Are there plans to offer a separate visual display where we can put in our home and see the stats without having to use phone, tablet, or browser? I see that some people have rigged this to work with a tablet, but thought I remembered seeing something about an integrated display being developed?
When you do the production math, it costs less to take a mass-produced tablet (like they give away in a box of cereal as a prize these days) and install an app versus manufacturing a dedicated console device at the low volume that weather stations generally sell. Street price, the Raspberry Pi official 7" touchscreen module is $70 USD on Amazon, and a complete Amazon Fire 7" tablet is only $50 USD.
I don’t work for WF and have never priced a production run in China, but my napkin-math for quantity 1000 of a color console specific to WF is likely going to cost north of $100 USD to manufacture…and that’s not the street price. That’s assuming that you can get 1/3 of the entire backer list to part with about $150 USD to buy one.
As for me, I’m in for the $50 option…
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(FYI, yes, there was word of a dedicated display option in the original campaign, but I’m sure that manufacturing realities quickly removed it from the project roadmap since having a smartphone to do the setup and view the data is already a requirement…)
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I’m currently working on a Python GUI to display the stats measured by Sky and Air. It’s designed to run on the official Raspberry Pi touch screen, which can be mounted to the wall with something like this:
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/smartipi-touch
I am only developing in my spare time so can’t promise any timescales (or even a finished GUI if life gets in the way), but watch this space if you are interested.
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This section lists users and products developed especially for being a Console.
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As an Amazon Prime Day promotion, I see that a refurbished Fire HD 8 is currently going for $39.99. This might make for a nice and inexpensive console.
http://www.aftvnews.com/prime-day-discounts-on-select-refurbished-echos-kindles-and-fire-tablets-are-now-live/
Correct. We evaluated all options to produce our own Android-powered tablet for a DISPLAY. Financially it never made sense for us to produce or for our customers to purchase when compared to the plethora of low-cost tablets available.
As example, one can purchase an Amazon table for ~US$50 or a low-price Android tablet for under $60. If we were to source a cheap Chinese Android tablet, design and manufacture a WeatherFlow case, modify the software to run just our Android app…it would cost more than US$70 to manufacture with huge minimums like 10,000. At that cost to manufacture, we would then need to retail for at least ~US$150+ just to break even. That’s bad business.
If you’re curious, below are concept images when we were thinking of building a WeatherFlow DISPLAY (we will not be producing).
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I posted this tidbit in another thread, but thought it’d apply here as well. I used the tutorial linked below to “hack” my Fire HD 8 to install the Google Play store, which in turn, allowed me to download and install the WeatherFlow app on my Fire tablet so I could use it as a console:
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