How to Put an Ecowitt Weather Station Online (2026 Guide)
By Lennart · Hands-on guides from the people building the platform
An Ecowitt station can publish to more places than almost any other consumer weather hardware, because its firmware has a Customized upload that accepts any server address you type into it. That one field is the difference between having a page on someone else's site and having a website of your own. Here are the four realistic routes, and which one fits which owner.
Looking for your exact model? The supported weather stations list names them brand by brand.
What do you need before you start?
Three things: an Ecowitt gateway or console already on your WiFi, the WS View Plus app on your phone, and a destination to send data to. Nothing needs to be installed on a computer, and no computer has to stay switched on.
The gateway is the piece that matters. On an Ecowitt setup the outdoor sensors talk wirelessly to a gateway (a GW1000, GW1100, GW1200, GW2000 or GW3000) or to a console with a screen (the HP2551 and HP3500 families). That device is what holds your WiFi credentials and does all uploading. If your sensors are reaching a console but the console is not on WiFi, nothing leaves the house.
Option 1: The free ecowitt.net dashboard
The path of least resistance. Ecowitt runs ecowitt.net as a free cloud dashboard, and in WS View Plus you simply enable the Ecowitt service and register the device to your account. You get live readings, charts, and a shareable public page.
What you do not get is control. The layout is fixed, there is no branding, and the address is an ecowitt.net URL with a device identifier in it. For a lot of owners that is completely fine. If you only want to check your own garden from work, stop here.
Option 2: Upload to a community network
Ecowitt firmware ships with built-in support for the big public networks: Weather Underground, Weathercloud and WOW among them. Enable one in WS View Plus, paste the station ID and key that network gives you, and your data joins a public map.
This is worth doing regardless of what else you choose, because it is free and it puts your readings to work in a wider dataset. It is not a substitute for having your own site, though, for the same reason as option 1: the page belongs to the network.
Option 3: Self-host with weewx or CumulusMX
If you want total control and enjoy running things, point weewx or CumulusMX at the gateway and generate your own pages. WeeWX has a thorough user guide and both programs are genuinely capable.
The trade-off is the one every self-hoster makes: you now own a machine that has to stay online, an upload pipeline that can fail quietly, and an archive sitting on storage you are responsible for. We went through the real costs in the hidden costs of running your own weather server, and the failure modes in 5 reasons self-hosted weather software is a pain.
Option 4: The Customized upload to a hosted site
This is the option most Ecowitt owners do not realise they have. The Customized upload is a screen in WS View Plus where you type in any server address, path and port, and the gateway will post its full sensor payload there on a schedule you choose. It is not limited to a list of approved partners.
That means you can send your readings to a service that builds you a real website on your own domain, while the gateway keeps doing exactly what it already does. No computer, no FTP, no template maintenance.
With Pro Weather the setup is:
- Create your site and copy the upload path from the dashboard
- In WS View Plus, open your device, then Weather Services, then Customized
- Set Customized to Enable and Protocol Type Same As to Ecowitt
- Enter the server, path and port shown in your dashboard
- Set the upload interval to 60 seconds and save
Within a minute your site has data. Every field on that screen, and the two quirks that break most setups, are covered in the Customized upload walkthrough; the exact values for your site are in connect other hardware.
How do the four options compare?
| ecowitt.net | Community network | Self-hosted | Customized to a hosted site | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free | Hardware, power, hosting | Subscription |
| Your own domain | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Design control | None | None | Total | Configurable |
| Needs a machine running | No | No | Yes | No |
| History | Limited window | Network's own | Yours to back up | Permanent |
| Setup time | Minutes | Minutes | An afternoon or more | Minutes |
Why does the Customized upload need port 80?
Because the firmware speaks plain HTTP and will not follow a redirect. This surprises people who assume any modern endpoint should be HTTPS, so it is worth being precise: the Customized upload in Ecowitt firmware does not do TLS, and if the server answers with a redirect to HTTPS the gateway simply fails, usually with no visible error.
Any destination that accepts gateway uploads therefore has to answer plain HTTP on port 80 for that specific path. Pro Weather does this on a dedicated hostname (i.pro-weather.com) which accepts the plain-HTTP post and forwards it over an encrypted connection from there, so the unencrypted hop is only ever between your gateway and the edge.
There is a second constraint worth knowing: current firmware caps the combined length of server, path and port at 64 characters, and quietly truncates anything longer. That is why upload paths for gateways are kept short.
Which sensors actually come through?
All of them, if your destination bothers to parse them. This is where destinations differ most, because the Ecowitt payload is unusually rich and many services read only the basics.
| Sensor | Field family | Commonly dropped? |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature, humidity, pressure | tempf, humidity, baromrelin | No |
| Wind, gusts, direction | windspeedmph, windgustmph, winddir | No |
| Rain, including piezo gauges | rainratein, dailyrainin, *_piezo | Piezo often |
| PM1 / PM2.5 / PM10 | pm25_co2, pm10_co2 | Sometimes |
| CO2 (WH45, WH46) | co2, co2_24h | Often |
| Lightning (WH57, DP60) | lightning, lightning_num | Often |
| Extra room channels (WH31) | temp1f..temp8f | Often |
| Soil moisture and temperature | soilmoisture1..8, tf_ch1..8 | Beyond channel 4, often |
| Leaf wetness | leafwetness1..8 | Often |
If you have paid for a lightning detector or a soil probe array, check that whatever you upload to actually shows it. A destination that silently ignores half your sensors is a poor home for the data.
Does this work on Froggit, Sainlogic or Ambient Weather?
Yes, identically. Fine Offset manufactures most consumer WiFi weather stations and sells them through other brands, and they all run the same EasyWeatherPro firmware configured through the same WS View app. Froggit, Sainlogic, Eurochron and Ambient Weather stations therefore expose the same Customized screen with the same field names.
Practically, that means a guide written for Ecowitt is a guide for all of them. The one thing that varies is the app name: Ambient Weather uses awnet rather than WS View, and its Customized screen sits in the same place.
Bresser and Vevor are the exceptions worth flagging. Their firmware offers only a fixed list of destinations with no custom-server field, so those need weewx, Meteobridge or CumulusMX in between. If your station came with the ProWeatherLive app, that route is covered separately.
Common questions
Can I upload to more than one place at once?
Yes, and most owners do. The Customized upload is independent of the ecowitt.net service and the community-network entries, so a gateway can feed your own site, ecowitt.net and Weather Underground simultaneously. Nothing competes.
Will the Customized upload break my ecowitt.net dashboard?
No. They are separate settings. Turning on Customized does not disable the Ecowitt service, and your app keeps working exactly as before.
What upload interval should I use?
60 seconds is the sweet spot. The firmware allows anywhere from 8 to 600 seconds, but faster than about once a minute gains you nothing on a public website and just multiplies requests.
What happens when my internet drops?
The gateway keeps measuring and keeps trying. It does not buffer and replay a long outage, though, so a multi-hour internet failure leaves a gap in whatever you uploaded to. This is one real advantage of a destination that archives independently: the gap is only in the live feed, not in months of history.
Do I need the paid Ecowitt cloud plan?
No. The Customized upload is a firmware feature, not a cloud feature, and it works regardless of what you do or do not pay Ecowitt for.