Setting up a Weatherstation: Sainlogic Profi WLAN WS3500
While browsing through Amazon lately, I saw this weatherstation and bought it. Many years ago I did have a similar station, and I had written my own software for capturing its data and sending it off to WeatherUnderground, using some OpenSource code. This new station, however, has upload functionality already built-in - so I would only need to configure this device properly.
Device Information
A problem arises when trying to find out what the actual "official" name of this chinese-made weatherstation is. I bought it on Amazon as:
Sainlogic Profi WLAN Wetterstation
But when going to the Sainlogic website, this device is nowhere to be seen... among the weatherstations shown here http://sainlogic.com/plus/list.php?tid=4 there is none that corresponds to mine.
The manual shows as manufacturer: Toway Sportswear Co. Limited in Shenzhen.
The product name is just plainly Sainlogic Weather Station, and as Models several numbers are given: WS3500, FT0850, FT0852, FT0300, FT0835 . Those FT-...-devices are on that Sainlogic website, and I can see that mine is NOT one of these. Therefore, I assume that mine is the model WS3500.
The setup of the software refers to the website www.ecowitt.net , for cloud-based storing of weather data. And indeed, when going to https://www.ecowitt.com/shop/goodsPage/1/28 , I see pictures of weather stations which are similar to mine - at least the rain gauge container is the same. But none of them is completely identical to the sensor arrangement of the one I bought.
Browsing further through the Google results (searching for "ecowitt weather station") I see several pictures of mine, under the following names: Froggit WH3000 SE Pro, Chilitec CTW-902 Wi.
When looking (after completing the Wifi setup - see further below) in the app WS View, under Stations there is a "EasyWeather-Wifi4123". This is apparently how the weather station manifests itself.
Installation of the hardware
The setup of the hardware was straight forward. I just needed to find a pole with an empty top end, onto which the sensor package could be mounted.
Interestingly, in the package sent there is a free gift selection, one of those is a metal sat antenna pole. This would be excellent, but I had already ordered this identical pole separately from Amazon, when I was ordering this weatherstation - it was given as "often bought together", and I know that I will eventually need one. My pole construction is not really heavy-storm-proof...
The "free gift" requires to write a product review on Amazon. Well, my experience with the product so far is good, but I still need to sort out the issues regarding the automatic upload.
Setting up the Cloud Weather Services
The main point of such a weather station is to share the information which it produces. This can be done by the device itself, when it is connected to a router. I hope that the software for this does not damage the integrity of my router security... everything seems all working OK, but I am not an expert in low-level security and deep hacking...
The first setting-up of the Wifi is not completely without hurdles, but everything is well documented:
- The device console needs to be set into Wifi mode. This makes it appear as a Wifi access point.
- The smartphone (I am using Android) needs now to be set to this access point, so that the smartphone is linked via Wifi directly to the weather station.
- With the smartphone app "WS View", the user can select which access point (router) the weather station shall use.
- It is important to select a Wifi connection which ONLY has the 2.4 GHz band. I did have a mixed connection, with both 2.4 and 5GHz in one connection. This connection cannot be used by the weather station, so I had to configure the router to provide two separate sets of channels: one set for 2.4 GHz (this is the one which needs to be selected for the weather station), and one for my other home network.
- Once this is selected in the WS View app, the smartphone automatically connects back to the wifi of the router, and the weather station is connecting to the router.
- From here it automatically receives the current time.
Further setup of the weather services can be conveniently configured with the mobile app "WS View".
Ecowitt
Apparently, Ecowitt is somewhat related yo Sainlogic. This cloud service is recommended as the first choice in the manual of the weather station. No further setup has to be done on the weather station console, all can be done on the Ecowitt site through the browser.
One needs to create an account on Ecowitt.net https://www.ecowitt.net/ . To link the weather station with the Ecowitt site, one needs to enter the MAC address of the device, which can be obtained by briefly pressing the "set" button.
The device then posts updates to Ecowitt every 5 minutes.
These data can be shared by creating a "share" on the ecowitt site. Here is a public share to my weather data:
It is to note that the share is only valid for 30 days. It if shall be remain longer, then the user needs to prolong the duration of validity manually before 30 days are over.
Weather Underground
Weather Underground has been around for a long time. Around 2004 I had written my software for automatic upload to this site, and it did work very well. https://www.wunderground.com/
I created a new account, but ran into a problem: the device list does not show any Sainlogic, Ecowitt or Froggit weather stations. So I selected "other".
And - it works!
WeatherCloud
The WeatherCloud can be setup by creating an account on https://weathercloud.net/ .
A device needs to be created. There are choices for Ecowitt and Froggit devices. I chose "Froggit", "WH series". Then the device needs to be "linked". A station ID and a key are displayed. These need then to be added into the configuration for WeatherCloud in the "WS View" app.
And here is the publicly shared page:
WeatherObservationWebsite (WOW)
This appears to be powered by the UK Met Office. But the map shows devices also outside the UK: in France, Germany, a few in Scandinavia.
There were problems: first there was a message that there was an outage of the servers.
And then when I tried to setup my account, an error came, stating that the service is currently not available. I will skip this then for now and try later some time.
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