Personal Weather Station to Integrate with SmartThings?

[JDRoberts]

Continuing the discussion from Change mode when it's raining:

@Keo

@JDRoberts

If it’s detectable rain, as others have said, any moisture detector can be the trigger–just understand that you’d get the same mode change for dew as well. So think carefully about how you want to use it.

As I think more about this, I think getting a personal weather station connected to smartThings may be the best solution. I may also benefit from knowing wind Speed and direction as well. My wife likes to put inflatables outside for the holidays and we get some pretty strong winds from time to time. Last year I tried to use IFTTT to turn off the inflatables if the wind was too strong. I found that the weather channel for IFTTT didn’t trigger accurately enough when our inflatable blew out of the ground.

Do you have any experience with connecting a weather station to smartThings? I know less about weather stations than I do about being a meteorologist.

I know people like the Netatmo, but I believe the ST integration is currently unreliable. I’m sure more people will comment on other brands as well.

[sidjohn1]

All depends on what you are looking for in a PWS. If micro weather is your top priority Netatmo is the way to go. If you just want weather in the smartthings app the default weather station device works well. If you want something more visual Weather Panel is good too.

[Keo (Joe)]

@sidjohn1

If micro weather is your top priority Netatmo is the way to go.

Netatmo weather station doesn’t give you wind speed or direction does it? I am really interested in micro weather. My area often has higher winds and no rain when rain and no wind is forecasted for my city. I want to be able to turn off outside devices when the wind speed gets above a threshold and change mode only when we have rain around our house.

[sidjohn1]

Both the default weather station device and weather panel pull their data from wunderground. You can check wunderground to see how close the nearest weather station is to you. In my case its 1/2 mile away so i do get micro weather w/o netatmo. This is not the case for most though. You might want to check out the wind gauge add on for netatmo, I’m not sure if its on sale yet but looks to provide the info you are looking for with the rain gauge. Right now the ST integration is not solid, but i know it is being worked on by both the community and ST. Worst case scenario you can make it work through IFTTT.

[Keo (Joe)]

@sidjohn1

You might want to check out the wind gauge add on for netatmo, I’m not sure if its on sale yet but looks to provide the info you are looking for with the rain gauge.

Awesome! I didn’t know that was coming out. Thanks!

[Keo (Joe)]

@sidjohn1

You can check wunderground to see how close the nearest weather station is to you

Can you tell smartThings to collect the data from a specific weather station?

[sidjohn1]

I’ve heard there is a way but IDK how to. From what i have seen, it picks the closest one to you off your GPS coords from your hub. I used the weather tile device data and the wunderground nearest stations to confirm where the weather data was coming from.

[storageanarchy (Barry)]

To get weather data from a specific WeatherUnderground station, simply enter “pws:STATIONID” (without the quotes) instead of your zip-code in the weather app (such as the SmartWeather tile) - you can also use that string in the calls to the ST weather API.

So, for the NetAtmos approach:

1. Buy & install NetAtmos
2. Register a new weather station with Weather Underground (it’s free) and get your assigned station ID
3. Find an app to upload your NetAmost data to Wunderground (not free)
4. Use the pws:stationID instead of zip code for your weather apps

Enjoy!

[Dianoga (Brian Steere)]

It’s worth noting that all Netatmo weather stations report to Weather Underground.

[storageanarchy (Barry)]

So they say, but you can’t select NetAtmos weather stations unless they are registered as a Personal Weather Station. Thus, I think “all report to Wunderground” may be true, but I don’t think Wunderground makes any of the NetAtmos data available to the general public.

Of course, I could be wrong…but my brother had to register his as a PWS before he could see it (or get Wunderground weather forecasts for his location).

[jody.albritton (Jody)]

@Dianoga

It’s worth noting that all Netatmo weather stations report to Weather Underground.

They all report back to netatmo which has its own weather map. You can turn this off in the settings. In order to get them reporting to WUG you need to sign up with Meteoware.

MeteoWare Plus for Netatmo Weather Stations

[storageanarchy (Barry)]

Indeed, despite this blog post from Weather Underground, it seems that they never completed ingesting all the NetAtmo devices. So, many are still going the Meteoware route.

But, if you CAN find your NetAtmo on the Wunderground map, you can send an email to claim it. Presumably that will let you access it directly from ST as with other PWSs.