Intro to the WX175 Weather Station Kit

I was looking for a way to monitor and control the conditions in my small greenhouse when I found the WX175 Weather Station. This gem features 2 Dallas 1 wire bus connections, a connection for a atmospheric pressure sensor, 2 inputs for humidity, 2 TTL inputs, 2 TTL outputs, and a counter input.

The WX175 Weather Station Kit is available from its designer Peter H. Anderson , Specific detailed information regarding the kit can be found here.

I quote "Kit WX #175 including the programmed Microchip PIC (28-pin DIP), 4.0 MHz ceramic resonator (3-pin SIP), MAX232 and associated capacitors, resistors, 22 awg solid wire, the Morgan Logic Probe and documentation - $24.95."

There is no PC board, sensors, or other input devices.

I first assembled the kit on a solderless breadboard (aka Experimenter Socket, QT socket). I verified that several DS1820 temperature sensors worked on both runs. The TTL input and output was also tested.

The WX175 components were then transfered to a Radio Shack board with the same layout as the experimenter socket.


The unit was moved to the garage and linked with a Windows XP via RS232. The run is about 100 feet of twisted pair phone wire (not cat5 which would have been better). I currently have 4 sensors working. The first sensor mounted on the PC board. The second monitors greenhouse air temperature. The third monitors the water temperature in the greenhouse pond, and the fourth measures outside air temperature. The dallas temperature sensors are inexpensive at about $5 each. The WX175 can handle 16 temperature sensors per run for a total of 32.

The designer provides a weather station interface written in Liberty Basic. Because my application was somewhat different I opted to write my own interface. To make things interesting I opted to use a language that was new to me. C# Clicking on any image will provide a larger, more readable view.



I am in the process of writting a C# program (WX175.cs) that sends commands to the WX175 and then displays and logs the results to a linux mysql server. A second C# application (WX175_GRAPH.cs) uses the data on the server to create graphs. The graph below show about 12 hours of somewhat corrupted data I have collected during development.


Both programs require more work prior to publishing but are at least limping at this time.