Indoor Temperature "device"

Is there something on the market that can be used for the indoor temperature reading side of things…??
The Tempest works fine, & the Pi Console is great, but the lack of a way to get the indoor temperature up on the screen is a pain…!!
Even a USB sensor to plug into the Pi would do…!!

Wouldn’t it be easy to add a temperature sensor to the raspberry?

Adding it so that it works with the Pi Console …is beyond me.

piconsole queries the WF REST interface, so what you’re asking is not possible unless you have a separate Air (which you can’t buy any more) for a massive indoor sensor.

There are a variety of easy and inexpensive ways get indoor readings and get the data to the pi, but the wfpiconsole software you’re running does not support integrating them into the display. It displays what you have WF and WF only.

Gary’s third-party Pi app does have the ability to add an external one-wire temperature probe to the GPIO pins…

Search for a second hand air device. I have seen some one else also looking to buy one.
Or consider a wireless thermometer.
I use a few cheap wireless thermometers for many readings, in lots of rooms and outside in different places. They reset their max min temps every 24hrs. I even know the max min temps inside my Rosella nest box.
Cheers Ian :slight_smile:

I bought an additional WF-AIR01 from WF at the end of last year
to use in my basement weather center. . .but the price I paid for it was something I did not expect to be that expensive! If I had to do it again…I’d just buy a “Tempest device only” (WF-TWD01) Tempest Device w/ pole mount attachment – WeatherFlow and use that as a glorified “indoor” weather station. It’d be the same thing as WF-AIR01 except the indoor “Tempest” would never detect any rain or wind or Solar / UV data.

A WF-TWD01 could be added to an already existing Hub Station as a secondary (indoor) device.

That’s a crazy expensive way to get a $8 temperature sensor, but it’s certainly one way to do it if you want it integrated into the WF ecosystem and wfpiconsole.

FWIW - you can get there roll-your-own with things like node-red and HomeAssistant too if you wanted to go that way.

Thanks All for the replies

Since I am in Australia…the AIR is not an option, WeatherFlow had to use different frequencies over here…!!
Just to make a very simple task…harder…

The WF Pi Console is great…it is “almost” what I was after in the 1st place. I did the research & WeatherFlow told me to hang off buying an AIR until I got the Tempest.
Unfortunately a Virus, a 12 month delay & a change in frequencies upset my plans :thinking:

This is why I am looking for a way around it.

I guess you checked but I thought the air/HUB frequency for USA was compatible with Australia, but I could be wrong.
There is a difference between the air and the Tempest in the way it calculates the temperature.
If you decide to use a Tempest as a thermometer then you should cover over the solar sensor to avoid the possibility that any light hitting the sensor combined with no wind would otherwise apply compensation and reduce the temp reading by a tiny amount. The Tempest applies compensation during sunny no wind periods because it is usually mounted in the sun compared to in a Stevenson screen like an air device should be.
Cheers Ian :slight_smile:

And the tempest indoors will require a power supply. How much did you pay for an Air?
Cheers Ian :slight_smile:

I got the WF-AIR on 11/27/2020. I paid $110.39 (US) for it. . .which included shipping. . . minus $20 for the “Black Friday” discount. Total cost was $90.39.

I help pay for some WF salaries. . . I have a deep investment in their products!!

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I just checked & that makes around A$343.00 + Shipping.
HUGE price for just a temperature sensor…!!! (Because it is not “just” a temperature sensor)

There has to be another way…

perhaps ask over in PI thread and ask there how easy it is to add a temp sensor. try and find a python wiz kid in your neighbourhood to do it for you.

There are many tutorials for thermometers and raspberry pis. Here is an example https://littlebirdelectronics.com.au/guides/187/raspberry-pi-weather-station-with-the-sense-hat
But there are simpler and cheaper options.
Here is an Australian example https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/temperature-sensing-with-raspberry_pi.html
Cheers Ian :slight_smile:

adding one to the tempest in easy, there are literately dozens of videos and manuals of how to do that cheaply. The most difficult part is it to add it to the current display, but that might be very easy as well (I didn’t look into it)

ummm…we’ve told you multiple ways multiple times…

You can not do what you want as long as you stick with wfpiconsole as your display. It simply is not engineered to add other sensors to the display at this time.

Adding a few buck temperature or temperature+humidity sensor to a pi is simple to do,. FWIW, I’ve had this in place on a model-B pi for over 7 years (wow).

But…you have to get the data to some app that can display it. Nowadays the usual way is to publish/subscribe with MQTT.

FWIW, my solution has an old model-B with a couple ds18b20 sensors on it, and I wrote some custom python to feed MQTT so my custom HomeAssistant dashboard can subscribe to that message. Super easy to do. Node-red can do the same kind of thing.

Short answer - not possible with wfpiconsole at this time. It’s (nicely) engineered around an all-WF hardware expectation so it’s a great turnkey solution for all-WF sites.

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Oh well - that was why I asked…!! (Short answer - not possible with wfpiconsole at this time)
MQTT - I had to look up, had never heard of it before.
Writing custom code is way above my level of knowledge.
Guess I am waiting for the Indoor sensor to be released.

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