Introduction: Acurite 5 in 1 Weather Station Using a Raspberry Pi and Weewx (other Weather Stations Are Compatible)
When I had bought the Acurite 5 in 1 weather station I wanted to be able to check the weather at my home while I was away. When I got home and set it up I realized I either had to have the display connected to a computer or buy their smart hub, well having it connected to my laptop or desktop was quite restrictive to me and I didn't want to buy their smart hub so I did some research and came up with this, Note this will work with other weather stations. Here is a list of the hardware supported hardware,
I have wrote this for newbies to Raspberry Pis and Linux based operating systems, for anyone can do this.
Step 1: Materials
a Raspberry PI, I used a Raspberry PI 3b
a keyboard and mouse or keypad
HDMI cable
a micro sd card
a Raspberry PI case (optional)
you can get kits with everything you will need from amazon such as the link I provided
Step 2: Installing Raspbian
First thing you will have to do is install Raspbian onto the micro sd card. You can download Raspbian from raspberrypi.org download (Raspbian (version name) with desktop) if you are familiar with Raspberry PI you can use the minimal version. You can follow the directions from Raspberrypi.org (do not unzip the file if you use my method). Myself I use a different software for installing it on a micro sd I use rufus when using this software MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE CORRECT DRIVE! also when selecting the bootable image select dd image then select the raspbian zip file.
After you install Raspbian onto the micro sd card insert the sd card into the micro sd slot on your Raspberry PI hook up your HDMI cable to your TV or monitor and to your Raspberry PI and then your mouse and keyboard after that then hook up your power to your Raspberry PI ensure your monitor/ TV is on.
Step 3: Prepare Your Raspbarry PI
Once it boots up configure your WiFi connection (assuming you are using WiFi)
then go start > preferences > Raspberry Pi configuration select the interfaces tab and select SSH the reason for this is that this will not be connected to your monitor/ TV so you will need to be able to connect to this from another computer
select the localisation tab and configure your local and set your timezone and keyboard
select the system tab and change your password
click ok and then restart your system
connect your USB cable up for your weather station
now click the terminal icon on the task bar to open a terminal
now the first thing is to make sure your system is up to date in the terminal type in
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
now to make sure your firmware is up to date
sudo rpi-update
reboot the system and reopen the terminal you can reboot the system from the terminal sudo reboot
once the terminal is open now we ware going to install weewx you can use the documentation at weewx it is the same as what I will show you but before you start get the longitude and latitude you can use the NASA website and also know about how far up your weather station is sitting
This step is optional weewx does supply its own website that is ran off your raspberry pi if you would like to use this feature install apache2
sudo apt-get install apache2
now you are going to tell apt where the repository is
wget -qO - http://weewx.com/keys.html | sudo apt-key add -
wget -qO - http://weewx.com/apt/weewx.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list
then update and install
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install weewx
after this installs it will run a initial config program here you will name your station put your long and lat in elevation of your weather station once you are done with that you can shut down and move your weather station monitor and Raspberry Pi to where you would like to put it this is where the SSH comes in you will need to download a program called Putty and install it on your computer you will need to know your ip address you can find it from the terminal just type ifconfig and look for wlan0 inet there will be your ip address if you are using wifi
Step 4: Finish Configuring Weewx
Now if you moved your weather monitor and raspberry pi and installed putty open putty up if you didn't just open a terminal if you are new to putty when you open it fill in your ip address default port of 22 is fine and make sure SSH is selected click open, then user name is pi and use the password you created earlier now in your terminal
sudo nano /etc/weewx/weewx.conf
now use your arrow keys find
first review the [station] section to ensure the info is correct then look for "This section is for uploading data to Internet sites" find your online service I used weather underground scroll to the weather underground website to where it says get started click the connect now link and register your weather station. fill in your info
[[Wunderground]]
# This section is for configuring posts to the Weather Underground.
# If you wish to do this, set the option 'enable' to true,
# and specify a station (e.g., 'KORHOODR3') and password.
enable = true station = Put your station id here
# To guard against parsing errors, put your password in quotes:
password = station key goes here
# Set the following to True to have weewx use the WU "Rapidfire"
# protocol. Not all hardware can support it. See the User's Guide.
rapidfire = False
now you are going to control x to exit it will ask you if you want to save the file enter y to save and enter again to save to the file name
now you are going to want to restart weewx
sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop
sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start
exit your terminal or putty window
Step 5: Finial Notes
If you installed apache you can from your web browser enter your ip address in and bring up weewx website that you are hosting on your Raspberry PI. You can change the skin of the website by downloading skins and installing them you can find out how to do this at the weewx website doc section there is a lot of good information on their website I do suggest browsing it,
Here is just a side thought if you do have a Acurite weather monitor it would not be to hard to make a wooden frame big enough to enclose the weather monitor and Raspberry PI all in one and hang it on the wall just remember to keep your weather monitor within range of the weather station.
I hope this was useful to you
