I’ve been doing some experiments in finding the optimal placment of the GW1100 gateway. The gateway receives radio signals from Ecowitt weather instruments in the field: anemometer, UV, light, air & soil temperature, humidity, rain as well as in-house temperatures, barometric pressure and indoor pm2.5, does a few local calculations, hosts a small set of web pages, and makes the data available over the in-house intranet. If the signals from the instruments are too weak or attenuated (by distance, metal screens, water walls or dense construction). that data is lost.
I noticed when I added the meadow soil temperature instrument (an Ecowitt WN34S) last week, that the readings were erratic, so I checked on the strength of the signal, and eventually graphed all of the signals on our in-house WeeWx web page. I first moved the GW1100 to an upstairs rear window. Anemometer signals were better, but rain and T&H outside worse. I tried a back room on the lower floor and that may turn out to be optimal. I’ll continue to test.
Signal strength is reported by the GW1100 in a scale of zero to four. and the WeeWX software graphs an average value The nearby in-house “Upstairs” and “Basement” temperature/humidity sensors (two Ecowitt WH32) always have a strong signal. The outdoor T&HP sensor (Ecowitt WH31_EP) was good when the GW1100 was in north-facing windows at the front or back of the house, but signals were poor around 1600 when I tried the upstairs placement. The anemometer (an Ecowitt WH68) has never been very strong, as it is the furthest away, and behind a metal-roofed garage. When the GW1100 was upstairs the signal appeared the strongest, but the rain gauge and outdoor T&H were notably weaker.
Alert readers (I see you out there!) will wonder why I didn’t just use the internal web pages of the GW1100 that display a “signal” column, shown above. The problem with those is that the signal strength appears to be averaged over time, and not as immediately responsive as the graphs I generated with WeeWX. Overnight, all of the signal scores caught up, and all are displaying four bars in the morning.
