Having just replaced my Peet Brothers 2100 (after many faithful years) with an Ambient Weather WS-2000 System, I’m having difficulties in connecting it to Weather Display. Unfortunately, the manual, and most help screens, are aimed at the Davis weather systems, so lack detail and specifics to other stations. It worked very well with my Peet Brothers (through a serial port) by providing continuous data from the weather equipment. However, the only working method for the Ambient so far is by getting information from the AmbientWeather website… which is very delayed and makes the use of the gauges nearly impossible. Besides, Ambient has a tendancy to “disconnect” after you have been downloading data often.
I have read other entries that describe (but not in detail or purpose) the use of the Weather Bridge. Am I correct in understanding that if I connect my system as described below, that I can provide a continuous stream to the Weather Display software:
USB out from the WS-2000 display to a USB hub (2.0 or greater) to the USB port on the WeatherBridge. The WeatherBridge would then connect via WiFi to the same network as the Weather-Display software.
If the above is correct, will any USB 2.0 hub work, or is there a recommended hub?
In the Weather-Display software, am I correct that under the station type, Ambient, that I enter the WeatherBridge IP address under “Use Via WiFi Direct (easiest)”?
Obviously, my goal is to get a continuous stream from the weather station so Weather-Display can create the “customclientraw.txt” file necessary for Steel Gauges and other files necessary to keep “Saratoga” style web site functioning!
if you get a GW1000 type bridge then WD can get the data direct from that
otherwise yes WD can be set to get data from meteobridge(also called weatherbridge) (see in the com port setup, TCP/IP setup tab)
UPDATE: I have been corrected :oops: See follow-up posts
With all due respect, I have a correction: WD will not be able to get data from Meteobridge via TCP/IP unless the Meteobridge has a Davis station logger connected. The Meteobridge TCP/IP data connection is not really with the Meteobridge itself but rather it is a pass through to the Davis logger. The WD menu Control Panel / Comm Port TCP/IP is only for Davis even if you have a Meteobridge.
If you do get a Meteobridge it won’t be able to get data either from the WS-2000… unless you also add the GW1000. Whatever you do, do not get the ObserverIP. It is technically obsolete in comparison to the GW1000.
In the case of the WS-2000, being that it is not a Davis station then WD will not be able to get data via TCP/IP as there would be no Davis logger connected.
The WS-2000 is not able to pass data via USB nor via WiFi. There just isn’t any easy way to get data from the WS-2000 directly. That is why as Brian has stated the best option is to buy an Ecowitt GW1000 as that will pickup your sensor array and allow WD to get data from it via its network API that WD supports.
The GW1000 is a great investment. You’ll be able to run WD and Meteobridge at the same time (and other software).
The reason the Ecowitt GW1000 works to get data from your WS-2000 sensor array is because they are both made by Fine Offset. The frequency will match if you order from Amazon US as it will be 915 MHz as your WS-2000. Realize the GW1000 doesn’t need your WS-2000 display at all as it is picking up the sensors directly. The GW1000 is very easy to configure with its mobile app (WS View).
the TCP/IP data from meteobridge into WD is not a davis protocol though at all, i.e its not tied to davis data logger or anything
as long as meteobridge can get data from a supported hardware then WD can get a data feed (in a format that is unique to meteobridge/hub)from it
but the issue here is that meteobridge needs a GW1000 to get data from the weather station just like WD does
Well I have a GW1000 and it feeds my Meteobridge. I’ve have tried to get WD to pull data from the Meteobridge and there is no success.
If you still remember my Teamviewer login from our work in developing the GW1000 support for WD you are welcome to jump in and take a look. On second though I’ll just PM you it again. I’ll have my Meteobridge interface logged in for you too…but I don’t think there is anything to do there.
My Meteobridge: 192.168.1.231
My GW1000: 192.168.1.233
Just remember to disable Ecowitt G1000 client in WD as that is what is now feeding WD. This is a test system…so you can’t break anything. I don’t care for the missed data in WD in this system.
Brian has configured my WD to get data from my Meteobridge. The Meteobridge is being feed data from my GW1000. No Davis logger required. I asked this question in the Meteobridge community forums and I was told repeatedly that it was not possible to do this. I should have asked here. I will say though that a few things is are a bit confusing and not intuitive in the final configuration to accomplish this.
Feedback for possible WD user interface experience improvement:
The required TCP/IP Connection settings under Comm Port Setup is not where I would have expected to find this. I did though touch on this menu but I backed out when I saw Use with Meteohub I actually think I never even looked to see what was nested under Meteohub because I don’t have a Meteohub as that is a different device altogether than a Meteobridge.
Although Comm/IP Port is its own icon under Control Panel perhaps maybe this belongs under Station Type & Settings. There are after all many other TPC/IP type connection settings under Station Type & Settings so why would this issue we are discussing be any different?
Thank you Brian!
NB - But for anyone with a GW1000 and a Meteobridge, I would suggest just having WD get data directly from the GW1000 as it supports multiple software simultaneously and because this will enable more of the optional sensors, besides it is more direct and it is always a better idea to remove the middleman if possible. You don’t want to lose data just because the Meteobridge goes down if the GW1000 is still up. I suppose this WD pull from MB could be useful for those that feed the Meteobridge by some other means…like the ObserverIP or from other Meteobridge supported hardware that perhaps WD is not able to share the direct connection with.
Hi Neighbor! (I’m just north of you in Gainesville!). And many thanks for confirming the GW1000 is the answer! I have one on order from Amazon (should be here tomorrow (Friday)). Looking forward to having my Steel Gauges working live once again!
I’ll respond again tomorrow after the GW1000 is installed. Thanks again to everyone!
First, let me say this…IT WORKS! The GW-1000 very inexpensive ($35 on Amazon) and easy way to get the Ambient WS-2000 data into WD! So far, I have only found one minor problem (and I’m not sure if I may have something set wrong!).
First, I have confirmed this by matching wind speed and wind gust readings between the Ambient display and the WS View app for the GW-1000… everything matches perfectly.
However, in WD, the wind is displayed as “wind average” and the wind gust is displayed as “current wind speed”. Any thoughts on where to fix this?
Thanks for all the help so far… you have saved me a lot of trial and error (not to say… a lot of money!)
Maybe I need to clarify… The “current wind” on the Ambient display is showing in Weather-Display as the “Average Wind Speed” and the “Gust speed” on the Ambient display is showing in Weather-Display as the “Current Wind Speed”. These indicated correctly when I was using the Peet Brothers 2100.
This also causes the SteelSeries Gauges to display the wind gust rather than the actual “current” wind speed.
Also, is the lightning and solar radiation/UV from the GW-1000 supported?
I didn’t mention earlier, but I am using 10.37S build 114.
I have two display consoles from Ambient, WS-2902A and WS-2000. Neither one says “current wind”. They say “Wind” and “Gust.” The WS View app and Ecowitt.net also only use “Wind” and “Gust.”
In some places in WD when you pull up some of the other graphs it does use the word “Gust” and that shows the same type of wind as what WD on main dashboard is called “Current Wind Speed.”
This took me a while to digest too. I think it is just a development history thing with WD that at some early development point it probably supported an anemometer that only supplied actual live wind speed, and WD then was designed for live wind to be Current Wind and it took and calculated an average of some seconds or minutes to then call that Average. With these newer modern electronic consoles they are able to keep track of their own recent gust and they can report two wind values. Therefore WD no longer needs to calculate the Average. But being that there were already two wind classifications it made more sense to just put the new electronic stations Wind speed into Average and Gust into Current Wind. It would have made way less sense to have done the opposite as average wind would just seem odd if it was used to show gust speed.
Your Peet Bros was probably just the type of station that only reported live wind… or rather Current Wind, and its average needed to be calculated by software. Just a guess.
So, please allow me to ask a couple questions. If you go WS2000 → GW1000 → WD do extra sensors, ie extra temp/hum and lightning detector come along and show up in WD? Also, can some one, in a few lines guide how this setup is put together? I get tired of Ambient putting WD “over limit” and data not really being current. It doesn’t matter 99% of the time, but in the middle of a weather event of some sort it becomes quite annoying to look at wd and not get current data. For $35 that a quite reasonable solution.
yes WD handles extra sensor data from a GW1000
and re the setup, there are a number of threads about the GW1000 already (which is probably why your Q has not been answered by anyone else)
its easy to setup,all you need to know is the IP address of the GW1000 bridge device and enter that in WD
(get that either from your router config (connected devices) or it shows up in the app)
I have received my GW1000 and it seems to be working as desired. No rain or lightning yet, but i see the raw data coming in on the Cron display.
I do not see my extra temp sensors (there are 2) coming in on the raw data and, obviously, they do not get display from the tags i had set up for Ambient WS2000. Is there something i am missing to set up? They are showing in the raw data looking on my phone directly at the GW1000 data.
The solar w/m2 is coming into the main server WD machine, but is not transfering to the client WD machine.
I thought i was running the latest, but i downloaded and reinstalled again just in case. Crongw1000 shows version 3.2, but i don’t see the extra temp sensor data being parsed out of the raw data. Can’t read the raw data, but it is showing up on my phone in the ecowitt app, so the devices are registered and producing data.
I gotta say, even with this minor bump in the road, this is MUCH better than using the Ambient API.