BIOS Weather Station BW976 22 March 2008
Posted by David Wilson in Uncategorized.Tags: BIOS Weather Station BW976 CE1177 USB Protocol Mac web
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A few weeks ago I brought a weather station from a local electronics retrailer (Jaycar). It was high up in their catalogue and was promoted as having a USB PC interface and a TV interface. Well here we have yet another manufacturer who only distributes windows software with their devices.
My idea was to be the next person in my area with an online weather station, one where you could hit my web site and see what the current conditions at my house are. And the crippled windows software supplied with the weather station only displays data to the connected PC.
Getting this thing internet connected means that I’d need to understand what the USB protocol is that the weather station is using with the PC software… enter USBSNOOP for windows (it’s a sourceforge project), some time, a bit of luck, and oh a quick note to the manufacturers to see if they would give me a copy of the USB specification for this device. The response was a polite bit firm “Unfortunately this is proprietary and is information that we can not disclose“.
I can advise that on the Mac I am successfully retrieving data (wind direction, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc) from the weather station. One data element remains to be decoded at time of writing, along with a bulk startup data sequence.
I’m working on building the Mac program now. The interface won’t be flash - it’s more to prove it works. When this is done I will look at the web interface part. I want to run this on a Mac running its built in web server. Actually I’m thinking PPC Mac Mini - it will be silent and if I can find a second hand one, quite cost effective.
If you would like details of the USB Protocol specification that I have thus far, send me an e-mail and I can share what I have.
FootNote: 2 April 2008 - have largely decoded output information from the Weather Station and have the details displaying on screen in a program that anyone can use. The GUI doesn’t have any dials or fancy stuff, but does have some “bars” for representations of temperature etc (as well as their decimal equivalents showing). Oh and I only show Celsius at this point, that is what is coming from the Weather Station.
Hi David,
I have the same idea, however I am going to write a java interface so I can integrate with a mobile phone interface. I was going to use a USB Snoop program, but if you’ve done the hard yards, Id sure appreciate a heads up on the USB protocol.
Regards
Rob
Hi David,
I have one of those weather stations also. Could I get a copy of the protocol and mac program.
Thanks
Joe
Hi David:
If you have the samemodel bios as I do if you touch the “temp” “raimfall” etc. buttons it changes to F inch etc.
I also would love your info as I will either put it up on a apple or a linux box.
Thank yoy
Mike
Hi David,
Ditto to Mike and Joe, I’d greatly appreciate a copy of the protocol and mac program. Like Mike, I’d aim to get it working on a linux box. I had in mind an old (i.e. low power) network connected Pentium2 that would constantly log the data for occasional access by another PC for analysis and plotting.
Your GUI stacks up pretty well against the software provided by BIOS. I found version shipped with the kit was buggy, but at least BIOS have provided an improved version on line. Pity it only works with Windows and MS Office…
Thanks,
Neil
Hello David! I found your Bios Weatherstation works using a Google search. I’d be interested in any data you’d share an also, if you are selling (or will be selling) your interface application for it. Thanks in advance! Marty aka martygerman@mac.com
Hi !
+1 for some protocol documentation / example code, I also fired usbsnoop but had trouble making sense of the protocol.
I’d like to build a libusb based cross-platform tool that I could use with my Cacti based home monitoring stuff.
BTW, there is something there with C source : http://www.pendec.dk/weatherstation.htm , did not try it as it does not seem to be the same hardware.
Thanks !
David,
I wish to use the weather data captured on my farm, stored in a data base and viewed remotely via a web page. Could you please email me the protocol.
Thanks
David,
I’m using two of these to record wind and pressure data at my college for a research project on the possibility of implementing small wind turbines on roofs and in between the buildings. I’m looking for a more efficient way to record the data (chart, text, and/or graph form.. something that I could use for analysis over long times) and was wondering if you could send along the USB protocol and anything else. It would be much appreciated!
Thanks
My problem is that I cannot get a question to or an answer from Bios regarding my CE1177. I desperately need an e-mail address because this piece of Chinese garbage is showing me 17mph when the wind was blowing between 50 and 60 miles per hour.
Hi Dave,
1000% improvement over the Bios sofware. If you’re still sharing please add me to the list. I’m working on a web version as well (php/javascript).
Thanks, Greg
i cannot offer any help in the programming area, but i do have a mac mini running webserver for some other apps, and am happy to be a beta testing station.
good luck
jeff
I also bought the bios home weather station with PC Interface. I want to use it on a 30ft sailing yacht. I am setting up a linux pc, using openSUSE 11 programming in ruby/ruby on rails.
the Linux ruggedised tablet PC has a Via Nano processor on it at 1.2Ghz. The VIA cpu has full 64bit intel/amd compatibility and Intel VT virtual machine compatibility. It also has at the moment the worlds fastest Floating Point Unit per clock cycle.
It would be great to get what you’ve got on the protocol. So I can write some linux software for putting it on the yacht I have to redo the wind direction based on infomation from the electronic compass, it won’t be pointing true north on top of the mast. I can give this back to whoever and maybe we could put it all up on sourceforge as a project.
Also how is yours for reliability, ive dropped mine a few times and it still has worked flawlessly for the last few weeks. I had to fully powerdown and start up a few times at the begginning. mayhave been interfeerence.
The ruggedised laptop PC only uses about 10W. Has wireless lan, bluetooth touchscreen, gigabit interface, serial, usb ….. comes with a great case that also protects it even more. I am typing this email on one of Their Box PC’s.
Thanks