Set Up WeeWX Weather Software

WeeWX is a free, open-source project written in Python. While it has many extensions and uses, its primary use is recording data and generating graphs. WeeWX runs on Linux and macOS. WeeWX is easy to set up and requires very little to get started. You can also take a look at the WeeWX home page, WeeWX user forums, and WeeWX GitHub repository for more information.

We are doing this install on a Rasberry Pi running Raspbian. Weewx is small enough that there is no visible slowdown even when running on the light-weight Raspberry Pi (Only 1GB of RAM in the Pi 3 B+ ). If you want to install Weewx on another debian-based system like Ubuntu, the steps will be similar. If you want to install on macOS or a RedHat derivative, follow the steps in the Weewx documentation.

To start the installation, connect to your Pi. This can be done by using a keyboard and mouse or by an SSH connection. If you don't know how to connect to your Pi via SSH, take a look at this article written by the Raspberry Pi foundation.

Enter these commands into the terminal:

wget -q0 - http://weewx.com/key.html | sudo apt-key add -

wget -qO - http://weewx.com/key.html | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/weewx.list

These commands only have to be issued the first time you install Weewx on a Linux machine.

The next step is to perform the actual installation.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install weewx

When you are prompted to confirm the installation, type Y, and hit enter. Weewx will then be installed on the system.

Weewx will ask you a few simple questions on how you want your weather station set up. Please note that the following settings can always be changed in the config file later.

When prompted, enter the location name of your weather station. The value you enter will not change any technical settings. This is the name that will display on the HTML webpage reports generated by the station.

After you enter your system location, you can now specify its latitude and longitude. If you need help finding your location, you can use latlong.net to find your latitude and longitude.

Next, specify your station elevation. If you need help finding your elevation, try out whatismyelevation.com

Finally, tell Weewx what units you want to display. (US or METRIC)

Pick what type of weather station you have. Not finding your station? Check out this list of all supported hardware.

At this point, you have finished configuring Weewx. It should be running as a background daemon (service). To test and make sure it is working, enter this command:

sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog

Your output should look something like the image above.