About
Weatherstation from Längenfeld, Tyrol, Austria
Hi, my name is Dominic and if you want more information about me visit my regular website at oe7drt.com/about/.
How is this built together?
Hardware
I use an Ecowitt Gateway GW1100 which collects weather data from the WS69 outdoor sensor.
Software
WeeWX
WeeWX is the main application, it collects the weather data and puts it all into a SQLite database. All the calculations are done by WeeWX and it is also the application that builds together the website from templates provided by the Skin. It also uploads the finished website to my webserver.
weewx-wdc
The Skin that I am using is called weewx-wdc. The wiki on the Github page is very useful.
Extensions
I am using some extensions (additionally to the theme/skin). First of all I use weewx-gw1000 to interact with the Ecowitt Gateway 1100A.
There is also an extension in use that shows historical values. It is called weewx-xaggs.
To display the computer stats I use the weewx-cmon extension (I will probably remove this useless stat page in a future version).
Since June 2024 I also post to OpenWeatherMap by using the extension weewx-owm.
Finally I use the weewx-forecast extension to show a basic forecast on the index page (today).
Extensions list and versions
How old is the data on this website?
The data on this website gets updated every 5 Minutes in general, there are a few tradeoffs though: the month and year tab get updated every hour, the statistics page gets updated twice a day.
This is a registered NWS/MADIS weather station
WX Quality Checks for this station
MADIS AV859 CWOP/APRSWXnet QC reports
Links to other presentations of this weather station
WUnderground
I left this link here, because the station still exists — but I stopped posting data to WUnderground a while ago.
Ecowitt
I think you need an account to view the station on the Ecowitt website.
APRS.fi
Makes the APRS-IS network visible :)
findU (no SSL)
The findU site gets delivered via HTTP and chances are good that your browser warns you because it wants to redirect you to the HTTPS version of it (which cannot be found). Although there is nothing bad at plain HTTP pages because the information delivered does not need to be encrypted in the first place.
Changelog
January 2022
The weatherstation has been set up with Netatmo hardware. I only had basic measurements without wind and rain.
December 2022
Rain and wind sensors have been added (still Netatmo hardware).
June 2024
I upgraded to WeeWX 5 in early June 2023 and I regret it for the first weeks. The weatherstation ran fine with version 4.10.2 and version 5 constantly stopped posting to the CWOP servers (it runs fine now since I modified the systemd service files (unit files) and moved from a remote MySQL server to a local SQLite database.
The website (its webserver) has moved from an OpenBSD server to a Linux server. The server location has also changed from Germany (Nuremberg) to Austria (Vienna).
A lightning strike sensor was installed on 20 June 2024.
February 2025
Until now a few python upgrades disrupted the proper workflow of the WeeWX weatherstation as the virtual environment had to be upgraded - this installation was the first time for me using this so I learned a lot (I'm pretty sure I will forget half of it).
On 21 February 2025 I created two scripts that supply a) an image of the sky in
Längenfeld and b) a timelapse video of the last day.
Both are included in the frontpage besides the forecast and on
Webcams/Externals
(found in the menu/sidebar).
Plans for the future
I plan to replace this station with some higher quality station like a Davis or AcuRite.
I cannot recommend this Ecowitt station at all (same for the Netatmo hardware).
Remember this
Some links to not forget (because this Ecowitt soilMoisture Sensor sucks). It delivers values in percent, but weewx expects centibar and I have no clue how to properly convert this yet.
- https://groups.google.com/g/weewx-user/c/sp93dcUTbL0
- https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=41714.0
Yes, that is the reason why my soilmoisture sensor is in a flower pot instead outdoor besides my thuja hedge.