Every time someone does a project like this, it exposes how trivial “IoT” really is once you strip away vendor lock in and buzzwords. A $3 sensor, a 10 line script, and a 40 year old ham protocol outperform half the commercial weather APIs out there.
With respect, this misses some important constraints. Scale it to thousands of locations and target 99% SLA. Now you have a maintenance problem in remote physical places, requirements for hardware reliability, subcontractors to manage, need a reliable network connectivity, etc. You also need to collect and redistribute the data (API or whatever) - while this is a trivial problem today, still you incur costs for hosting, network, etc. While I actually agree with the sentiment, it is not just a $3 sensor either.
There's a magical world out there where Tuya leave us with the ability to OTA flash custom firmware of we have physical access, and then we can all just run ESPHome on private wifi networks.
Slightly tangential, my hope is that the Blitzortung project up momentum.
> Blitzortung.org and Lightningmaps.org are world-wide non-commercial low-cost community-based lightning detection and lightning location networks. They provide free real time lightning maps for a lot of count
I had a station for a few years. The receiver had a usb interface so no software radio required. I used weewx to import the data. I even had a water temperature sensor off the end of my dock so I could see if the lake was warm enough to swim in.
my winter project is to create a container pod at home that remixes media, maybe adds in some old or joke tv commercials between shows, and most importantly, shows the weather and the route to work at 7am. i think everything exists to do this, but it might take a few weeks to cobble together.
I want to do the reverse: I have a DIY esp32 "weather" station (temp/humidity but more importantly particle sensor) and I would love to share it via radio!
The very first cable weather "channel" was a large circular base at least 4' diameter (don't remember exact size, but big) that had various full size gauges on it. A camera was positioned to look down on the gauge under it. The whole table top rotated so that each gauge would continuously cycle under the camera. When you viewed the channel, you'd have to wait until the gauge you wanted to see rotated back around.
I expected "putting something on the internet" to mean being to talk to a device directly, not taking its data and publishing it somewhere. Is it just me?
I get the sense from the article that part of the fun was doing this via radio frequencies rather than having to deal with a network.
> At this point, we've connected the Temu weather station to the Internet and the ham radio network. Anyone with an APRS-enabled radio, digipeater, receiver, or just a web browser can see what the temperature and humidity are at my house.
Every time someone does a project like this, it exposes how trivial “IoT” really is once you strip away vendor lock in and buzzwords. A $3 sensor, a 10 line script, and a 40 year old ham protocol outperform half the commercial weather APIs out there.
With respect, this misses some important constraints. Scale it to thousands of locations and target 99% SLA. Now you have a maintenance problem in remote physical places, requirements for hardware reliability, subcontractors to manage, need a reliable network connectivity, etc. You also need to collect and redistribute the data (API or whatever) - while this is a trivial problem today, still you incur costs for hosting, network, etc. While I actually agree with the sentiment, it is not just a $3 sensor either.
There's a magical world out there where Tuya leave us with the ability to OTA flash custom firmware of we have physical access, and then we can all just run ESPHome on private wifi networks.
And what recovery mechanisms do you have in place when the OTA flash goes wrong?
Slightly tangential, my hope is that the Blitzortung project up momentum.
> Blitzortung.org and Lightningmaps.org are world-wide non-commercial low-cost community-based lightning detection and lightning location networks. They provide free real time lightning maps for a lot of count
[docs of the projects](https://docs.lightningmaps.org/) [real-time lightening map](https://map.blitzortung.org)
"If you want to support me, send me AA batteries" in the bot account profile made me chuckle.
You might consider joining the Citizen Weather Observer Program. It's a great way to share your data with other station owners.
http://www.wxqa.com/
I had a station for a few years. The receiver had a usb interface so no software radio required. I used weewx to import the data. I even had a water temperature sensor off the end of my dock so I could see if the lake was warm enough to swim in.
my winter project is to create a container pod at home that remixes media, maybe adds in some old or joke tv commercials between shows, and most importantly, shows the weather and the route to work at 7am. i think everything exists to do this, but it might take a few weeks to cobble together.
For even more retro points, have the UI presented by WeatherStar! https://weatherstar.netbymatt.com/
Holy cow, cheap weather stations are encoding and decoding JSON? What a century.
No, the tool rtl_433 repackages payload data in json for easier downstream consumption.
I want to do the reverse: I have a DIY esp32 "weather" station (temp/humidity but more importantly particle sensor) and I would love to share it via radio!
I was kinda expecting analogue tech and computer vision here. :D Nice work.
The very first cable weather "channel" was a large circular base at least 4' diameter (don't remember exact size, but big) that had various full size gauges on it. A camera was positioned to look down on the gauge under it. The whole table top rotated so that each gauge would continuously cycle under the camera. When you viewed the channel, you'd have to wait until the gauge you wanted to see rotated back around.
I expected "putting something on the internet" to mean being to talk to a device directly, not taking its data and publishing it somewhere. Is it just me?
Yes.
[dead]
Cool project but I would just have used a zigbee/wifi weather station, they are just as cheap.
I get the sense from the article that part of the fun was doing this via radio frequencies rather than having to deal with a network.
> At this point, we've connected the Temu weather station to the Internet and the ham radio network. Anyone with an APRS-enabled radio, digipeater, receiver, or just a web browser can see what the temperature and humidity are at my house.
this is one of the most fascinating and funniest articles i've read in a while