off chance your router goes down) has also proven useful to keep by the door so I can check things as I'm about to take the dog out for a walk.

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Nice, we have a 5.4kW Solar system (LG Panels w/ 5kW Fronius Inverter) + Tesla Powerwall 2 on our house. We've had the Solar system for about 4 years (It paid for itself about 6 months ago) and added the PW2 in March.

When the weather is good we use hardly any grid power at all.

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That's fantastic! Mine is just a little 1.2kw system with a 2 KVA Victron MultiPlus, designed to power the studio (just 10' x 20') and 8' x 16' wood-fired sauna (half hot room, half cooling off room). People laugh when they see the number of outlets in the exercise studio, as I have one every 32" (I hate long cords). But it actually uses very little electricity, as the heat is propane and the lighting is LED. The sauna uses even less (usually just LED lighting). I went with 2 KVA so that we could run a coffee maker, though, as I enjoy that after a sauna. The solar was relatively easy to do. The hard part has been putting up all the cedar planking inside. Feels like miles it!

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Sounds like you have it perfectly sized for your studio. :sunglasses:

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