Weather Station Advice

My nearest weather station listed in 24 miles away. Should I be concerned about accuracy? There are a few closer if show personal weather stations - but the links don’t work.
If I want to use my own PWS - any recommendations on a good one that will work fine with the Rachio?

Thanks!
Baze

@cboese - the decision on a PWS probably revolves around budget and site specifics (split sensors vs. all in one). The trick on getting a PWS to work with Rachio is to have the weather data transmitted to CWOP, PWSweather or Hamweather as those are picked up by Aeris, Rachio’s weather data provider. There are small devices that will do that if the PWS you pick doesn’t support those out of the box. If the device transmits to WeatherUnderground @Gene has a nice site at wufyi.com that pumps specific site data over. Start at 128 -> Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations

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Thanks for the reply. That helps

1 other question. How does the Rachio do the smart watering (Forecast) when using a PWS?

@cboese - this is my guess (I don’t work for Rachio and I haven’t written a line of code for them) and I hope I answered your question correctly. Aeris picks up the data points from the PWS (via PWSWeather) and interpolates that with other data points to create a forecast based on that location. Therefore, the first rule of computing still applies - GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) - meaning if there are bad data points fed into the system there will be a bad forecast spit out of the system. Rachio then uses that localized forecast to determine evapotranspiration and expected precipitation. Rachio also checks in with the specified PWS station about an hour before watering time to see if it has been raining and if it should skip the scheduled watering.

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@DLane

First wiring and now weather. I honestly couldn’t have explained it any better.

@cboese

Before buying a PWS I would start with using one in the app. If you tell us which one you pick we can look it up and determine some level of accuracy.

:cheers:

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@franz - just logical. I might even have a few more tricks up my sleeves :wink:

And thanks for the compliment.

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OK, so how did I tell you what station it is? Here is what comes up when I click link on the chose weather station: http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/search?site=KMPR

@cboese

In your case I’d pick the station MID_UP324. It looks like the first two stations do not have precipitation data (No recorded precip data).

:cheers:

Great. Thanks. So just out of curiosity, is there a way to see what site (psweather, etc…) these choices are from?

We currently receive our weather from https://www.aerisweather.com.

If you see PWS_* stations in your list it is easier to view them since they are hosted on pwsweather.com

Stations with MID_* are typically CWOP stations and are sometimes harder to track down. Typically googling the station name (dropping the MID_) will be able to find it or entering the code here (dropping the MID_)

http://weather.gladstonefamily.net/

:cheers:

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I have a Vantage Vue in my back yard, and. I use a Raspberry Pi running Weewx to serve up my data to CWOP and Wunderground. Works well for me but there is some effort setting up the Pi and the Weewx Software.

Hey @AF1E-

I know you are all set up with Rasberry Pi, but @Gene set up this cool (and fairly simple) solution, if you are interested :slight_smile:

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I’m using a Davis Vantage Pro 2 (not cheap) and uploading data via a RaspberryPi and WeeWx (cheap) to CWOP (like @AF1E). Until this year I had been running WeatherLink to upload to a personal webpage from a PC, but the RaspberryPi is very nice for a low cost and low power always-on solution. I have no Linux and painfully minimal Python background but found WeeWx simple to install and get running.

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I’m new here, but I’m wondering - if I intend to use @Gene 's solution, and end up wanting to get my own PWS, do I pretty much just need one that uploads data to WU?

I’m not even sure I’m going to get my own anyway because I just used @Gene 's solution on a golf course’s PWS nearby and will see how that goes. Thank you, @Gene.

@geo - the short answer is yes (WU and @Gene 's wufyi.com). If the PWS uploads to PWSWeather, CWOP or Hamweather then the data will get directly picked up by Rachio’s weather provider. Also, we can see if V3 of Rachio’s application expands their weather provider choices.

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