LaCrosse WX stations (was: [aprssig] WX station transmit rate?)

[Sean Jewett]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 scott at opentrac.org wrote:

> Speaking of weather stations, does anything support the La Crosse stations
> yet?  Are they any good?  Do they require a negative voltage to work?
> 
> If no one else has done it yet, I might add support to the OpenTracker if
> anyone's interested.  For now it only supports the 1-wire station.  The
> 1-wire station has the advantage of being very light on power consumption -
> works great for solar powered stations.  But the La Crosse stations are
> probably a cheaper way to go if you want a larger set of sensors - AAG's
> add-ons are pretty overpriced.

I posted awhile back that I was looking for info on how to decode the 
wireless packets the LaCrosse stations were sending.  I was not able to 
come up with anything and an exhaustive google search at the time revealed 
nothing as well.  Unfortunately as well priced as the LaCrosse gear is, 
their computer interface is way over priced IMO.  What you'd spend for the 
computer interface alone is the cost of a wire wire station.  

My thought is this:  

If there is anyway to figure out how to decode the packets then it's a
simple matter of using a computer sound card to decode the packet or
better yet, maybe something akin to opentrac if it's feasible to use as a
decoder.  The LaCrosse stations beacon in the 432 MHz area IIRC (not good
for you VHF+ junkies), though I think they're using a splinter frequency
that is not easily received by a standard scanner.  However, it might be
possible to use an old dual band radio, the 440 side to listen for the
packets and the 2m side to do packet (provided you have seperate audio
outputs).  Can you tell I've got a vaguely useless Yaesu FT-8000?  
Anyway, I picked up the wireless station with the wireless temp / humidity
sensor on the thought that if I could get the packets decoded I'd make the
jump to the full station (ie w/ anemometer).

I made some ogg format recording of the packet.  It's not great quality, 
I held my F6A up to a microphone to record it.  However, it should give 
you some idea of what's going down if you don't have a LaCrosse station:

http://www.rimboy.com/sounds/

This is the temp / humidity sensor beaconing.

Sean...

--
The punk rock will get you if the government don't get you first.
	--Old 97's
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
KG4NRC  http://www.rimboy.com  Your source for the crap you know you need.