Tempest LAN ethernet connection

[Mark Burfeind]

recently my approximately 10-year-old Vantage Vue ISS gave up the dreaded Super Cap ghost and in searching for a more modern weather station I like the WeatherFlow Tempest for numerous reasons including solar battery charging and various sensors that others charge additional for but unfortunately as sold one has to have WiFi to make a network connection to it. My home LAN is completely hardwired from a DYI router to provided DHCP to a switch allowing hardwired connections to all devices throughout the house. I could put a WiFI access point to connect the Tempest Hub to the network but if possible I would like to avoid any use of WiFi.

I've been reading about the meteoStick as a way to read the RF data stream from the station sensor. 

Considering using a Raspberry Pi 4 to connect the meteoStick and WeeWx eliminating the need to use the WeatherFlow WiFi/Bluetooth Hub

If this is a possibility also considering using either a thermometer/hygrometer/barometric hat on the Pi itself or a different indoor sensor array connected to possibly a Pi Zero also hard wired to the LAN

Thinking is that the indoor sensor should be located away from the RF receiving PI that is also running WeeWx due to abnormal heat readings from the Pi4

WIll appreciate any comments relating to indoor sensor arrays and the ability to keep everything hardwired to my LAN!!

[vince]

I'm unaware that the WeatherFlow gear can be run at all without a Hub.   The Hub emits the UDP broadcast to your 2.4 GHz wifi network which other gear can read.  You also need the Hub connected out to to Internet so it can receive sensor tunings from the WF servers.    Even if you 'could' sniff the RF from the sensor suite you wouldn't have any tunings of those readings toward anything approaching reality, so you'd be sniffing garbage.

Doing a roll your own indoor sensor setup is a well-known thing, but you'd want something more than a PiZero since that doesn't have wired ethernet.  Yes you need to keep the sensors away from any heat sources including the pi themselves.  I would not suggest a HAT for that, you want something more like a breadboard some distance from the pi.  Putting an environmental HAT on the pi pretty much guarantees incorrect data.

You can buy a whole replacement ISS suite for your Vue for half the price of a WF Tempest setup.  Check out scientificsystems.com and scaledinstruments.com for a couple of the generally most inexpensive Davis gear sellers.  I've had great luck with both sellers.