After doing a lot of reading past weeks, I convinced myself that in my case zwave with (probably) a MiOS device would be the best option for me. But after investigating the prices of the desired switches and modules, I come to the conclusion I cannot find a proper outdoor wireless temperature sensor.
Is it just me, or is this indeed hard to find? How do others solve this “problem”. Its an assumption, but I feel I’m not the only one who has a wish to involve outdoor temperature in Home Automation. Even only for informational purposes I find interesting to have it in my system.
Hope you can help or elaborate on the options I have.
I access data provided by a local PWS (Personal Weather Station) located two blocks from my house. The data is pushed in real-time to Wunderground. There’s a plugin available or you can write your own luup code to access a plethora of outdoor information (e.g. Soil moisture, leaf wetness, Solar wm/2, humidity, real-feel temp etc.). In either case (plugin/luup), you’ll need to acquire an API key (free but limited to x number of calls per day, I poll every 3 minutes) from Wunderground. Aside from the time to set everything up, it’s free…
More information on the plugin can be found within the programming section.
Sorry if it sounded as if the plugin provided access to all the Wunderground data, that was not my intent. You’d have to write luup code to make the call, parse and store information not available via the plugin. I stopped using the plugin awhile back and just parse all the data myself.
[quote=“dpackham, post:3, topic:182387”]What’s the name of the plugin you refer to that gives you leaf wetness? Etc?
As mentioned above I also use the Wunderground service and that works really well. But the Aeotec 4 in 1 which includes temperature also 100% outdoor compatible which is useful for the actual temperature at your house. However, be warned the Aeotec 4 in 1 has terrible z-wave range so you would need to limit this to 15m from your nearest repeating node.
Okay guys, thanks for you answers. This kind of confirms, there is nothing really that is zwave compatible and works up to the standard. It still is possible but I need to go into plugins or other workarounds.
I’ll take all this in consideration. Other option I had is the less familiar Homewizard solution(http://www.homewizard.nl/). This dutch I believe, but does support all kind of (affordable) solutions. Its nowhere as sophisticated as fibaro or MIOS, but if it doesnt really support temperature sensors, it feels like a dealbreaker for me.
For the sake of simplicity as the code is quite comprehensive and out of scope for what your asking, I’ll provide a simple example:
local http = require("socket.http")
local json = require("akb-json")
local url = http.request("http://api.wunderground.com/api/'your API key here'/conditions/alerts/astronomy/q/pws:'Your PWS here'.json")
local X = json.decode(url)
Previously I was having reliability issues with the JSON (I assume by default) loaded on the unit, so I downloaded the akb-json (which can be found on this site) and have used that without incident.
[quote=“dpackham, post:5, topic:182387”]OK cool. Care to post your luup code that parses?
These ones are part of the plugin, along with forecast information a bag of others that were added a few months back, and has since been pushed to apps.mios.com:
So what’s the least expensive way to connect a reliable outdoor thermometer? I use the WU plugin for temp, and a degree or two doesn’t matter to me. But I’m curious for people who don’t/can’t use the plugin, what’s the best choice?
It’s not a general purpose thermostat. It’s designed to alarm on a temp or humidity out-of-range condition, but doesn’t otherwise reliably report to vera. I have one that works great at controlling basement humidity. But many people have been frustrated trying to use it as a general temperature or humidity reporting device.
If they make an ST814 that actually works as described in the everspring documentation, a lot of people would be happy.
I’m now just getting into the Arduino and MySensors option so that’s another low cost, fairly steep learning curve option… So far the Arduino sensors that I’ve built up also seem to work very well, but they have only been running for ~2 weeks…
How often does your ST814 report? The unit in my basement gives me an idea of conditions, but it’s not pollable, and it doesn’t report at the frequency set under the advanced tab. The only indoor thermostats that I know of that are fully functional are the HVAC type.
Zwave Alliance has twice approved the ST814. So there may actually be an old and new version of the device. I would buy another one if I could get one that would report temp. at set intervals.