TFA SINUS + te923tool

I have a small weather station, a TFA SINUS. Last year, I started to capture the data from the weather station. To do so, I needed a software that can communicate with the weather station. And that is where te923tool comes in handy.

In this article I will explain, how to install the te923tool and how to run it.

To get te923tool, download it with e.g. wget:

# mkdir /usr/src/te923 && cd /usr/src/te923
# wget -c "http://te923.fukz.org/downloads/te923tool-0.6.1.tgz"
...

Extract the sources and change into the new directory:

# tar xf te923tool-0.6.1.tgz
# cd te923tool-0.6.1

Just run make to create the te923con binary (libusb headers are required):

# make
gcc -Wall -lusb -o te923con te923con.c te923usb.c te923com.c
# ls te923con
te923con

Copy the new binary:

# cp te923con /usr/local/bin/

When the weather station is connected, execute te923con as root:

# te923con
1577111460:23.60:49:9.60:54:i:i:i:i:i:i:i:i:999.8:i:6:0:13:0.2:0.0:8.7:0

The values for each sensors are seperated by colons with the following meaning (excerpt only):

1577111460 - Timestamp
23.60 - Temperature from internal sensor in degree
49 - Humidity from internal sensor in percent
9.60 - Temperature from external sensor in degree
54 - Humidity from external sensor in percent

And so on. Depending on the connected sensor, you get more and more values. In my above output, I have also the wind sensor connected (I still don't understand what Wind Gust means). All sensors are described when the help option is used:

# te923con -h
...

You can also query the status of the batteries per sensor:

# te923con -s
0x29:0x17:0x14:0x10:0x26:1:1:0:1:1:1:1:1

Output is again seperated by colons. The output also indicates that I need to change the battery for my wind sensor soon.

I have added the te923con queries to my Nagios setup (including pnp4nagios) to capture and keep the states for each sensor. The graph for my outdor temperature looks in my case like this:

At the beginning of this it was somewhat cold and with some negative temperatures. Then Summer came and between July and August we see a spike with temperatures up to 40 degree. Now in Winter temperatures are between 0 and 10 degree again.

Links:
te923tool: http://te923.fukz.org/index.html
TFA SINUS (item number: 35.1095): https://www.tfa-dostmann.de/en/produkt/radio-controlled-weather-station-with-wind-and-rain-gauge-sinus/