Home Weather Stations with Programmatic Access to Sensor Readings?

Question

Are there any known home weather stations which allow programmatic access to the sensor readings? Inexpensive, and platform neutral systems are especially interesting (together with any pre-existing APIs to access the data from the devices).

Answer 1

A different approach is to look at some of the already existing weather software available, and see which weather stations they support. One can assume that those weather stations have a reasonably accessible interface, which you could use.

I'd check out some of the stations supported by for instance wview or Weather Display.

Answer 2

The weather stations I am familiar with use a serial interface, which is something to keep in mind. The more straightforward models use their serial interface in a standard way and you can use a USB-serial adapter and open-source software to access them. Others are wired in a strange way for no apparent reason and the available open-source software does not work perfectly (and USB-serial adapters do not work either even on Windows with the official software).

They also typically have a bit of onboard memory so that you only need to start up your computer once or twice a day to get a dump of the history of the sensor readings.

The Lacrosse WS2300 is a simple weather station from the first category (recommended). The WS3600 falls into the second category (avoid). Google "open2300" for open-source drivers for the former, and "open3600" if you decide to get the latter for some reason.

Answer 3

For those looking for a Weather station with an API (Programmatic Access to data):

1) Ambient Weather

• JSON Formatted Data
• Connection secured by key
• Lot of weather stations (from $100 to $1000)

2) WeatherFlow Smart Home Weather Station

• REST API and local data access via UDP and BLE
• Solar powered
• AI / Machine learning improves forecasts over time (someone has more informations?)
• $299.95

3) Acurite

• Open source API that can be installed on Rasperi PI: acuparse
• But unavailable in most European countries...

4) Vantage Pro2

• Solar powered
• From $600 to $1300 for the Vantage Pro2 or $240 for the Vantage Vue (weather station only)

5) Froggit weather stations

• From 65€ to 314€ (more if you take more screen with it)
• Looks hard to configure access to data. Configure the console to send to weewx

---

A little comparative page between weather stations with API

To be continued... (Feel free to comment if you see more informations to add to this answer)