I have started a weather station project just for fun. I am using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W since I have a strong background in UNIX based OS's. I have been using various I2C devices from Adafruit to get temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. Now I need to implement wind speed and direction. I do have a mechanical cup anomometer from Adafruit connected to an ADC converter on the I2C bus and am getting data just fine. But I need to start the tedious task of calibrating the voltage levels to the wind speed. I don't bother with a user interface I just send the data to weather underground. It shows the correct temperature, humidity and barometric pressure, which is all that is implemented on that alpha version just fine. You should be able to see it here:
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KTXROANO168
In searching for wind direction device I have been running across ultrasonic weather stations that not only contain wind speed and direction sensors but also temperature, humidity, pressure and various other sensors all in one. Most seem to communicate via RS485 using MODBUS RTU. I am not familiar with either of these but there does seem to be a standard library for modbus library in the standard repositories. So, I assume I can figure it out. It will be fun trying. Here are a couple of them:
www.dfrobot.com/product-2942.html
https://www.amazon.com/RS485-Modbus-Dir ... _puis?th=1
My concern is whether I can get enough data on them so that I know how to interpret the data stream. Some of them seem to be intended to plug into a specific controller. I'd expect it would be difficult to get the specs to be able to interpret the data from these devices.
Can anyone recommend an ultrasonic weather station similar to the ones above where it is known that I can get the necessary data to communicate with it ?
Just wondering if someone has some hands on experience with these types of items and how easy it is to get the needed technicainformation to be able to interpret the data stream.
Thanks
Chris
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KTXROANO168
In searching for wind direction device I have been running across ultrasonic weather stations that not only contain wind speed and direction sensors but also temperature, humidity, pressure and various other sensors all in one. Most seem to communicate via RS485 using MODBUS RTU. I am not familiar with either of these but there does seem to be a standard library for modbus library in the standard repositories. So, I assume I can figure it out. It will be fun trying. Here are a couple of them:
www.dfrobot.com/product-2942.html
https://www.amazon.com/RS485-Modbus-Dir ... _puis?th=1
My concern is whether I can get enough data on them so that I know how to interpret the data stream. Some of them seem to be intended to plug into a specific controller. I'd expect it would be difficult to get the specs to be able to interpret the data from these devices.
Can anyone recommend an ultrasonic weather station similar to the ones above where it is known that I can get the necessary data to communicate with it ?
Just wondering if someone has some hands on experience with these types of items and how easy it is to get the needed technicainformation to be able to interpret the data stream.
Thanks
Chris
Statistics: Posted by chriskot870 — Thu Aug 07, 2025 6:17 pm