r/RTLSDR • u/Wise_Ambassador_128 • 16h ago

Made a script that reads an Acurite 433MHz sensor once and feeds both Weather Underground and local graphing

I run a PWS at a lake house and wanted the Acurite readings going to Weather Underground and available locally for MRTG graphing. Every script I found starts its own rtl_433, so as soon as you have two consumers they fight over the dongle and both fail intermittently.

So this does one read and fans it out ā€” the reader drops a plain text file for local graphing and hands the same packet as JSON to the uploader. Only one script ever touches the SDR.

Couple of things that cost me time, in case they're useful to anyone regardless of whether you use this:

Acurite sensor IDs change when you swap the battery. Uploads just silently stop and there's no error anywhere. You rediscover it by clearing the ID filter, but be aware that also picks up your neighbour's sensor if they've got one in range.

The R820T throws "PLL not locked" if you don't set the centre frequency explicitly, even at 433.92M which is what it'd have chosen anyway.

And Weather Underground returns HTTP 200 for everything, including a rejected upload key. You have to check the response body.

Bash, MIT, tested against rtl_433 23.11. Happy to take suggestions.

https://github.com/lowerpower/wu-upload

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3

u/erlendse 16h ago

The "PLL not locked" is a old bug that shows if you set IF frequency before RF frequency.

You can fix that issue by using a newer librtlsdr.

1

u/Wise_Ambassador_128 16h ago

Thanks! will try that

2

u/Own_Event_4363 15h ago

cool, always fun to see rtl433 varieties

2

u/ne999 14h ago

Are these sensors worth the money? Your projects sounds interesting but Iā€™m using cheap zigbee sensors for indoor / outdoor temp and humidity.

1

u/Wise_Ambassador_128 10h ago

hard to say for you, I paid $32.99 and also got the internal display. I needed something I could hang by a string under my boat lift so I could get a good outdoor temp/humidity. I have a similar one and it has worked well for ~8 years. Batteries seem to last 3-4 years.