Meteobridge PRO2

The Next Gen Meteobridge PRO

As Meteobridge PRO was launched in 2015 time has come to present an improved successor. We are happy to announce that the PRO2 is now ready for prime time. The success of the Meteobridge PRO over the last years motivated us to keep its basic strengths and to selectively improve capabilities. Top priority was to keep its low energy profile to make it a really carbon footprint friendly device for weather data storage, aggregation, analysis, graphing and publication.

Exteriour

The exterior dimensions of the PRO2 are unchanged compared to the PRO. To distinguish it from previous model, the housing is now completely black. Front panel has the same structure as before. You have a reset hole, LEDs for power, status and RF reception, an OLED display and a full size USB2 port. As OLEDs show wear after years of operation, the OLED can now be exchanged more easily and without soldering. Back panel comes with an WLAN and a RF antenna, a micro USB power connecter, an additional micro USB port, an Ethernet socket and a 4-pin I2C port for future expansions (like an I2C temperature/humidity probe that does not breath the warm climate in the PRO2 housing). Beside the I2C there is not much difference compared to the PRO from the outside.

Inner Values

Meteobriodge PRO2 is no longer driven by the Carambola2 SOC but by the VoCore2 SOC that had its premiere at the Meteobridge NANO. This SOC upgrade gives the PRO2 about 30% more processing punch, reduces power consumption down to an average of 1.5 Watts (WLAN or LAN) operation. While the Meteobridge PRO did heat up noticeably over time, the PRO2 remains hand warm and does not feel hot at all. This is achieved not just by the NEW SOC but also by some changes on how to connect the circuits which can decode Davis Vantage RF signals. The VoCore2 provides double the RAM of the Carambola2 which gives the PRO2 more headroom when running code. As an effect the PHP-based dashboards introduced for Meteobridge NANO SD are now also available on the PRO2.

Future Options

The I2C connector at the back is not the only change to allow for HW addons for the PRO2. The PCB redesign mad it passible to get rid of the separated RF board of the previous model. While the Meteobridge PRO had the main stuff on the base board there was a second board responsible for providing the data storage in terms of an internal USB stick and the RF reception circuitry. The PRO2 has all components (micro SD card for data storage, RF circuitry) on the base board, which gives the option to design a daughter board that can be connected by

• a tiny shape

With the success of Meteobridge the question how to put this to the next level was obviously on the table. Our answer is to get independent from reflashing third party router platforms and to build a platform that ideally suits the need of a Personal Weather Server. Doing so the design goals were easy to set...

• keep low power foot print and find ways to monitor power use
• keep size real tiny
• get rid of necessary USB hubs
• add permanent storage for local data persistence
• integrate RF features to directly readout data from Davis sensors
• equip with proper RF and WiFi antenna
• allow direct GPRS/3G operation with a optional standard USB mobile dongle
• add a database for permanent storage of data
• allow flexible data exports, where data can be picked up from SMB share or sent via mail of FTP
• have some sensors in the box itself (pressure, temp, hum)
• some kind of status and data display would be great
• sensor data graphing features out of the box would be great

After a quite some months of prototyping and new HW/SW design we are going to release this unique new bundle of dedicated hardware and advanced Meteobridge software as the new Meteobridge PRO.

You can find a datasheet about the Meteobridge PRO here, which summarizes the key features on three pages.

Meteobridge PRO can graph weather data in a very versatile way and can feed those graphs to your web server to be integrated into your web presence. You can see some of the predefined examples on the right.

Units hit the markets in January 2016. There are two versions, one with the Vantage RF receiving capabilities and the shiny red caps, see picture) and one without (which will have black caps). Units always come fully licensed, license transfer from standard Meteobridges is not planned.

The introduction of the PRO will not stop further development of the standard Meteobridge. They share 90% of the code and will be both further developed, of course with the PRO offering much more options.

Where to Buy?

Meteobridge PRO is available from these resellers as a turn-key solution (including license, power supply, Ethernet cable, USB converter cabel):

• AmbientWeather located in the US sells Meteobridge PRO with RF module as "WeatherBridge PRO". Please visit their online shop to checkout options and prices.
• meteo.cc located in Switzerland sells Meteobridge PRO with (red) and without (red) RF module as "weatherBoxx PRO". Please visit their online shop to checkout options and prices.
• Prodata Weather Systems located in the UK sells Meteobridge PRO with and without RF module. Please visit their website to check out options and prices.
• Weerhuisje located in the Netherlands sells Meteobridge PRO with and without RF module. Please visit their website to check out prices and options.
• soluzionimeteo.it located in Italy sells Meteobridge PRO with and without RF module. Please visit their website to check out prices and options.
• weerspecialist.nl located in the Netherlands sells Meteobridge PRO with and without RF module. Please visit their online shop to check out options and prices.
• meteobridge.shop is offering Meteobridge PRO with and without RF module. Please visit their online shop to checkout options and prices.