Ambient Radio Weather Network (arwn)

Collect 433 MHz weather sensor data and publish to MQTT.

Designed to work with an RFXCOM USB receiver or an RTL-SDR dongle, publishing sensor readings over MQTT so they can be consumed by other software such as Home Assistant.

Hardware Requirements

You will need a Linux system (a Raspberry Pi 3 or later is sufficient) and a 433 MHz receiver:

• RTL-SDR dongle (~$25 on Amazon) — recommended default. Requires rtl_433 installed separately.
• RFXCOM receiver — more expensive, narrower sensor support, better hardware error correction. All supporting software is bundled.

Installation

Install rtl_433 (RTL-SDR users only)

Follow the rtl_433 installation instructions. On Debian/Ubuntu a package is available:

sudo apt-get install rtl-433

Install arwn

pip install arwn

Configuration

Copy config.yml.sample to config.yml and edit:

collector:
  type: rtl433        # or rfxcom
  # device: /dev/ttyUSB0   # rfxcom only

mqtt:
  server: 192.168.1.x
  # username: user
  # password: pass

# Optional: Weather Underground reporting
wunderground:
  user: your@email.com
  station: KXXYYY123
  passwd: yourpassword

# Map hardware sensor IDs to friendly names.
# IDs survive battery changes when named here.
# An "Outside" sensor is required for Weather Underground.
names:
  "ae:01": Outside
  "e9:00": Living Room

Running as a systemd service (recommended)

Install and enable the systemd user service:

arwn-install-service --config ~/.config/arwn/config.yml

The service will start immediately, start at boot, and restart automatically on failure. No sudo required.

To check status:

systemctl --user status arwn
journalctl --user -u arwn -f

RFXCOM USB access

If using an RFXCOM receiver, add yourself to the dialout group (one-time):

sudo usermod -aG dialout $USER

Log out and back in for the change to take effect, then re-run arwn-install-service.

Running manually

arwn-collect -f --config config.yml

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md and AGENTS.md.

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Credits

Sean Dague