Imagine you own a weather station. Then imagine that after some years have passed, you’ve had to replace one of the sensors multiple times. Your new problem is that the sensor is no longer available. What does a hacker like [Luca] do? Build a custom solution, of course!
[Luca]’s work concerns the La Crosse WS-9257F-IT weather station, and the repeat failures of the TX44DTH-IT external sensor. Thankfully, [Luca] found that the weather station’s communication protocol had been thoroughly reverse-engineered by [Fred], among others. He then set about creating a bridge to take humidity and temperature data from Zigbee sensors hooked up to his Home Assistant hub, and send it to the La Crosse weather station. This was achieved with the aid of a SX1276 LoRa module on a TTGO LoRa board. Details are on GitHub for the curious.
Luca didn’t just work on the Home Assistant integration, though. A standalone sensor was also developed, based on the Xiao SAMD21 microcontroller board and a BME280 temperature, pressure, and humidity sensor. It too can integrate with the Lacrosse weather station, and proved useful for one of [Luca’s] friends who was in the same boat.
Ultimately, it sucks when a manufacturer no longer supports hardware that you love and use every day. However, the hacking community has a way of working around such trifling limitations. It’s something to be proud of—as the corporate world leaves hardware behind, the hackers pick up the slack!
Just FYI, La Crosse makes garbage products. They are selling literal e-waste.
I’ve got 15 year old, bottom of the line Acu-Rite and LaCrosse stations, each with an external temp/humidity/barometer sensor. The Acu-Rite has never needed more than a battery replacement. The LaCrosse’s base station and (replaced) sensor have never managed to go for more than a week or so before losing the plot.
La Crosse is around 70 miles from here.
In the recent past, I would stop at La Crosse Scientific’s outlet store there.
IOW, I have bought a couple of wx stations from them, as they seem to work for a few years and then quit. Knowing that their transmission protocol has been deciphered, I might be able to get those operational again.
NB: I found my current wx station on Banggood, it was the same as one of LCS’s products, but without their branding, and cost about 25% less.
I have a weather station, forget the brand. It worked good for a few years until one day it seems to have just stopped transmitting (or receiving, not sure which yet). It was just stuck on a temperature, wind speed, humidity and pressure for like a week.
same same, I have a whole box full of dead weather stations. They can’t seem to make it past 2 years.
When my current one dies (which it already did once – I’m on the second one) I’ll do this instead.