{"id":188,"date":"2024-09-13T11:27:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-13T15:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/?p=188"},"modified":"2024-09-13T11:27:35","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T15:27:35","slug":"gw1100-antenna-placement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/13\/gw1100-antenna-placement\/","title":{"rendered":"GW1100 Antenna Placement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been doing some experiments in finding the optimal placment of the GW1100 gateway<\/a>. 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<\/a>) 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/div><\/div>
Overnight signal results from moving the GW1100 to different windows<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


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<\/a>) 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"GW1100
<\/div><\/div>
Sensors showing IDs and signal strength for anemometer, rain gauge and outside temperature and humidity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"GW1100
<\/div><\/div>
GW1100 web page showing devices, IDs and signal strength for “Upstairs” and “Basement” T&H<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"GW1100
<\/div><\/div>
GW1100 web page showing devices, IDs and signal strength for meadow soil temperature<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “GW1100 Antenna Placement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[22,10,12,8],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weather-station","tag-anemometer","tag-ecowitt","tag-maintenance","tag-wx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iayft.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}