What would even be a reason to get a smart weather station?
There are tons of cloud services to give you an idea about the current weather outside!
The Netatmo weather station for example looks super stylish! But 200 Euros for a weather station to measure temperature, humidity, pressure and others?
For this reason, I will show you 3 alternatives to the Netatmo weather station in which one of them we will dive a bit deeper in.
Shutter Automation
Well there is a good reason, I needed a smart weather station: our KNX system with its connected shutters! To be more precise, I needed the light intensity for the automatic sun protection feature by the MDT shutter actuator. There are also stylish weather station for KNX. But with two major cons:
- Price
- Cabling
I didn’t want to have it straight screwed on the house, where it would be too visible, but rather have it somewhere in the back garden. In addition to this, it needs to be high enough when screwed on to the house, to not to be shaded. But than again, close to the roof might be an issue with the upcoming solar panel installation as this could have an impact on the temperature measurements.
Pulling a cable trough the garden? The WAF (wife acceptance factor) was equal zero to do so.
Netatmo weather station looks nice and you don’t need to pull cables trough your garden. But still there is the high price of the device and the connection to the cloud.
Heat alerts
During summer, we open the windows during night when it is cooling down outside. The next day, especially when someone stays home, it is important to close them again if it becomes too hot. By setting up an announcement trough our ChromeCast speakers, we know that a window was left open and it should be closed. Just important to exclude the terrace doors from this when using sensors monitoring the lock state of the windows and doors, else you will receive notifications all the time, even while you might have this door shut, but not locked.
Sprinkler
You could use the information from the rain sensor in order to know if your plants which have no moisture sensor needs water since it was hot a few days and their had been no rain.
Wind Alarm
You have a parasol or an awning open outside? Set up an alert if the wind becomes to strong to notify you or if they are electrical ones, close them automatically until the wind calms down again.
Also depending on the window shutters you use, it is important to open them in order to avoid damage. This is especially the case when using so called venetian blinds
Alternatives
So I needed to look for alternatives, taking the Netatmo weather station as a reference. And there are some really nice projects which I found:
Open Green Energy
Open Green Energy is based on a ESP32 chipset, combining different sensors and connectors to attach them to the board. Since it is an ESP chip, you should be able to install ESPHome and receive the data.
LineaMeteoStazione
The weather station from mischianti.org is similar to the one from Open Green Energy. But it shows an ESPboard prepared for a solar powered solution out of the box.
But I had no time since summer was coming up and I did not wanted to wait until the pieces arrive, which I could barely find at that time. I also wanted something to not look too much DYI but still almost as nice as the Netatmo Weather Station.
7-in-1 Solution
What I found was a 7-in-1 weather station from a company called Bresser (Amazon). The main features advertised of this one had been:
- temperature
- humidity
- pressure
- light intensity
- UV
- wind speed
- rain
But, pressure doesn’t seem to be available on the RF protocol. I rather guess this is part of the indoor station you can get with their outdoor station.
Also they offer a WiFi version, but again, I guess the WiFi is part of the indoor station. If you want to dig into that one, I suggest to have a look into this Github Issue
In my opinion a fair competitor against the Netatmo Weather Station. Not 100% as nice, but close and doesn’t look too much DIY.
Most importantly is the fact that this weather station is equipped with little solar panel. This is now running since two years in my back yard without any issue, without any charging or battery replacement.
This means that you don’t need power where you install it, neither is a wired data connection needed and no hassle of changing the batteries every few months. A feature the Netatmo weather station does not seem to provide.
Connect to HomeAssistant
Why get the data into HomeAssistant?
When using HomeAssistant, a main reason is to have all data locally. Which means that even with an internet breakdown, the sensors should still be available.
In my opinion this is a big downside when it comes to the Netatmo weather station, of which the IoT class is Cloud Polling. Which means that your weather stations sends the data first to the cloud, and HomeAssistant needs to pull it again from the cloud. No internet means also no data anymore in that case. This would break all your automations.
Main reason for me to connect the weather station to HomeAssistant is the KNX Expose feature. This allows you to send the data from the weather station, to your KNX bus via KNXIP. An important prerequisite for this is a KNX router in your KNX setup and the whole thing connected to Home Assistant.
Ok great! We got our weather station, we have installed it in our back yard, looks nice (almost as nice as the Netatmo Weather Station) and cheaper than the Netatmo weather station. But since there is no Wifi, Zigbee, Z-Wave or Thread:
How to get the data into Home Assistant?
LILYGO TTGO Lora 868Mhz
I have decided to go ahead with the Lilygo TTGO Lora board. Important specification of the board is the support of 868Mhz for the RF communication. The board exists in different versions with different frequencies. So watch out when you order yours!
This board is used to receive the RF packets coming from the weather station and decode those and forward them to HomeAssistant via Wifi.
Another important spec is also the support of FSK modulation, since this is needed to decode the RF packets, which are send under FSK modulation.
OpenMQTTGateway
The software I use to receive, decode and forward the data is OpenMQTTGateway.
Here a list of supported boards:
https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/prerequisites/board.html
With the release of 1.7.0 of OpenMQTTGateway, the FSK modulation (beta) works out of the box! No need anymore to build the environment by yourself! This facilitates the setup process a lot!
Installation
For the installation of OpenMQTTGateway, the easiest way is trough the web browser (not all browsers are supported, but Google Chrome is one of them) using:
https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/upload/web-install.html
All you have to do, is selecting the right firmware (in this case lilygo-rtl_433-fsk).
Configuration
Once the upload is done, follow the next steps to setup the wifi of the board
https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/upload/portal.html#configuration-portal
RF Connection
When everything is connected, the last thing to be configured is the RF reception. Log into the board by typing the ip in your browser. Select Configuration –> Configure RF and set the right frequency (868,300 for the Bresser Weather Station).
MQTT Connection
Conclusion
By installing OpenMQTTGateway, it is possible to get the weather data straight from the weather station from your garden into your SmartHome. No cloud pulling, not relying on someone else computer like with the Netatmo Weather Station. In my opinion, this local solution, gives your more information and this for a much cheaper price. For those interested in Radio Frequency, can even dig further in this topic and play around with RTL SDR.
Below an overview of the sensors you will receive in Home Assistant, once they have been received, decoded and forwarded (except for the counters, they have been set up manually in Home Assistant).
For those, who do not have a KNX system offering this solution but have connected smart shutters might be interested in taking a look into the Blueprint Cover Control Automation (CCA) from hvorragend
https://github.com/hvorragend/ha-blueprints/tree/main/blueprints/automation
My favourite automation I have set up so far is the sun protection. It really helps to keep your home cool during summer months and avoiding to be exposed to active cooling.
If you want to read more about, why I think SmartHome is becoming more important, feel free to have a look into my SmartHome Overview or my Blog Posts.