Ecowitt
Ecowitt Wittboy Weather Station (GW2001)
- Wi-Fi
Verified September 2026
The Home Assistant crowd's favourite weather station: the solar 7-in-1 WS90 array (sonic anemometer, piezo rain sensor, no moving parts) pushes readings to the GW2000 gateway, which HA's core Ecowitt integration receives locally over your LAN. Buy the UK/EU 868MHz version. Mount the WS90 on a pole with open sky above — trees, chimneys, or roof edges nearby will skew wind readings. "No moving parts" matters here: no tipping-bucket or spinning cups to jam with ice come winter, though the piezo sensor can misfire on fog. Solar power plus 2×AA backup keeps it running through grey UK winters; Ecowitt recommends an optional 12V supply if you expect hard frost or snow.
In Home Assistant
| Control | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Wind gust | Sensor | Peak wind gust speed from the sonic anemometer, updates with no cup-stall lag — the entity to trigger blind/awning-retract automations. |
| Rain rate | Sensor | Current rainfall rate from the piezo rain gauge; prone to false positives from fog/mist, so pair with a minimum threshold before automating. |
| Rain detected | Binary sensor | Whether rain is currently detected — a simpler on/off complement to rain rate for gating irrigation automations. |
| Solar radiation / UV | Sensor | Solar irradiance and UV index; useful for shade/blind automations independent of wind. |
| Soil moisture | Sensor (%) | Per-channel soil moisture from any WH51 probes added to the gateway — appears automatically once paired, no HA-side reconfiguration. |
The GW2000 isn't discovered automatically — after adding HA's Ecowitt integration you still have to open the gateway's own web UI, not the HA-side config, and manually enter your HA box's LAN IP, a case-sensitive path, and a port that can collide with other local services if you're also running other add-ons on the same port. Once pushing, HA exposes wind direction/speed/gust, rain rate plus daily/weekly/monthly/yearly totals with a separate rain-state binary sensor, UV index, solar radiation, and full pressure/temperature/humidity/dew point — and adding a WH51 soil probe to the gateway makes it show up unprompted as its own soil-moisture entity, no re-pairing in HA needed. A solid automation pairing is wind gust and rain rate together: trigger retractable awnings/blinds to close above a gust threshold and pause smart irrigation whenever rain rate is nonzero, since the sonic anemometer has no cup-stall lag and reacts to gusts in real time — though the piezo rain gauge is known to throw false positives from fog and heavy mist registering as light rain, so gate any rain-triggered automation on a rate threshold rather than acting on any nonzero reading.
Specs
- power
- Solar panel (6.5V/4mA) with 2×AA battery backup; optional 12V supply recommended for frost/snow
- gateway
- GW2000 Wi-Fi/Ethernet hub, 868 MHz RF to sensors
- expandable
- Supports extra Ecowitt sensors incl. WH51 soil moisture
- sensor type
- Weather station (temperature, humidity, wind, rain, UV, light, pressure)
- outdoor array
- WS90 7-in-1, solar powered with supercap
- wireless range
- RF to gateway ~100m, gateway Wi-Fi ~50m, both environment-dependent
- wind speed range
- 0-40 m/s, accuracy ±1 m/s below 10 m/s, ±10% above
- temperature range
- -40°C to 60°C, accuracy ±1°C
- rain rate accuracy
- ±10% between 5-50mm/h, ±20% outside that range