Sainlogic Weather Station SA7
I’m rapidly becoming a fan of Sainlogic Weather Stations. I started out by reviewing their Home Weather Station SA1 which was cool but lacking any wind detection equipment. Then they provided me their Portable SA3 which I also thought was cool and then realized that its killer mission was for recording indoor areas that needed monitoring. For example, greenhouses or walk in freezers, etc. Then along comes the Sainlogic Weather Station SA7 which does all the things that I’m looking for. It can be purchased from Amazon as well.
I’m a bit of a weather geek. Certainly more than most folks. For years I have been capturing NOAA data from their weather satellites. Then when the GOES birds came along I tracked them too.
Now I’m surrounded by trees and can’t get a solid lock on any of the deployed GOES sats.
Old People Talk About The Weather
Fact. They do. I specifically want to know each morning what the weather is and what the wind speed and direction is. That information makes the difference between an outdoor bicycle ride where I see deer and bears and stuff. Or bad weather leaves me inside to stare at an iPad screen of lovely young exercise gals who are spin bike trainers. There really is no loss here for me.
First And Foremost Let It Be Known
That I, and I alone control the wind apparently. I had been having a drought in getting bicycle rides in due to high winds that fight me on the return leg of my ride. So I get the SA7 station, and get a chance to test it, and the thing has barely spun in 3 days. I am available to set up a wind indicator in your windy residence for the simple cost of a whole lot o’ dollars.
What Is In The Box?
Content: 1 x Gateway 1 x Integrated Outdoor Transmitter
1 x Foot Mounting (with pole insert) 1 x Mounting Bracket Back Plate (polemount)
1 x Mounting Pole 2 x Pole mounting nuts (M3) / bolts (03)
4 x Pole mounting nuts (M5) / bolts (05) 4x Tapping screws
1 x Manual 1 x Adapter
Notice that there are no batteries included. You’ll need 3 AAA batteries and 2 AA batteries. Use alkaline and not rechargeable.
Sainlogic Weather Station SA7 Capabilities
The following can be measured with the Sainlogic SA7
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Dew Point
- Wind Speed
- Wind Direction
- Wind Gusts
- Pressure
- Moon Phase
- Rain Guage
If you compress the Wind items into one item that then gets you 7 measurements which I suppose is where the number 7 comes from in the name.
Communications
In a world of WiFi and Bluetooth, we tend to forget about devices that work on 433 MHz transmissions. Another cool thing about that is that you can POTENTIALLY grab some of that data flying around and then feed it to an MQTT server. From there you can import that data into Home Automation which is super cool.
The Sainlogic Weather Station SA7 can send info to WeatherSeed and Weatherunderground (link to my station) but how cool would it be if you could push the limits of what it was supposed to do and send that data to your local network and Home Automation hub? When I did a scan of 433 MHz around my property I was SHOCKED to find out how many devices are around here. Tire Pressure Monitors send data via 433 MHz and so do a lot of other weird things.
It’s one thing to see the data and another thing to decode the data. This will take me some time and my Point of Contact is going to run it by the Tech folks to see if they can help me figure this out. Here’s an example of the info out there:
Detected OOK package 2025-06-07 20:15:48
pulse_slicer_manchester_zerobit(): Cotech 36-7959, SwitchDocLabs FT020T wireless weather station with USB
bitbuffer:: Number of rows: 1
[00] { 1} 00 : 0
Pulse data: 1 pulses
[ 0] Pulse: 80, Gap: 2501, Period: 2581
Analyzing pulses...
Total count: 1, width: 0.32 ms ( 80 S)
Pulse width distribution:
[ 0] count: 1, width: 320 us [320;320] ( 80 S)
Gap width distribution:
Pulse period distribution:
Pulse timing distribution:
[ 0] count: 1, width: 320 us [320;320] ( 80 S)
[ 1] count: 1, width: 10004 us [10004;10004] (2501 S)
Level estimates [high, low]: 1079, 132
RSSI: -11.8 dB SNR: 9.1 dB Noise: -20.9 dB
Frequency offsets [F1, F2]: 734, 0 (+2.8 kHz, +0.0 kHz)
Guessing modulation: Single pulse detected. Probably Frequency Shift Keying or just noise...
view at https://triq.org/pdv/#AAB102014027148155
Wow! I believe this station to be using the Cotech 36-7959 protocol. It is listed as # 153 in a program called RTL-433. That doesn’t mean I can DECODE it, though.
Registering protocol [153] "Cotech 36-7959, SwitchDocLabs FT020T wireless weather station with USB"
I always encourage anyone doing research to buy anything tech to do an FCCID lookup on the item. There is so much REAL product information beyond that of a user manual. The SA7 report can be found here.
Enough Of That
I look for exciting breakthroughs on 433 MHz data snatching from the air soon. But let’s move on. Here’s what the information looks like on the IOS Weatherseed app.
Sainlogic SA7 Weatherseed Data (click pics to enlarge)
Lots of good local data from your outdoor station. To expand those horizons just a bit we can share our data with Weatherunderground.
Weatherunderground Integration
Remember years ago when people used to convince you to “donate” your unused computer cycles to help cure cancer or something. In reality they were probably bitcoin mining but that is neither here nor there. During that revolution some good things came out of that mindset. Aircraft ADSB tracking was one such thing. I track bird songs which feeds to a larger database system for bird migration. Weatherundergound has always been one of the good guys and I have had one of the WU API’s for years. Just looking around the area close to me shows a whole bunch of other data collectors / submitters. Cool!
And here is a cut and paste screenshot of my WeatherUnderground Personal Weather Station (PWS).
Final Thoughts
Having a Personal Weather Station can be fun and also extremely useful. While I think that the WeatheSeed and WeatherUnderground integrations are very cool, I am a guy who worries about something called “Local Control”. That is where your household Internet Of Things (IoT) devices only talk within the local network. Some 433 MHz decoding would allow the user to display their local data in their home automation environment. Granted it won’t look as fancy but it will be the same data.
I realize I’m probably in somewhat of the geek minority for wanting a weather station to ONLY work within my network but it is a recommendation and a dream feature.
Straight up though, this is the best Sainlogic weather station I have tested to date. And I do love this device. I get sent a lot of gear to review and so much of that stuff gets boxed back up and either stacked in the attic or given away to friends, family, etc.
This Sainlogic SA7 is getting a permanent installation here at Casa John’s Tech Blog.
JOHN’S TECH BLOG HIGHLY RECOMMENDS THE SA7 PERSONAL WEATHER STATION