Basic weather station (temp/humidity) with a large display

[Dan Bunyard]

I have what seems to be a dumb question but I keep coming up empty. I want a screen with a USB interface for WeeWX that simply needs indoor/outdoor temp and humidity. I don't need a full-blown weather station with all the bells and whistles, just temperature and humidity. Does anyone have a good suggestion? TIA!

[tarob...@gmail.com]

If all you want is temperature/humidity then just get an outdoor temp/humidity sensor that is wireless (I have four acurite temp/humidity sensors) and use the SDR driver to capture the data. You'll also need to get an antenna to capture that data. Here are some good instructions (https://github.com/bdwilson/acurite) on everything needed.

[Xant]

Hardware/OS not specified. But if RPi, have a look at Pat O'Brien kiosk project:

https://obrienlabs.net/setup-raspberry-pi-kiosk-chromium/

On Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 5:13:40 PM UTC-5 danod...@gmail.com wrote:

[Dan Bunyard]

I could really do whatever for hardware - consider this a blank slate. The only real boxes I need to tick are outside temp/humidity and a large screen the wife can view from ~20ft away. However, if rolling something myself is going to be just as expensive as getting another AcuRite 02064 then I'll just do that and be done with it.

[vince]

On Monday, November 2, 2020 at 3:40:25 PM UTC-8, Dan Bunyard wrote:

I could really do whatever for hardware - consider this a blank slate. The only real boxes I need to tick are outside temp/humidity and a large screen the wife can view from ~20ft away. However, if rolling something myself is going to be just as expensive as getting another AcuRite 02064 then I'll just do that and be done with it.

 

The display she can read from 20' is the hard and expensive part.   For that I'd suggest node-red or HomeAssistant which let you build just about any display look'n'feel you can dream up.  But the hardware is the costly part....

If you have a raspi handy, you could build something like this for about 90 bucks

* screen = https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Official-Touch-Screen/dp/B073S3LQ6Q

* case = https://www.amazon.com/SmartiPi-Touch-Official-Raspberry-Touchscreen/dp/B07WXK38YM

You still need the sensors part, likely wireless and battery powered since they're outdoors someplace.

There's a lot of talk about EcoWitt these days and an evolving weewx driver for that gear.  Their sensors are super-inexpensive, about $12 for the temperature/humidity one, and their wifi gateway is $35.    Hook weewx reading that stuff up and publishing to MQTT via the MQTT extension, and you could definitely have something that a roll-your-own dashboard like node-red or HomeAssistant or even grafana could display on the pi.

So that gets you to $90 plus pi for the inside, and $50 or so for the outside, plus the time-value of your labor to connect them up software-wise.   If you don't have a pi, add $40 os so.    So your total is in the $140-175 ballpark to do a whatever-you-want display that would look very nice.

[Dan Bunyard]

Yeah that's what I keep seeing. I already have HomeAssistant and Node-RED up and running but it's a virtual machine in my basement. I keep coming back to the screen being the costly bit which is why I may just get another Acurite and call it a day. It's been serving me well for ~4 years now but it finally kicked the bucket. I've been piping the data into Home Assistant with WeeWX for a while (probably 2 years).

I do like the idea of the EcoWitt, that sounds like a cost-effective option. Maybe I'll see if I have an extra Android tablet lying around or pick up an Amazon fire one and root it. I can probably 3d print a small holder for it so that I can sit it in the same place I have the Acurite screen now. Thanks for all the ideas, definitely have the gears turning!

[John Kline]

Android tablets can be picked up for < $100 (https://tabletunderbudget.com/best-tablets-under-100-dollars/).  With such a tablet running Chrome continuously, and any of a number of WeeWX skins that you could use/customize/modify, you could get what you want.

On Nov 3, 2020, at 8:50 AM, Dan Bunyard <danod...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[vince]

On Tuesday, November 3, 2020 at 8:50:00 AM UTC-8, Dan Bunyard wrote:

Maybe I'll see if I have an extra Android tablet lying around or pick up an Amazon fire one and root it.

You want to be really careful with which tablets you use and how old they are.  Reportedly a 'current' Kindle Fire works great and can be easily set to work as a kiosk, but my experience is not necesarily for all uses given the oddities of the Kindle browser.

My one-gen-older 8" Fire wasn't good enough for me here but that might be nuances of the Home Assistant stuff I display here. My 2015 Samsung Tab2 tablet also could 'not' display everything I cooked up with node-red and HomeAssistant as its os isn't updated any more.

A official pi display+case for $90 if you have the pi already is a guaranteed win long-term.  Sometimes you just have to invest a few more bucks to future-proof yourself.  But 'lots' of people go the tablet route...

[Dan Bunyard]

Good looking out, thanks. I think I have a Galaxy Tab A somewhere around here. I may give that a shot first then move to the pi if it doesn't work out. If I don't already have something I'll go the pi route.

Do you have specific links to the EcoWitt stuff you mentioned? Can it be expanded if I wanted to (thinking maybe lightning detection)?

Thanks!

[James Batchelor]

What about an arduino or NodeMCU with a large LED board?  just drawing the Temp in big digits.

I just set up a NodeMCU + little OLED to read a WeeWX json file for current data..

of course a large LED board might be the same $ as a tablet..

james

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[Dan Bunyard]

That's a good thought, I'll have to see how cheaply I can get a display. I think I even have one or two NodeMCUs laying around somewhere.

[James Batchelor]

something like :

https://maker.pro/esp8266/tutorial/how-to-build-an-led-matrix-display-with-a-nodemcu-esp8266

 maybe not big enough?
james

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[Dan Bunyard]

That probably would get it I think. 3d print a case for it all and ship it. Thanks so much for the suggestion!