Gina

Don't quite understand ESP-NOW.  Says if doesn't use WiFi yet isn't wired so does it use BlueTooth?

Ordered a BME280 due to arrive tomorrow.  That will go in the Stevenson Screen on the north wall of the obsy.  I'll use a DHT22 for inside the scope room.  Have several of those.  Or the other way round - just that I only need one pressure sensor.  Don't know what the use the altitude sensor is.

I presume you mean this one :- https://lastminuteengineers.com/bme280-esp32-weather-station/

I think that's a good idea.  I reckon I could modify the code to do what I want OK.  It would certainly be a good first step.

Can only find ESP-now for ESP8266 - not ESP32.

I thought installing WeeWX into the ESP was asking too much - WeeWX looks like a powerful piece of software.

I wondered about ESP-now for using two ESPs.  Sounds like a solution.

Read right through that now and not all the code is included! 😮  I may be able to glean some information from it but I'm none too hopeful.

I Googled ESP and WeeWX and came up with THIS which might form a basis for what I want.  It uses an RPi as the client rather than a desktop or laptop and ESP8266 like I have with lots of pins.  I guess an ESP32 would work as well.  I haven't read right through the article yet but it looks hopeful.

One thing I was hoping I might do as an extra would be a wall display of the weather data with analogue dials.  An RPi would drive these gauges nicely.

That one seems to connect via USB not LAN/WiFi.

Most of those - don't think I have anything to add.  Oh yes...  Forgetting to set things correctly!!

I think I prefer the WeeWX approach but I don't know if it is possible to make the ESP look like one of the commercial stations. 

I have yet to find something which will work as I would like.  The ESP as web server is interesting though complicated and would require quite a lot of work to add the wind sensors and rain gauge.

Another problem may be that I was thinking of having 2 ESPs in different places to cover all the WS sensors.

Maybe I need to rethink the whole thing.

11 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Doesn't have to be ekos. Before I coded it so that indi drivers could poll the data, I coded it as an ordinary web server, like this

https://lastminuteengineers.com/bme280-esp32-weather-station/

That's interesting.  Hadn't though of making the ESP a web server, indeed didn't know it was possible.  So all the HTML code is put in the ESP32.  That should work fine for a simple weather station but I wonder if there's space to generate graphs and charts as I've done in the past using Python and GnuPlot.

I think the WiFi range should be alright but I'll bear that in mind.

My plan was not to use the weather station to control the roof but to display the weather data indoors - particularly wind direction and speed plus temperature and humidity outdoors and in the obsy.

I'll check that out as it could do what I want but I did say "weather station using an ESP without anything to do with Ekos etc."  Sorry Wim.

Checking out the documentation I've found another problem.  The drivers included are for the many proprietary stations.  Can't see any mention of ESP.  Maybe I would need to code the ESP to use one of those station data formats.

I come back the the query of whether anyone here has a working weather station using an ESP without anything to do with Ekos etc.

Problem installing WeeWX - all went well until the install stage.

gina@Mint-Desktop ~ $ sudo apt-get install weewx
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

I've had this before with other software but forget how to cure it.

5 minutes ago, fireshipjohn said:

Hi Gina, 

For the wind direction indicator, have you seen the AS5600 chips? 

"AS5600 Absolute Value Encoder PWM I2C Port Precision 12Bit"

On Ebay for about £3, you just hover a magnet over them, and it will read out the angle to 12bits, you can easily drop 8 of those bits!

Data sheet here:  https://ams.com/documents/20143/36005/AS5600_DS000365_5-00.pdf

Might be simpler than all those reed switches and resistors!

I already have a similar device but the mechanics of my wind vane use an end bearing (ball and flat) and I can't use an on-axis magnet.

13 minutes ago, jiberjaber said:

There's also this if it's not all about indi, though you might have to reverse engineer how the sensors are connected to the application and then replicate that on you ESP station implementation..
http://www.weewx.com/

That looks very interesting - could be just what I need.  Thanks.

I certainly think MQTT is OTT for what I want.

I agree that I could probably use KStars/Ekos/INDI but that doesn't really fit the bill as I see it.  It's great for astro but my thinking is that a weather station is rather different.  If linking the weather to obsy roof control I can see the advantage but I don't think I shall be doing that - just a rain sensor will take care of closing the roof if it rains.  I know I could use an RPi (maybe plus ESP to give enough IO pins) and get the data indoors that way.

I thought I read that one or two on here had weather station software running on their indoor computers that didn't use Ekos etc.

I'm sure I'm missing something quite simple here.  Getting confused!  I can handle modifying the C++ code in the INDI drivers to suit my astro needs but the framework is already there.  I reckon that if I had that for the weather station I could modify the code to suit my inclinations.  I'm well familiar with C++ so coding the ESP is no problem (same as Arduino) and I've used Python in the past and could probably pick it up again.  I have a fair sized book on Python programing.

Oh dear - that's gone right over my head.  For a start I just want a program that reads data from the ESP and displays it.  Either as numbers or as graphs/charts.  Later I would like to upload to my web site, which I used to do years ago but used a commercial weather station.  I wondering though if my brain is getting too old to handle all this.

I'm looking for the software to run on my Linux Mint machine.

I have the ESP8266 NodeMCU V1.0 ESP-12E WiFI Module on a breadboard ready to connect to for testing.  I have the information on programming this so that's alright, I think.

Now to the nitty-gritty... Can someone please tell me how to read the WiFi signal from my computer (Linux Mint).  For astro I use KStars/Ekos but the far end uses RPi with INDI - a totally different system.  I know several of you use these ESP devices in your weather stations so I would appreciate help here please and not try to "reinvent the wheel".

Yes, I love socialising but been deprived of it lately.  SGL has enabled me to survive the last few months!!

Proper chatterbox me! 🤣  I think I'm known for "talking the hind leg off a donkey"!!!  May be a sign of loneliness.

I hate to think hope much I've spent over the last decade.