WeatherLink by Davis Instruments

[aolson]

Hi All. Just a quick product suggestion. I have a home weather station, (WeatherLink by Davis Instruments). The outside unit connects wirelessly to the indoor unit, the indoor unit is connected to my home wifi. I can use an app on my phone and see current weather at my place…
Temperature, Wind, Humidity, Rain, & Barometric pressure…

Super cool if sprinkler system could integrate actual conditions into the “Plan”.
a) If predicts rain - delay, if actually rains - skip
b) Higher than forecast temperature - add more time, Lower temperature - decrease time…
c) If wind is blowing higher than X miles/hour - go into “pause” mode.
d) Humidity & barometric pressure could be used to fine tune model???

Thanks for the time. Andy.

[franz]

@aolson Thanks for the suggestions!

We currently do support integration with personal weather stations.

Personal Weather Stations & Rachio

In our next release (2.0, late April/early May release) we will allow you to find these on a map and select a preferred station that we use. Our current release, 1.8, will pick the closest PWS to your device.

a. ) We already support this (weather intelligence)
b.) We already support this (water budgeting) calculating evapotranspiration
c.) This is in our backlog
d.) We already support this (water budgeting) calculating evapotranspiration

So, I think we have most of the requested features. Our 2.0 release is going to have an even better way to run schedules. We are calling these flex schedules and they will only water when your zone needs it, tracking each individual zone like a checkbook with credits and debits.

Let us know if you have suggestions or feedback.

Thanks and have a great day!

[Dan8]

Don’t quite understand how it works. Need clarity here. I also have a Davis that continually broadcasts detailed weather info including actual calculated ET from the formula, not approximated or downloaded from websites as most units do today. This data is vastly different from what you get online and represents the real conditions at my location (house). I want to use this data rather than someone else’s.
So are we saying the Rachio unit can use the information from my Davis unit and how is that done.
Thanks

PS and anyone locally is also welcome to use the data as the Davis transmits everywhere.

[emil]

Hi @Dan8,

Good afternoon. Thanks for reaching out. Sorry for any confusion on the topic.

I also have a Davis that continually broadcasts detailed weather info including actual calculated ET from the formula, not approximated or downloaded from websites as most units do today. This data is vastly different from what you get online and represents the real conditions at my location (house). I want to use this data rather than someone else’s. So are we saying the Rachio unit can use the information from my Davis unit and how is that done.

Yep, Rachio can use this data. To do so, please follow the steps in this support article: http://support.rachio.com/article/351-setting-up-pws-to-pwsweather-weather-for-you

For your MeteoBridge, you’ll need to find the correct one for your PWS here: http://www.meteobridge.com/wiki/index.php/Stations

Here’s the original post on the topic as well, if it helps

Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations

@aaronrryan‌ Wow this is great, thank you so much. I’m sure this will help anyone looking to make this integration. Hopefully Aeris does not take too long to incorporate the PWSWeather network. If by the end of 2014 (8 weeks) they haven’t figured it out, we will more than likely move to a different weather service. Once again thanks for this and have a great weekend! Let us know if there are other features you would like or have any feedback. Take care. Franz

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions or hangups on setup.

Best, Emil

[kpare]

Hello,

Before I bought my Rachio, I have been publishing weather for 2 years using weatherlink. This weatherlink data logger cost $295. It can publish to WU, CWOP, and Globe. Why does Rachio use PWSweather as the sole source for data? Why can they not get data direct from the more popular Weatherunderground site? I really do not want to pay for weatherbridge and throw away my weatherlink data logger. This seems really silly.

[DLane]

@kpare - A) I believe Rachio does pull from CWOP so you can continue to use your weatherlink. The Aeris (http://support.rachio.com/article/250-weather-service-faq) network they use pulls from a couple of sources- NWS, CWOP, PWSWeather, etc.

B) See -> Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations for a quick and easy way to get data from WeatherUnderground to PWSWeather. Start around post 128 and look for @Gene.

C) Who knows what @Franz has up his sleeve for additional weather sources in V3.

[Gene]

Thank you @DLane for your endorsement

@kpare Pws question (link) topic has a more comprehensive set of instructions on how to use wufyi site.

Cheers,
Gene

[kpare]

Although I think Rachio should have a user friendly solution, Gene, this is a great solution. Thank you very much. Everything is working fine.

[mckynzee]

Supporting WUnderground is a fairly large investment, which is why it has been such a conversation. I agree the previous workaround was absolutely not user friendly, and I can’t tell @Gene how thankful I am for the current workaround to ease the pain a bit!!
Would more extensive weather support be a feature you would be interested in paying for? If so, what do you think would be a reasonable value?

[Bizza]

I use the WU API for a couple of applications now - Solar system (logging temperature along with solar data to PVOutput), and now Rachio. For PVOutput, I input my personal API key into the website, and as long as I stay under the WU limit of requests, it is FOC.

If you can integrate an WU personal API key into your system for each account that wants it (user has to get their own key), it could be FOC for everyone. I have not gone into the legal/commercial side of doing this, but it seems a number of websites are doing it this way.

[mckynzee]

@Bizza Can you tell me some websites that have been doing it this way? I’m curious what scale they are doing it on…