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

[Monty Wilson]

Have you looked at the program Weather Display?  Mine copy indicates it
supports the WS 2300.

Monty Wilson, NR0A
jwilson at ncfcomm.com


-----Original Message-----
From: aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org [mailto:aprssig-bounces at lists.tapr.org]
On Behalf Of scott at opentrac.org
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 09:10
To: 'Sean Jewett'; aprssig at lists.tapr.org
Subject: RE: LaCrosse WX stations (was: [aprssig] WX station transmit rate?)


I didn't even realize it could operate wireless.  From looking at the specs,
it looks like it'll work wireless or wired (the WS-2300, that is.)  Says
it'll record data more often if it's wired.  And it comes with a serial
cable.

I was able to find the serial interface information (thanks DB3TB) - check
Sourceforge for the Open2300 project.  The file api.txt describes the
protocol.

Scott
N1VG

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Jewett [mailto:sean at rimboy.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 6:22 AM
To: TAPR APRS Mailing List
Cc: scott at opentrac.org
Subject: LaCrosse WX stations (was: [aprssig] WX station transmit rate?)


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.



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