Motorola Edge+ 2021 running Android 13:
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I used to work for AEM/Davis Instruments, and the WeatherLink Console was a popular product among users. Now that I no longer own a Davis station, I’m managing with the Tempest using my iPhone and iPad, but a “Tempest Display” would be a huge plus.
It would be great if Tempest also improved where the Davis WeatherLink Console lacked at. Working in tech support, I saw a lot of issues with the WeatherLink Console needing to be rebooted or having performance or reception issues. Mine literally died shortly after I received it. Here’s what I’d like to see on a Tempest Display, and where Tempest could improve over Davis’ WeatherLink Console
- Touchscreen Display
- Better reception performance than Davis’ WeatherLink Console. Definitely include an external antenna!
- Better performance/firmware (try to avoid needing to reboot the display off and on, the WeatherLink Console used a variant of Android, not sure if the Tempest Display should or use some other software)
- Customizable tiles
- Graphing/Charting
- It could connect directly to the station and also double as a second Hub, eventually packages could ship with the Display instead of the Hub for those who don’t need a second Hub
- Alerts and lightning alerts
- Forecasts
- Radar
- View other Tempest stations on a Map, favorite select stations.
Sorry to rain a little on your parade, but lots of things would be great. Unfortunately Mick was right. You can’t always get what you want…
I’d suggest you spend some time and try to spin up a bit on the 7 or so years of history in the forums and set your expectations accordingly.
WF has historically had zero interest in providing ‘any’ console at all. It is believed that this is a business decision. Their architecture assumes a very mobile-centric setup:
- you need their mobile app to set the station up
- you are expected to use their mobile app and/or web page to access its data
- you can choose to make your station public, but it’s not required that you do so
- you must have a hub - the hub connects continuously to WF servers
- each sensor is registered to ‘one’ hub on your LAN, setup via the mobile app
- you cannot touch firmware at all - WF pushes updates occasionally at their pacing
- you cannot tune the sensors yourself, they get tuned by WF magic-math that is undisclosed to us. They used to call it ‘continuous learning’ but I don’t know what today’s term is
- many things (lightning, altered rain) come only from WF servers
- other readings can be heard in the UDP broadcast to your LAN whether you want it or not
- diagnostic data is not available to the users
- there used to be built-in compensations for physical design of the sensors (example - corrected temp readings based on temp+wind+solar) but we have no visibility toward what they massage, no ‘off’ switches for that, and no idea what the corrections are. You get whatever the Hub gives you when it’s done tweaking things based on its tunings and firmware
There is a nice set of APIs if you want to develop - WeatherFlow Tempest API & Developer Platform
That said, there are a variety of ways to get nice dashboards if you do some work yourself. These include:
- run weewx and roll your own dashboard and use a Kindle Fire for a touchscreen
- run the great pi-based wfpiconsole app (pi + touchscreen)
- run Home Assistant and roll your own dashboard, again easily displayed on a Kindle Fire
If you want less configurable variants, there are lots of third-party-integrations out there including:
- Obligatory WeatherFlow e-ink Display - display data using a pi to an ePaper display
- WeatherFlow PiConsole - app for a raspi to display to a connected display, touch screen supported if you have a touchscreen display for the pi
- Tempest Weather Display - LightMaps - commercial product
The LightMaps $119 product seems to be not configurable but it looks pretty turn-key. The two pi-centric integrations above are more labor and more expensive probably but your labor to install/configure/support is worth something too. Regardless it’s far less than half the price of a Davis WeatherLink Console, although admittedly they do not act like a Hub at all.
I could see building an os+app combination for either e-ink or piconsole, possibly even a docker image, as very doable. But that doesn’t mean it can be productized into a product you’d make money developing, selling, and supporting.
(best example I can give you there is Home Assistant - you can buy their very expensive little pi-based hardware, but you can get there MUCH cheaper and more flexibly if you run their docker variant on your own pi and configure/alter as you see fit. Somebody at NabuCasa is being paid to do os updates, regression testing, etc. for their version changes. That has to cost some serious $$$).
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Thanks for the feedback. I have a Raspberry Pi here, so I may take a look at it (and compare it with LightMaps). I’m already running WxBox on it so I can send data from my Tempest to CWOP and PWS Weather (and it’s working great, those were two areas that WF also never implemented).
I guess I could also start my own company some time and build my own turnkey Tempest display and make some money that way. 
Davis has gone in a similar direction with being mobile-centric, but they ended up developing the WeatherLink Console since enough people wanted a console, plus this way they can have a higher-end hub and still monetize the data from customers from it that send data to WeatherLink’s servers.
“If” WF ever got into the Display business, the sensible move would be that it could double as a Hub (basically a touchscreen Hub) like Davis did with their WeatherLink Console. It would basically give WF an upsell for customers who want a fancier/touchscreen Hub. The WeatherLink Console basically ran its own variant of the WeatherLink app optimized for the console, so if WF made a similar move, it wouldn’t take away from its mobile-centric focus. It would just provide something fancier it could sell at a higher price.
Customers can’t touch the firmware on Davis’ devices either now with the WeatherLink stuff. It’s all automatic. It was the old devices that allowed customers to manually update their own firmware at their will.
Davis stations still have some form of customer-allowed calibration that WF hasn’t allowed yet, but there are still some limits without actually changing out hardware parts. Lighting also came from AEM’s servers as well.
I’m not holding my breath that WF will implement all (or even some) of the feedback I’m providing. Working for Davis, customers threw all sorts of excellent feedback to me as a front-line support rep. Some of that feedback will take years for them to implement, some likely never will. It’s likely the same scenario with WF/Tempest, but I’m willing to at least throw the feedback out there so they can at least have my 20 years of experience in this industry to hear how they can dominate the market, if they so choose to listen. If they don’t implement any of it, their loss, but at least I had an opportunity to air the feedback,
I doubt WF has altered much if anything in their product line based on forum posts here. Perhaps the latest generation hub antenna+ethernet changes. Impossible to know.
The problem for a console is WF would have to compete with the much higher volume Chinese (likely stolen tech) vendors like Ecowitt who sell their gear for pennies comparatively.
Ecowitt hub/gateways are as cheap as $69 to $165 price range and they ‘do’ work, with less slickness under the hood than WF of course end-to-end.
But consider the variants I mentioned for getting a console yourself:
- pi4 + wfpiconsole + display is perhaps $150 and an hour or two labor
- pi3 and the e-ink app is well under $100 and an hour of labor
- pi3 (or even a zero) and a Kindle Fire 8 displaying weewx is under $100 and an hour of time
- the commercial product I mentioned is under $125 or so too
I can sure understand WF not getting into the display market. A handful of trouble tickets per month from folks who didn’t plug the console in or the like would eat up every dime of potential profit.
I’m definitely going to research those other options for sure. I have a spare Pi here on site. I may even try the turnkey option (once I take another job and get some extra income).
The Davis/WeatherLink Consoles are Chinese-made displays, just with a custom Android app on them. They’re sold $$$, and dedicated Davis customers still buy them up. There is a market for this, but WF might want to see more research from Tempest users before seeing if it’d ever be worth the effort or leave it to the third-parties to innovate.
The good news is working for tech support on the main weather display they’d need to compete with, if WF ever wanted to venture into this route, I know all of the design decisions not to do.
Even if WF doesn’t implement any feedback, I’ve just had fun giving it all to WF here (as I’d love to see them dominate the weather station market).
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In the meantime, I did browse the WF store, and there are some good third-party solutions (some that were mentioned here). I’m glad to see WF featuring the third-party solutions to make it easy for customers who want something to find one.
I’m also running more tests with WxBox and giving the developer feedback. He might consider a display option with WxBox as another DIY display. WxBox is already taking care of the two main gaps I needed resolved with my Tempest (CWOP and PWS Weather support) and doing it wonderfully.
Not to belabor the point, but weewx and perhaps the Belchertown skin over nginx as a webserver would be your most trivial option to set up. An under 5 minute install on top of a pi that is up and running.
Just get a cheapo tablet and use free Fully Kiosk Browser and set it as the home URL. Kindle Fire models work just fine and are already on pre-BlackFriday sale.
Weewx can upload to almost anything - CWOP, WOW, WOW-BE, AWEKAS, PWSweather, WUnderground are included in as core uploaders. There are about 30 other user-generated uploaders in the weewx wiki you can add. Likely even more than that.
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Thanks. I’ve heard a lot of good about weewx and may give it a spin sometime. Good to see it as another solid option out there.
From someone that came from a real weather station. I thought this one would be promising. But it’s nothing but a joke. I’m so glad you love yours.
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