Getting your WX station out to RF using weewx + aprx

I have been using my WH1080 since two years ago and it is still working great until few days ago when I found out that the anemometer doesn't seem to give any reading anymore. Anyway, other than that, everything still working just fine.

I have been experimenting with Raspberry Pi for quite sometime and I've moved my WX and aprx along with few local server apps into Raspberry Pi (previously on my router running OpenWRT). Anyway, for this post, I'm going to guide you on how to get the WX data into RF without a need of the Internet connection after the first setup.

What needed?

1. Raspberry Pi, I'm using raspbian. I'm not going in details on how to set it up. By now you should've been able to get this up and running.
2. weewx software, more information can be found in http://www.weewx.com/. Installation guide can be found here: http://www.weewx.com/docs/debian.htm
3. A weewx extension that I've adopted from cwxn extension so it could produce an aprx ready beacon file can be found here: weewx2aprx-0.4.zip (old deprecated package ->) weewx2aprx-0.1.tgz
4. Aprx package which can be found here (prepackaged): http://thelifeofkenneth.com/aprx/debs/

After you've got everything installed, the weewx and aprx package. You can install the weewx2aprx extension, to do this, just use the following command:

wee_extension --install weewx2aprx-0.1.tgz

          wee_extension --install weewx2aprx-0.4.zip   

You need to edit the /etc/weewx/weewx.conf. Toward the end of the configuration file, there is a new section created by the above extension installer. Edit as required, the necessary fields are the lat, lon and the note.

# Options for extension 'aprx'

[Weewx2APRX]

    lat = 0312.81N

    note = "WH1080+weewx+aprx Sg Buloh, Malaysia"

    symbol = /_

    lon = 10133.17E

    filename = /var/tmp/aprx_wx.txt 

Change the above to suite your preference and rerun the weewx's service by issuing the following commands:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/weewx stop 

$ sudo /etc/init.d/weewx start 

Edit your /etc/aprx.conf file and add the following information under the beacon, change the callsign as necessary :

        beaconmode radio

        beacon srccall 9M2TPT-13 \                                             

              via WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 \                                            

              file /var/tmp/aprx_wx.txt

 That should be it.