Ventus W830 Weather Station

The Ventus W830 (and Alecto WS5500) weather stations can be configured to send weather data to a local server. To add the weather station to the Home Center 3 you can use a Raspberry Pi (or computer) to translate the payload to the FIBARO API format. With this method you can integrate the Ventus W830 or Alecto WS5500 weather station into the Home Center 3.

Prerequisites

1. WS View app on Google Play or the iOS App Store,
2. A Raspberry Pi or other computer with Node-RED installed,
3. This Ventus W830 Quick App.

Quick setup

View the included comprehensive manual for detailed installation instructions.

Weather station setup

Read in the manual how you link the weather station to your Wi-Fi and install the WS View app from Google Play or the iOS App Store on your phone.

Configure the weather station to use a local server with the WS View app and use the IP address and /weatherstation path when using my Node-RED flow example.

Quick App installation

Install the Quick App by adding a new device and uploading the .fqa file downloaded from here.

The Quick App contains a Lua function to retrieve the weather data via the Home Center 3 API. The Node-RED flow sends the data to the Quick App. Therefore, no additional configuration is required.

Node-RED flow

In Node-RED you can import the following flow:

[{"id":"4bd03a27.686964","type":"http in","z":"5df41914ccf9555f","name":"WS830 incoming data","url":"/weatherstation","method":"post","upload":false,"swaggerDoc":"","x":140,"y":220,"wires":[["c81fb2783c57da97"]]},{"id":"c81fb2783c57da97","type":"delay","z":"5df41914ccf9555f","name":"","pauseType":"rate","timeout":"5","timeoutUnits":"minutes","rate":"1","nbRateUnits":"5","rateUnits":"minute","randomFirst":"1","randomLast":"5","randomUnits":"seconds","drop":true,"allowrate":false,"outputs":1,"x":360,"y":220,"wires":[["44d0fc53f3f75405"]]},{"id":"44d0fc53f3f75405","type":"function","z":"5df41914ccf9555f","name":"HC3 payload","func":"weatherdata = msg.payload;\n\nmsg = {\n  headers: { 'content-type':'application/json' },\n  payload: { 'args': [weatherdata] }\n};\n\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"initialize":"","finalize":"","libs":[],"x":550,"y":220,"wires":[["147e1206594b336b"]]},{"id":"147e1206594b336b","type":"http request","z":"5df41914ccf9555f","name":"HC3 Ventus W830 QA","method":"POST","ret":"txt","paytoqs":"ignore","url":"http://192.168.1.1/api/devices/200/action/data","tls":"","persist":false,"proxy":"","authType":"basic","senderr":false,"x":760,"y":220,"wires":[[]]}]

The flow contains a http in node to retrieve the weather data payload from the station. I limit the flow so that it only sends new values to the HC3 every 5 minutes. This is not necessary, but I want to avoid unnecessary network traffic on my home network.

The function node translates the weather data JSON to a FIBARO API call and sends it to the Home Center 3 with a http request node.

Note: you have to configure Basic Authentication with your Home Center 3 username and password to authenticate to the API!

As soon as you deploy the Node-RED flow the Home Center 3 will retrieve the weather data when it is pushed by the Ventus W830 weather station.

Full documentation

Full documentation of the Ventus W830 Quick App is included in the provided ZIP file or at my Smart Home Adventure blog.