I installed the Ambient Weather WS1401IP about a month ago. Overall I’m pleased. Although, as reported above, the build quality is not great for $150 US. I expect it will last a couple or three years, then we’ll see what kind of shape it’s in.
I’m using the Ambient Weather binding mentioned here, although I’ve made a couple local changes to the binding (added a channel to tell it to reboot itself (more on that in a minute), fixed the ability to save config changes, added channel for last report time).
I’m a bit disappointed in the IP Observer (gateway) module. It flakes out after a while of scraping the HTML page. Response times jump from about 600 ms to 8000+ ms, then it eventually stops responding. It’s a known problem, and the solution is to switch to the Ambient Weather API. I’ve considered writing a binding for that, but my solution now is to have the binding reboot the device when the binding sees a response time greater than 8000 ms (hence the reason why I added the reboot channel), and to cycle the power every night at 00:15.
Any chance you can share these changes with me? I have also made some changes and created a channel that displays the milliseconds it took to scrape the livedata.htm with the idea to add another channel to do a reboot with. But if you have already made the changes it will save me some time working out how to do the reboot. Also interested in the fix for config changes. Just PM the changes if that is the easiest way or I can send an email addy.
I am looking for something similar to Netatmo, but more reliable. Their API seems to be flaky and a lot of people have problems with the hardware.
I am running right now with their demo station (asked them for invitation), but the OH binding only read data once from there. It still works in the Android app and on the web site. Checked the config and the binding says “online” but does not work. Strange.
I’d like to have inside and outside temp and humidity and also inside CO2 (that is the tricky one because almost no station offers that). Don’t need wind etc. Cloud is nice to have, but not really needed when I have an OH binding.
When using openhab it should open up more possible units as you don’t need co2 in the weather station as you could use a zwave co2 sensor and a more basic weather station for the rest.
Not Many stations can connect direct to openhab and be cloudless, this one can do that plus still upload to weather underground which there is also a binding for.
Many brands sell that weather station Re badged so just do a search in your local country and if it looks the same it will be. They make versions with better screens but you will need that box which can be purchased separately to get the connection to openhab without a cloud.
Just a heads up that weather underground are making big changes to their api in the next month and this will probably break the binding and require changes to be made, they have not released full plans and details yet. The binding for the ip observer unit should keep working through the WU changes and it is found here…
I see that this station can upload its data to WeatherUnderground. That being the case, my WeatherComapny binding will pull the PWS data from WeatherUnderground. As an added bonus, you get a 5 day weather forecast from the Weather Company. It’s a bit of a roundabout way to get the data, as you’ll be pulling the data from the Internet rather than directly from the weather station…
@mhilbush, Thanks that looks promising, i will dig into that binding. @andres_meyer : Actually, the configuration software allows to send the Data to a Server which you can specifiy. Unfortunatly i am not smart enoough to get that done. So i will try Marks Binding.
as described above, if your station is compatible with the Observer IP, you can buy an Obesrver IP and use @matt1’s binding
you can of course get an app and api key from your Ambient Weather dashboard, then use the ambientweather binding
if you upload your data to Weather Underground, you can pull the observations using the weathercompany binding. This binding also give you access to the The Weather Company’s 5-day weather forecast.
To the best of my knowledge they don’t expire. However, they can be revoked due to abuse. I suppose they also can be revoked if you stop uploading to Weather Underground. But I don’t know if they actually enforce that.
