Warning, newbie ahead. I’ve just set up the new Tempest, and I can’t figure out how to download my data from it. Also, I’d like to have a display screen that I can use to see the data, rather than having to look at my phone the whole time.
I was using am Ambient weather station, and I could backup the data from that onto an SD card, then use the data from the csv format, but I can’t see anyway to do that with the Tempest. I’m not a programmer, and I really just want a “plug n play” solution, and the stuff I’ve seen on the forum seems to be above my skillset (eg python, raspberry pi, needing a computer running the whole time, etc). I looked at the Weather Display integration - incomprehensible to me, but got it to work briefly, but then stopped updating the data, interface was clunky, couldn’t see where I could access the data from, etc. I have set up Weather Underground, but can’t get the data from there either.
TL, DR - is there a plug n play way that I can download my data in csv form? Is there a plug n play display monitor that I can buy? thx!
Yes, thanks Gary, I did look at that already - it all looks v intimidating, and none of those look like plug n play. I just want a “solution” that I can download/buy and that will work without needing all the technical info that those third party apps seem to require… I need the “weather station for dummies” solution
I just downloaded some data using the api button on top of this page or go directly to https://weatherflow.github.io/Tempest/api/swagger/
click authorize (I used the Oauht2.0, the top one)
click on the STATIONS part of Staitons: get stations.
after you have done that, click on the GET part of get stations, and on the try it out button that appears. In the response body, find the device id of your tempest.
Next step is the get the observations. Click on the OBSERVATION part of observations: get observations}. Then click on the GET part of get observations/device/{device-id. Enter the device id.
if you want todays observations use 0, for yesterdays use 1 in day_offset and for the day before that use 2, etc. Leave the time_start en time_end fields empty, for the format choose csv and click try it out.
I copied the response body into a file, and imported that into excel without any problem.
Of course this is only useful if you want to occasionally download data.
I do not know how you want the history displayed and for what purpose.
You can use a computer screen looking at the web page of your station.
You do not need to use the App at all once it is working.
If you have weather underground working then you can see a table on their web page for the day of your choice which you can cut and paste into a spreadsheet or screen capture.
And I am not sure if you clicked the tempest icon to see the card view which you can then click an item to see its graph which can be reduced in time scale and moved to see back in time.
And there is the IFTTT app to load the one minute data into google sheets but it creates a new sheet every 2000 minutes.
cheers Ian
Thanks Ian - the two things are related but different. I want the display unit so that I can sit it on my shelf and can check out the current weather at a glance, rather than having to look at a phone or an app. My current display unit shows all current stuff at a glance, in a larger screen format than what you can see on a phone. So as I’m sitting on my couch reading a book, I can say - gee, it is really windy outside, I wonder what the wind actually is, then can glance at the display screen and see what it says.
The historical data I want to download so that I can make cool things from it like an annual/seasonal wind rose, etc. Thanks for the advice
there is no display of any kind in the WF product suite
everything WeatherFlow is centered around using their mobile app, or their website
Re: data:
there is no plug’n’play feature to let you download CSV or any other format.
and even if there ‘was’ a way to download the data, there’s no way to ‘upload’ any stashed data
In order to do anything other than ‘use the WF mobile app’ or ‘use the WF website’ you have to do something custom. How custom and how slick depends on how much time+money (and blood pressure) you want to devote toward making a custom solution that meets your unique needs.
But - adding a little raspberry pi + display for $100-150 total and investing some of your time+labor to learning weewx will definitely let you do what you’re asking.
there are ‘thousands’ of weewx sites worldwide and ‘dozens’ running WF gear
currently there are 45 WF sites registered, but registration is optional, so I’d guess a more likely number is 2-3x that
we see newbies and Windows-only folks jumping on the weewx bandwagon all the time, so lots of people have lived the adventure.
But it really comes down to whether you’re willing to invest your blood pressure learning something new (Linux) and how to minimally do things there, as well as how to one-time configure weewx. If yes there, what you’re asking is pretty straightforward in ‘that’ ecosystem.
yup, but I don’t want to pick up my phone - I just want to look at a permanent display on the shelf that presents all the data in a nice big format. It seems like this is an opportunity for someone who knows what they’re doing to build a nice interface and sell it to someone like me who doesn’t know what they’re doing… I guess I had assumed that a “display unit” and “getting access to your own data” were basic, core functions of any weather station, as that is what I was used to in the past, without any effort required to make this stuff work.
Thank you Sunny, that has been very helpful. I think I managed to get that working, but I seem to have got stuck at the last instruction, getting the CSV file into excel. I copied all the data from the response body into a file, but when I pasted it into excel, it all went into one line. Is there a step in the middle that I need to do, to make each observation a separate line in excel? Thanks!
the trick is to past it into a file and open that file in excel (not paste it into excel)
make sure to tick the mark My data has headers, and select ‘commas’ in the next panel
btw the column “timestamp” is the Unix time in seconds, you might need to use that, because sampling isn’t always at the same interval.
Some of us are using older iPads and cheap Fire tablets as always on displays that make it easy to see from across the room at a glance. Family loves it! Just use “Always On” and “Full Screen” modes. I run it 24/7 with no issues.
I might add that ‘nice big format’ is a very personal thing, and no two people define ‘nice’ and ‘big enough’ identically. Do you need to see it 10’ away ? Up to 40’ ? Do you have issues like macular degeneration requiring massive fonts ? How massive ?
I’m not being facetious here, this is the kind of stuff that makes or breaks something from working for ‘you’ for ‘your’ unique needs. I’ve worked online with multiple people over in the weewx-users group who’ve asked for similar displays who always have unique needs for readability.
Yup. Some are profitable. Some aren’t. This one isn’t profitable unless you charge a price so high nobody would be crazy enough to consider paying.
I’d be happy to build you one for $500/unit and $200/hour labor rate for hand-holding with a minimal pre-paid 10 hour/year support retainer, plus 100 hours at that rate for initial product development. Really. I’m serious.
Bottom line - yes it is ‘possible’ but it is obviously not worth the development cost and longstanding support costs. There are lots of opportunities out there, but for anybody to move forward it has to be profitable as a business thing.
You can already buy a minimal Kindle for $30 and use it as an always-on web browser displaying the WF website for your station. But even ‘that’ is not turnkey. You need to mount/power/configure the Kindle. I’m expecting you’ll also want a custom display. That means a computer someplace to generate the custom dashboard.
There are simply no solutions that are turnkey for what you’re asking for.
Bad assumption. You didn’t do good enough research before purchasing a WF station. You picked the wrong vendor for your needs.
Some price points currently:
one competitor to WF (Ecowitt) sells a standalone display to add to their gear for $139 US (link) but that locks you into their stations or ala-carte sensors that are similar to WF, but somewhat further away from the prosumer kind of market WF targets with the Tempest. It does give you an idea of the basic price point for a commercial console though.
Davis has u.g.l.y. console displays that are both uglier and far more expensive, from $189 to $289 list (link)(link) that also locks you into their weather station ecosystem
In comparision:
A roll-your-own 7" raspberry pi touchscreen solution including display, case, raspi, SD card, power supply, and a theoretical semi-turnkey weewx setup can be done for somewhere in the $150 range or so. You’re not going to beat that price for the hardware.
ok - I’m only half kidding about the $200/hour thing above. Maybe. Possibly.
Here’s an offer for you:
you buy me a raspi hardware set of my specification that I can keep permanently, and I’ll do the software development part
I’ll mail you a SD card that you can just put into your (matching) gear and it would be pretty darn turnkey
I’ll find a way to dumb down any initial configuration so that you can do it from any Windows or Mac box if you can edit a simple text file
And I’ll even release the code and docs on GitHub so others can roll their own themselves in the future
I admitted to being a newbie right at the outset. I also didn’t buy it for myself, it was a gift, so I’m just trying to figure this out. Please don’t offer any more solutions - other users have been more than helpful, without being rude.
Hi, As stated above without all the extra words and complexity. You can use either a Ipad or any Android tablet (check out amazon) and install the WF App. Then under the WF App settings enable the “Always on mode” and “Full screen mode”. It’s really inexpensive and works great. You can get the size display you want instead of what the weather station vendor manufactures.
It works great and will be a great solution for you!
Sorry you feel that way. Again, you seem to be looking for something that’s just not in their product line.
If somebody can get you a full spec of a known-good tablet and mounting kit to make a tablet stay on all the time, look professionally mounted, and stay safely powered without a bunch of wires being visible, it would be great to post that precise list of items with Amazon purchase links since this comes up a lot.
Examples like Gary posted definitely all work great, but have a significantly higher expertise level required to download/install/configure the software than the turnkey thing you mentioned you were looking for.
I might fiddle around with seeing if I can come up with something to help get weewx working with the (nice) Belchertown skin without needing much Linux-fu on the part of the user. The hard part is always getting the pi on your network, and identifying the serial numbers of the WF gear, since both are unique to your site. It’s probably possible though, and weewx would work fine with the hardware example Gary’s photo showed.
My pretty typical Belchertown site looks like the following…
