Pic-E Ultimeter 2000 Project

This project uses the TAPR Pic-E to transmit weather data from the Peet Brothers U-2000 weather station. There are several advantages to using the Pic-E rather than a TNC for a stand-alone weather station:

The new "Complete Record Format" from Peet Brothers is more than 400 bytes long. This makes it too long to be used in a stand-alone weather station. While the old format is still available in the U-2000, the Peet Brother's Weather Picture requires the complete format. I want to be able to run a stand-alone weather station and the Weather Picture simultaneously.
While some U-2000's (though not all) include a 5 minute wind gust as part of the stand-alone string, it is only for the last 5 minutes. If the transmit interval is set to more than 5 minutes, some of the wind gusts will be missed.
In stand-alone mode, the U-2000 puts out total rainfall since it was last reset. There is no provision for 1 hour or 24 hour rainfall.
The Pic-E may be programmed by the user, and therefore may be customized for special uses, for example the capability to immediately report severe condition could be added.
The Pic-E costs less than half what a TNC costs.

FAQs

Yes, this can be modified to make the Radio Shack Weather Station function as a stand-alone wx station. There are two people tackling this project now.
Yes, this can be modified to make the Davis Weather Station function as a stand-alone wx station. There is someone who has expressed an interest in doing this.
No, a U-II version is not so simple. Both the U-2000 and Radio Shack send date and time information as part of the data. I use this data to time the outgoing packets and to fill in the date and time fields in the APRS packet. Since the U-II does not send this info, a version for the U-II would require an outboard real-time clock, and a way to set it... too much for this project.
No, I won't be doing any of these projects myself. There is too much else that I want to tackle.
Yes, source code is available. See the TAPR Pic-E FTP site...

Project Status

Feb 16, 1999, version 0.01
All parsing code and AX-25 code is functional, the major changes needed are to support alternative timing of transmissions (presently hardcoded at 1 minute for debugging) and calculation of rainfall values. I still have over 200 bytes of the 1024 left for enhancements!

Mail comments to k4hg@tapr.org

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