In Agromanager, you can connect different types of weather stations through the AWS Platform (Agromanager Weather Station).
You can use either a physical weather station at your company or a virtual weather station based on OpenWeather.
In this article, we explain which option to choose and how you can connect a virtual OpenWeather weather station to your Agromanager environment.
Which type of weather station would you like to connect?
Before creating a new weather station, first decide whether you want to use a physical or virtual weather station.
Physical weather station
Do you have a physical weather station at your company? Use the specific guide for the brand of your weather station.
- Sencrop: How do I connect my Sencrop Weather Station?
- Wolky Tolky: How do I connect my Wolky Tolky weather station?
These guides explain step by step how to establish the connection with the physical weather station and how to link the available sensors to Agromanager. Do you have a Davis weather station? Feel free to contact our helpdesk. Our colleagues will be happy to help you set up the connection.
Don't have a physical weather station, or would you like to use online weather data? You can create a virtual OpenWeather weather station by following the steps below.
Step 1 - Open AWS
Weather stations are added and managed through the Agromanager Weather Station Platform, or AWS.
Log in to your Agromanager environment. Then click Applications in the menu on the left.
Next, click the AWS application.
If the application is not immediately visible, first select All Applications and use the search bar at the top to search for "AWS".
Step 2 - Add a new weather station
After opening AWS, you will see an overview of all weather stations you have access to.
To add a new virtual weather station, click the green New button in the top-right corner.
Step 3 - Enter the general information
Under General, first enter the basic information for the virtual weather station.
- Name: Give the weather station a recognisable name. For example, you can use the company name + "OpenWeather" or "Online".
- Owner Email: Enter your email address.
- Interval: Select 24 h.
- Time zone: Select the time zone in which your company or weather station is located.
- Brand: Select Virtual.
- Interface: Select OpenWeather.
- Address: Here you can enter the address, postal code, city and country where you want to position the virtual weather station.
A virtual OpenWeather weather station retrieves weather data based on the configured location. It is therefore important to set the position of the weather station as accurately as possible.
Enter the correct Latitude and Longitude. You can use the GPS location of your company or of a specific parcel.
You can easily find these coordinates using Google Maps or another map application. Search for the required location and right-click on the map to view the GPS coordinates. Would you like to use the location of a parcel? You can also find these coordinates in the cultivation details of the parcel in Agromanager.
Preferably choose a location that is as representative as possible of the parcels for which you want to use the weather data.
Then click the green Next button at the bottom.
Step 4 - Interface
For a virtual OpenWeather weather station, you do not need to enter any additional account details or external identifiers under Interface.
Click Next to continue.
Step 5 - External
Under External, select Location based.
This tells OpenWeather to retrieve the weather data based on the location configured for the weather station.
Then click Next.
Step 6 - Link your Agromanager environment
In the final step, you can link the weather station to your Agromanager environment.
Select the correct environment and then click the green Save button in the top-right corner.
The virtual weather station has now been created and linked to your Agromanager environment.
Important: the screenshot below shows a test environment being linked. Do not copy this name. Always select the name of your own Agromanager environment.
Step 7 - Link the sensors
After the virtual OpenWeather weather station has been created, the available sensors still need to be linked to the correct reading types in Agromanager.
Open the weather station and click Edit in the top-right corner. Then go to the Link Sensors tab.
You will now see an overview of the available OpenWeather parameters. For each sensor, select the correct Reading type.
Link the sensors as follows:
- Clouds → Cloudiness
- Dewpoint → Dewpoint
- FeelsLike → WindChill
- Humidity → Humidity
- Pressure → Airpressure
- Rain → PrecipitationInMm
- Summary → Summary
- Temp → Temperature
- Visibility → Visibility
- WindDeg → WindDirection
- WindSpeed → Windspeed
Important!
The SensorID fields are filled in automatically and do not need to be changed. The Port and Ignored columns also do not need to be changed for a standard OpenWeather connection.
Carefully check that each sensor is linked to the correct reading type. This mapping determines how the retrieved OpenWeather data is interpreted and displayed within Agromanager.
Once all parameters have been linked correctly, click the green Save button in the top-right corner.
The virtual OpenWeather weather station is now fully configured and ready to send weather data to Agromanager.
How is the weather station used?
Once the weather station has been linked to your Agromanager environment, the system can use it for the relevant crops and parcels.
Based on the configured location, the available weather data is retrieved from OpenWeather and processed within Agromanager.
If you have multiple locations or companies that are geographically far apart, it may be useful to create several virtual weather stations. This allows representative weather data to be used for each location.
Combining OpenWeather with a physical weather station
A virtual OpenWeather station can also be used alongside a physical weather station.
This can be useful when your physical weather station does not have all the required sensors.
Example: your physical weather station measures temperature, humidity and precipitation, but does not have a wind speed sensor. In this case, OpenWeather can be used to provide the missing wind speed data.
This makes it possible to combine data from different weather sources within Agromanager.
Important to know
Weather data is not sent retrospectively to your Agromanager environment.
From the moment the weather station has been correctly created and linked, new weather data can be retrieved and processed.
Are you experiencing problems while setting up the weather station, are no sensors appearing, or are you not receiving any weather data? Please contact our helpdesk.