I’m with others that are very disappointed with the display options. My wife and I both keep looking to the counter where we had a display for our other station. I could put it back up, but then I’d be reminded many times a day that I can’t see the info from the cool Tempest.
For all the code out there, would be nice if there was a thread that showed everything, display options, and what is needed to run it.
The Android tablet idea seems okay, still disappointing.
Alexa Show might be good, if the Skill would display by default, with time and inside temp.
Anyone seen a weather display that connects to Weather Underground or maybe the Tempest network?
If you just want a display (rather than @peter’s excellent integrated PiConsole) just follow @vreihen’s frequent suggestion and buy yourself an inexpensive Kindle Fire and use FullyKioskBrowser to display whatever website you want. You’re talking a $40 problem with a Fire 8 typically.
I use one to display my custom HomeAssistant dashboard, but it works fine for any website.
As I wake up in the morning I sometimes ask Google Home to give me the weather info before I roll over and open my eyes. As per my other response we can see the data on nearly every handheld device in the house. I have a simple display that is connected to an ESP32 that gives outside temp and humidity as well… I’m looking at changing that to an ePaper screen to get a little more detail and a unit that I can run off battery for extended periods. Like the other options such as Raspberry Pi there are plenty of projects that can be adapted to give you a good solution - if you want to tinker or build your own.
With you at this point. Love the Tempest but miss the display of my trusty Davis. Did the whole Fire 10 with the BTST fully kiosk thing but its not the same. Too bright at night, washed out by day, half baked solution. Putzing around with a PI or computer is outside what I want to do or have as building/coding makes me cringe.
Weatherflow needs to simply offer a dedicated display. Enough of this web only stuff. It’s disappointing to see anytime this subject comes up people jump up with “options” that basically defeat the simplicity of the unit itself.
Understand your points that many others have made, but you might consider doing more research before you buy your next station. Not having any display has been very well known since the initial pre-release Indiegogo days.
It is rather presumptuous to assume I didn’t do my research. I did in fact do so and went with the Tempest for a number of reasons. That said the lack of an external display was a significant detractor and what delayed purchasing one sooner.
Davis’s detractor was the inconvenient method of getting the data off the console and utilizing it for online use. The cost for a simple wireless web interface was prohibitive, though thankful for aftermarket options that just work. Davis’s recent solution was equally bad, with the updated console but at least it’s a quality piece of equipment. Though coming in at over a grand for everything is beyond my means
Tempest however is the opposite of Davis with clean weather upload but no way to see it when the internet or power is down and no option to remedy at any cost.
Third party providers are great, but there is nothing out there yet that offers the clean interface that Im looking for without needing to be a programmer or electronics hobbyist.
All I can suggest is an integrated Ecowitt setup for something similar for a affordable station with a display that can do uploads etc. that lots of people seem to like at a Tempest-like price point (amazon link). I don’t have first-hand experience with this particular setup but their little $12.99 T+H sensors and $35 gateway do work great FWIW.
Yes, Davis’s datalogger etc. is absurdly expensive and the new console/datalogger combined unit is crazy expensive and not getting the best of reviews to say the least.
I like the idea that the data consumption has been left to the hobbyist.
I suspect most WeatherFlow users are “amateur scientists” and “tinkerers”; embrace your hobby .
Many people have provided display solutions and the raw data is available for any user to create their own interpretation. There’s something great about that.
I have personally owned multiple VERY EXPENSIVE Davis “Vantage Pro” weather stations, with a dedicated display, I was not that impressed, and it was not that easy to operate.
Embrace the fact you can see telemetry on your phone, tablet, and computer. You can share the link with friends and family. Then, if you want more specific data or format you can create your own or get applications created by other users.
If you have a ROKU streaming device, try my interpretation of the data.
Please send suggestions to me for additions !!
Just back to add…I love how my Kindle fire lights up my house at night to show weather at a low setting but during the day is too dim to see. Really how hard would it be to have a basic LED display available?
And no…not getting an Ecowitt, Davis, Oregon, or some other brand.
Tidbyt display is ideal for display ( whilst not comprehensive ) with the bonus of other apps being able to be played through it. https://tidbyt.com/ Apologies if this has already been mentioned.
If you price out all of the major components like an LCD touchscreen wholesale at quantity 500, you will quickly discover that a $50 Amazon Fire 7 tablet running the WF Android app (or Fully Kiosk Browser to a web site) is a steal. Heck, the crappy official Raspberry Pi touchscreen is $70 retail ($20 more than the complete Fire Tablet) in quantity one:
The purple app is still running on my ancient gen-5 Fire 7" tablet. I haven’t tried it on any newer ones, though.
With Amazon’s summer Prime Day about to kick off, that will probably be the cheapest that the Fire tablets will be until after Thanksgiving.
My $0.02 is for anyone looking for a 24/7 wall-hanging tablet to consider the Fire 10" tablet with the Fully Kiosk Browser app, which is the cat’s meow for home automation and other uses and should be under a hundred bucks during the upcoming Prime Day sale…
Firstly, there are lowish cost projects that can pull get textual data from the Davis from the vantage console into a serial port on a PC or Raspi. I’ve recently redesigned an built a couple using both pic and avr (arduino) hardware as an exercise based on other opensource projects I’ve seen.
The Tempest system is much easier to tap into than the Davis by a country mile. Didn’t need any hardware build or microcontroller programming and I had two options to choose from.
Once the unit is booted and gets an IP address it starts broadcasting weather data to the local network and I’m pretty sure that in an exercise I was doing earlier today, that I saw the broadcasting start BEFORE the internet connection came up. I can recheck tomorrow. Therefore, any product that WeatherFlow could bring to the table would be able to pull data multiple different ways.
Davis has cost me more money, time, and effort to integrate into out home environment.
The topic of data loss has come up before and, so long as the base unit (wifi unit) doesn’t lose power then teh data should be forwarded to the could when if becomes available. It is recommended that time/critical services have the base unit connected to a UPS.
I received a Tempest PWS for Christmas and while the hardware is excellent the lack of a dedicated display is baffling to me. Surely it isn’t unusual to want an always-on display that is readable from across the room?
I tried the PiConsole route and while it works it’s not nearly customizable enough and it’s not “across the room readable with a 7” display. I wouldn’t mind investing in a larger display but the very limited customization options make me want to not spend the money.
The only two Android apps that work are the official Tempest one, which isn’t customizable nor readable from across the room, and the WDLive app which is ugly (sorry) AND lacks customization.
I don’t mean to offend the folks running passion projects, they’re doing what scratches their itch and that’s totally fine!
With the lack of any suitable options I’m going to have to make a custom dashboard for Home Assistant, which I really didn’t want to do, to display on a tablet in kiosk mode.
If Tempest doesn’t want to make a dedicated accessory they could at LEAST make the display of the Android App customizable so that those of us who want a “Room Display” could re-arrange things to suit and run it.
Nowadays the assumption apparently is folks will use their mobile device, unfortunately.
FWIW, you received a ‘gift’ so unless you return it for something else at this late date you have to either live with it or take control of your own setup and do something yourself to scratch whatever itch you have.
This is a $40 problem via a 8" Kindle Fire and free FullyKiosk browser, plus the one-time cost of your labor and blood pressure.
Easy option is to configure your station to upload to someplace on Internet WF can upload to which has a webpage you can live with and then you’d just need to download one Android app to the Kindle Fire and configure it to spin up that URL fullscreen on bootup. Super easy to do.
Or as you said, alternative is integrate into HA and do a local dashboard since you seem to know how to do that already. Also pretty easy to do the WF=>HA part. Getting a HA dashboard that fits the eye is more pain, but lots of us have walked that path already and undoubtedly would share code.
If you have a spare raspberry pi, running weewx with the Belchertown skin is a nice option. That seems to be everybody’s favorite skin for weewx or pretty close to everybody.
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