Upgrade my weatherstation to WeeWX 5

Table of Contents

I moved the weatherstation software again to another computer, this time a virtual one – that means one Raspberry Pi less on the windowsill.

The installation process is also covered in the 5.0 docs.

Creating the virtual environment #

$ sudo pacman -S python-pip

$ python -m venv ~/weewx-venv
$ source ~/weewx-venv/bin/activate
$ python -m pip install weewx

The installation is complete, let’s create the station. I like doing upgrades “from scratch” because I can use an up-to-date configuration file – although it is more work to add the old changes to the new file.

Create the new station #

$ weectl station create

Follow the instructions on the command line. Edit the freshly created configuration file.

$ nvim ~/weewx-data/weewx.conf

Including my old settings and add the GW1000 configuration for the plugin that I will soon install.

Installing the extensions #

Do this within the virtual environment!

Install the GW1000 driver:

$ weectl extension install https://github.com/gjr80/weewx-gw1000/releases/latest/download/gw1000.zip

Install the WDC theme:

$ wget -O "/tmp/weewx-wdc.zip" https://github.com/Daveiano/weewx-wdc/releases/download/v3.5.1/weewx-wdc-v3.5.1.zip
$ mkdir /tmp/weewx-wdc/
$ unzip /tmp/weewx-wdc.zip -d /tmp/weewx-wdc/
$ weectl extension install -y /tmp/weewx-wdc/

Install the XAGGS extension:

$ weectl extension install https://github.com/tkeffer/weewx-xaggs/archive/master.zip

Install forecast plugin:

$ wget https://github.com/chaunceygardiner/weewx-forecast/releases/download/v3.4.0b12/weewx-forecast-3.4.0b12.zip
$ weectl extension install weewx-forecast-3.4.0b12.zip

Install the OpenWeatherMap extension:

$ wget -O weewx-owm.zip https://github.com/matthewwall/weewx-owm/archive/master.zip
$ weectl extension install weewx-owm.zip

Install Systemd and udev files #

$ sudo sh ~/weewx-data/scripts/setup-daemon.sh

My installation died everyday at 5 AM and so I modified the systemd files at the [Service] section:

--- weewx.service	2024-06-13 21:13:50.115021718 +0200
+++ /etc/systemd/system/weewx.service	2024-06-11 05:22:43.224222604 +0200
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@
 ExecStart=/home/dominic/weewx-venv/bin/python /home/dominic/weewx-venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/weewxd.py /home/dominic/weewx-data/weewx.conf
 StandardOutput=null
 StandardError=journal+console
+RestartSec=60
+Restart=on-failure
 User=dominic
 Group=dominic

Adopt the configuration files #

Again, to include the latest changes and themes.

$ nvim ~/weewx-data/weewx.conf
$ nvim ~/weewx-data/skins/weewx-wdc/skin.conf

Start WeeWX and test the configuration:

$ weewxd

If everything runs without problems we can now enable and start the Systemd service.

$ sudo systemctl enable weewx.service

I like to test it with a full reboot, if you just want to start the daemon right away you can also run sudo systemctl enable --now weewx.service instead.

Register the station on OpenWeatherMap #

After creating an API key (which I already have because of the forecast plugin that I use already) we can register our new station on the command line with curl.

$ curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" --request POST \
  --data '{"external_id": "LGFD_OE7DRT","name": "OE7DRT-13, Laengenfeld, Tirol, Austria","latitude": 47.07321210625363, "longitude": 10.974540559888204, "altitude": 1202}' \
  "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0/stations?appid={APIKEY}"

That should give you something like this (probably without linebreaks!):

{
  "ID": "${STATION_ID}",
  "updated_at": "2024-06-23T07:40:47.276754274Z",
  "created_at": "2024-06-23T07:40:47.276754093Z",
  "user_id": "${USERID}",
  "external_id": "LGFD_OE7DRT",
  "name": "OE7DRT-13, Laengenfeld, Tirol, Austria",
  "latitude": 47.07321210625363,
  "longitude": 10.974540559888204,
  "altitude": 1202,
  "rank": 10,
  "source_type": 5
}

I haven’t found any information about the format of altitude so I currently used 1202, which represents my stations height in meters.

To change a stations information I’d then send another request like:

$ curl --header "Content-Type: application/json" --request PUT \
  --data '{"external_id": LGFD_OE7DRT, "name": "OE7DRT-13, Längenfeld, Tirol, Austria"}' \
  "http://api.openweathermap.org/data/3.0/stations/${STATION_ID}?appid=${APIKEY}"

Send the URL as the stations status text #

Create another virtual environment:

$ python -m venv ~/aprs-venv
$ python -m pip install aprslib

Create systemd files for the user:

$ mkdir -p .config/systemd/user

Create these two files in the directory above:

aprs-sendstatus.timer:

[Unit]
Description="Send APRS status package to APRS-IS for the Weatherstation"

[Timer]
OnBootSec=2min
OnUnitInactiveSec=30min
Unit=aprs-sendstatus.service

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

aprs-sendstatus.service:

[Unit]
Description="Send APRS status package to APRS-IS for the Weatherstation"
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/dominic/aprs-venv/bin/python /home/dominic/bin/aprs_sendstatus.py

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Enable the timer:

$ systemctl --user daemon-reload
$ systemctl --user enable --now aprs-sendstatus.timer

Check if the timer is listed:

$ systemctl --user list-timers
NEXT                          LEFT LAST                               PASSED UNIT                  ACTIVATES
Sun 2024-06-30 21:54:20 CEST 25min Sun 2024-06-30 21:24:19 CEST 4min 18s ago aprs-sendstatus.timer aprs-sendstatus.service

1 timers listed.
Pass --all to see loaded but inactive timers, too.