Hi everyone,

I am trying to set up an observatory for research purposes, but I am struggling in understanding how a weather station can be connected to Ekos.

After some researches I have understood that the Davis Vantage Pro2 should be a good choice for what I have to do (complete sensor suite, INDI lib available, etc.), but I would like to ask if you know how this weather station can be connected to the Ekos system (i.e., to the mini PC commanding the shelter + telescope system).

Thank you in advance for your time.

You can use AAG Cloudwatcher or Uranus Meteo station, both are well supported in INDI. David Vantage Pro2 is supported but it's a bit old.

Thank you very much for your advice. I am very new to the topic of astronomy instruments (I have always studied it theoretically) so I am still trying to figure out how things work in the practical world.

By the way, I thought that Davis VP2 was a good choice because it has all the sensors required in one solution, whereas for the CloudWatcher it is needed to choose every additional sensor and assemble all together.

This one here should be the full sensor suite, right? (I need just to add the anemometer, if I am not mistaken)

www.indilib.org/individuals/devices/weather-stations.html

When it comes to detecting bad weather conditions and parking the mount and closing things down you can consider using more than one of the weather options. 'Weather Meta' will consider input from up to 4 other named weather stations.

The WeeWX driver is another option, it supports some different weather stations including the Davis Pro.

With some DIY (Arduino wiring and coding glue) you can also supplement with individual local sensors. For example the Davis uses a rain bucket while an RG11 sensor can detect the slightest drops of rain. When adding a local sensor such as a RG11 rain detector using the 'Weather Safety Proxy' is handy. Then Weather Safety Proxy can be one of the inputs Weather Meta considers.

edited to correct the names.

Thank you very much for the information! I will consider also all of there in the final choice!