Can anyone clarify the differences between these two plug-ins, and why you would choose one over the other? Or is there a need to use both? Are there other options?

My current needs are to have weather displayed on a control page, and have irrigation conditions based on temp. At some point in the future I plan on buying my own weather station.

I set-up NOAA, and I'm getting data into the plug-in and onto a control page. The variables are listed in conditions.

I installed the trial of WeatherSnoop, created a device, and get this error:

Code: Select all

Jun 14, 2012 2:10:28 PM
  WeatherSnoop Error              Error getting station Weather Station [weather snoop plug-in] data: HTTP Error 401: Unauthorized

Under the WS plug-in [edit device] I have tried the following:
Mini.local
local
192.168.x.x

and port 8176

What am I missing?

Also the WIKI states:

In WeatherSnoop, make sure that you have HTTP enabled under the Sharing tab on the Weather Agent configuration window.

The sharing tab has already defined: Mini.local
And I have checked: "Serve my weather data via http on port" and I entered 8176

The NOAA weather feed provides only limited data but it's also free so that's why we provide the plugin for it. The biggest missing piece is rain data - apparently the NOAA data is (primarily) acquired from airports and they don't normally report rainfall.

WeatherSnoop provides a lot more data (either through a directly connected weather station or Weather Underground) but you have to pay for it. I happened to have a weather station so I built the WeatherSnoop plugin to get my station data into Indigo and that's why we provide that plugin.

You can use both since they both just create custom weather station devices. It would be up to you to determine which to use in which scenarios.

As for your WeatherSnoop problem, 8176 is the default network port that Indigo uses for Indigo Touch and IWS so unless you changed it to something else you shouldn't use that port in WeatherSnoop. I believe it defaults to 8000 which should be fine.

Great! I have data on port 8000 Thanks Jay

Sounds like there is no need for WS until I get my own station. Rainfall is not important since we don't get any!

Does anyone have info/links regarding:
- buying a station
- features needed
- wired vs wifi
- battery vs other power source
- models w/ best Indigo integration
- models w/ best reliability in extreme heat [100º - 130º]

Basically, what do I need to know to move forward in buying a station. I would love to hear about everyone's set-ups. Photos would also be nice.

CraigM wrote:Great! I have data on port 8000 Thanks Jay

Sounds like there is no need for WS until I get my own station. Rainfall is not important since we don't get any!

Does anyone have info/links regarding:
- buying a station
- features needed
- wired vs wifi
- battery vs other power source
- models w/ best Indigo integration
- models w/ best reliability in extreme heat [100º - 130º]

Basically, what do I need to know to move forward in buying a station. I would love to hear about everyone's set-ups. Photos would also be nice.

I have been researching the same thing, seems like the Davis Vantage Pro2 is the unit to get, although pricey, it seems (from the reviews) to be the most robust & offer the most features / options of any weather station in the sub $1k price range.

I plan on having a external temp sensor in my fish pond.

The system would be used with Weather Snoop or perhaps WeatherCat with Indigo / Security Spy.

I would be open to suggestions of weather (pun intended) to use the Scientific Oregon sensors and the RFXCOM, or to go for the Davis.

Korey wrote:I have been researching the same thing, seems like the Davis Vantage Pro2 is the unit to get, although pricey, it seems (from the reviews) to be the most robust & offer the most features / options of any weather station in the sub $1k price range.

I plan on having a external temp sensor in my fish pond.

The system would be used with Weather Snoop or perhaps WeatherCat with Indigo / Security Spy.

I would be open to suggestions of weather (pun intended) to use the Scientific Oregon sensors and the RFXCOM, or to go for the Davis.

I've had the VantageVue (the all in 1 wind/rain/temp station that uses the Vantage Pro console, which means it could accept the additional sensors) for nearly 4 years, and it is a pretty rugged unit; however, I do have an issue with the rain sender; every once in a while it simply quits counting in the middle of a rainstorm. I think it's because of the design of the connector they use, which can get shorted out when it's damp... I plan to pull it down, disassemble and waterproof it with vasoline next time the CR123 battery dies (about a once in 18 month maintanance procedure, even with the solar panel). However, (short term) I have been impressed with the RFX/OSI package I set up from Homeseer (and now available from SimpleHome, I hear) two months ago. You WILL need to have a basic understanding of scripting if you want to log the weather info, but it's less than half the price of the Davis for the basic wind/rain/temp/humidity sensor suite, and OSI compatible Radio Shack temperature senders are under 20 bucks a pop, although I haven't actually tried using the waterproof ones on a long term basis; the one I use to monitor the bbq pit meat temprerature works great to let us know when the brisket is done, but not well done...(triggers are a wonderful thing )

I think the biggest advantage to using WeatherSnoop is it's other capabilities - data upload/delivery (to weather underground, cwop, weatherbug, and directly via http), historical data, charts and UI, etc. And of course the wide selection of weather station hardware it supports. It appears that they've changed their minds regarding Oregon Scientific support since the last time I spoke to them - that's great news.

The advantage of using the RFXrec433 is that it's cheaper (doesn't require buying WeatherSnoop) and more expandable in terms of number of sensors.

Since I don't upload data anywhere, don't really use the other features of WeatherSnoop, and most importantly my server can't run Lion (and version 2.2 of WeatherSnoop will require it), I'm just going to switch to the RFXrec433 from WeatherSnoop. Anyone with broader needs would probably be better off with WeatherSnoop.

I recently added WeatherSnoop to my plugins (I was previously using NOAA). The problem I found with NOAA was the temperatures were accurate for my neighborhood. The airport that was used was pretty far away. There were several WeatherUnground stations near my house so I picked the one that was closest to me that was also on the side of a mountain (I live in an area with a large mountain, houses on the top, bottom and sides of the mountain) and because of mountain, the temperatures can be very different in the different areas. What I didn't like about WeatherSnoop is that info was not in variables from what I could find. It was available in the plugin but does not set variables. Not sure how to more the data to variables easily but since I only need the data for triggers, I didn't have a problem. WeatherSnoop Lite is only $20 so I opted for the accuracy. I am thinking about get my own weather station but I haven't decided yet.

You generally don't need plugin device data in variables since you can use device states directly in almost all the same ways you can use variable data. I'd be interested in hearing the scenario you have which requires the data to be in variables. BTW, the NOAA Weather plugin doesn't put them in variables either - the old NOAA scripts do because they were pre-plugins.

You can, of course, create triggers such that when a device state changes it executes an action to insert the device state into a variable. That action is in the [url=Action Collection]Action Collection[/url] plugin.

I actually did end up creating triggers for what I needed (controlling the AC depending on the outside temp). I do want to control a bug zapper outside so that it only turns on a night, when it is not wet outside (raining or showers) and the temp is above 70 degrees. Right now it turns on after sunset, I haven't gotten around to do the other two conditions.

Device states are available in conditions as well so you can use them directly. I have similar logic for my sprinklers - if it's rained more than half an inch in the last two days skip the normal watering schedule.

I just wish someone other than Davis would make a soil moisture sensor, or that Davis would sell them for a reasonable price. The ideal way to control the sprinkler system would be to stick a moisture transmitter on each zone, and create a custom schedule whenever the zones are dry enough... but not when it would cost 600 bucks just to set up the base station.

Re: soil moisture sensors.
They don't work. I installed 3 of them from Davis a few years ago. They are in a line about 10 feet apart 6"-8" deep in my front lawn. They deliver inconsistent and useless data. The data don't change consistently after a rain or a lawn watering. I've had 2 of them read near zero while the third reads in the 100-200 range (out of 255). Currently their readings are as follows: 170, 56, 200. The associated soil temperature sensors work fine. They tell me, for example, that although it snowed last night, the soil temperature is still ~60F, so I can leave my sprinklers on.

I use the Davis to control my sprinklers as follows: First, I have determined, over several years, that one run of my sprinkler system is equivalent to about 0.33" of rain. I maintain a variable in Indigo called "Sprinkler_Moisture_Balance". It is equal to (yearly rain + yearly watering) - yearly evapotranspiration - a fudge factor. At sunset, midnight, and 5 AM Indigo runs a script to check (Sprinkler_Moisture_Balance < 0) ^ NOT its_raining ^ (Outside_Temp > 35F) ^ (10MIN_AVG_Windspeed < 5 mph) ^ NOT Sprinklers_Running. If that expression evaluates to TRUE it runs the sprinklers. Every now and then, after a very heavy rain, the Sprinkler_Moisture_ Balance will be too high, because most of the rain ran off and was not absorbed by the soil. This might result in a week and a half of no watering, and I start to notice the grass withering. Then I manually run a script which adjusts the fudge factor so that watering will occur the next available time. This has worked fairly well for 3-4 years. Maybe someday I'll try to estimate how much of the rain is absorbed based on the rain rate, but this seems too complicated to be worth the effort. I sure wish those soil moisture sensors worked!