Acurite Atlas (status?)

[kkru...@gmail.com]

Quick background: I've been running weewx for ~4 years with an AcuRite 01036. This has been working great in spite of the 'USB mode' issue I have to deal with on power outage, equipment move, etc. (ie, receiver/display must be reset to mode 3 or 4 + sometimes different USB ports must be used/reseated). My setup involves sending data to nearly a dozen weather sites + an InfluxDB / Grafana. I have a bit of home automation and other projects based on this. 

We recently came upon a 2nd house in an interesting location (very wet and woodsy)I'm looking to setup a weather station and some indoor monitors. I gave a quick peek at the weewx page and saw the Acurite Atlas was supported so I ordered it. I was disappointed to find there's no straightforward means of getting this to work with weewx. I've exhausted possibilities with interceptor (https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-interceptor) because 1) traffic sniffs show Acurite Access has hardcoded DNS and 2) traffic to myacurite.com is encrypted (see screenshots). I'm considering the other option with SDR but thinking it may be best to just try a different weather station. How much will it cost for me to ship this huge box back to Acurite? 

Can anyone tell me if they have one or the other functioning with their Atlas? 

https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-mini.html

https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-mini-2.html

I've only done cursory check on whether those are supported. I've never dealt with SDR before. 

And lastly, does anyone have a weewx hassle free weather station to recommend? I'd rather not have a display, not too picky on how many metrics offered, and under $250US. 

[Stephen Hocking]

Hi,

I have a working setup with an Atlas using SDR, and some user code to scrape the pressure off the Atlas. It was a bit of an adventure (I'm about to get the lightning strike stuff working when I have a bit of spare time), but it is doable. The nooelect stuff should be fine.

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[vince]

You can get into ecowitt 'very' inexpensively especially if you don't need a display.  Gary's weewx driver is very solid.

Disclaimer - the gateway module requires internet connectivity or it'll reboot very often due to its watchdog timers.  If that's ok for your site, you might want to give them a look.

Poke around https://www.amazon.com/ecowitt/s?k=ecowitt for possibilities.   You can do it ala-carte piece by piece or they have more integrated solutions with/without a console.

[kkru...@gmail.com]

Thanks so much for the responses so far. Stephen... I think I've seen some of your posts re: Atlas. I may just give this another chance with the SDR. Can you (or anyone) tell me if one or both of these works out of the box:

https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-mini.html

https://www.nooelec.com/store/sdr/sdr-receivers/nesdr-mini-2.html

And thanks Vince for informing me about the Ecowitt products. I haven't looked at those until now. Very interesting! 

[storm...@gmail.com]

In my opinion, I would look at something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/NooElec-NESDR-Smart-Bundle-R820T2-Based/dp/B01GDN1T4S/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=rtl-sdr&qid=1637035059&sr=8-4

The V3/V4 versions are much more stable then the originals.

[kkru...@gmail.com]

By "stable" do you mean signal strength / quality / SNR, lapses in connection, availability to the OS, or something else? 

I'm not too concerned about interference as the location for this is quite rural, in the woods. 

Unfortunately, I ordered the NESDR Mini 2 before reading your comment. Yet I'm wondering if it it'll be "good enough" for what I'm trying to accomplish. 

[storm...@gmail.com]

By "stable" I mean the oscillator frequency does not drift over time.  That will be fine for what you want to do.

[tarob...@gmail.com]

I've been running an Acurite Atlas and Acurite 5n1 for over a year using raspberry Pi 3B and weewx with the SDR driver. The guide I followed is here (https://github.com/bdwilson/acurite). Adding the pressure was the hardest but got it working with BME280 temp/pressure/humidity sensor and this guide (https://github.com/bdwilson/acurite/blob/master/Pressure.md). Adding the lightning data wasn't difficult and I can post my config if needed. I can post you the links of the USB antenna used and the BME sensor. It might take a bit of effort to setup up, but in the long run IMO this is a great setup as it allows you to add just about any RTL sensors from many brands to the setup. 

BME Sensor: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LETIESU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

RTL-SDR Antenna: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009U7WZCA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1