I have the original Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire weather sensors and have enjoyed playing with them over the years. I decided to try one of the new AAG stations when I learned they had one with an RS485 interface.
As I've read from pwillard and others, and confirmed on my own, AAG are not the most responsive company that one might deal with. They take their own sweet time with delivery and don't give you any progress reports unless you bug the hell out of them. You have to submit a nda to be considered for them sharing the Windows program that apparently talks to their product. Good luck with that. I wasn't that interested anyway since I mainly use OS X but it would have been nice to have something to test the station with before I started writing my own code. I think it's a good deal for $79, otherwise.
After spending some time deciphering the RS485 protocol in the poorly translated .pdf, I was able to communicate through the very nice RS485 to USB adapter that comes with the kit and a terminal program that can send hex as well as ASCII. The manual was originally written in Chinese and then translated into Spanish which was then translated into English. Very entertaining.
Once I was sure I understood the protocol, the first command I gave it was to turn off the terribly annoying flashing array of 35 blue and red LEDs.
Pros:
The enclosure is waterproof unlike the Dallas original and should last pretty well. It contains a light intensity sensor as well as a DS18S20 type temperature sensor and a wind speed and direction capability using Hall effect devices rather than the original reed switches and magnets. The kit come with almost everything you need to set it up including an RS485-USB bridge and all the cables and power supply.
Cons:
No software. You can submit a form for them to consider sending you a Windows program. I haven't heard squat back.
The case is made out of clear plastic instead of the white opaque of the original and the DS1820 is inside of that. The reading I got during the day when our ambient was 105 F was over 140 F. Useful for knowing when to bring it in to keep from burning it up I guess.
It takes 12 VDC and 5 VDC to operate. The RJ45 connector system that is used is not based on any of the current "standards" for RS485.
Since the interface is no longer 1-wire, there is no documented way to add any additional DS18S20s. The protocol "manual" didn't hint at any way to do this. This means that there is no way to add any additional 1-wire sensors. So far they don't offer any RS485 accessories. That's unfortunate because there has evolved a pretty healthy accessory community because of the popularity of the original Dallas kit.
So, not as cool as it could be. The good news is that most of my other weather related sensors are Arduino based so it will be easy to add them to an RS485 network.
I mounted the station on a pole without completely disassembling it first which I will remedy later. From the pinouts on the presumably accurate schematic, they are using an Atmega8 in the TQFP 32 package. There is a programming connector shown on the schematic. If they haven't prevented reprogramming the chip, it should be very easy to reprogram it with a custom Arduino sketch. The only problem I see is the limited code space in an Atmega8. I think there should be room to turn it into a more useful product, though. Failing that, I'm not afraid to solder a different chip onto it as it has the same pinout as a 328.
I would like to solar power the station and give it wifi capability. I'm still waiting for the Xbee wifi development kit to arrive. Since I intend to have it display on a web page rather than an LCD remote, I haven't written very much code for it. Just enough to set the calibration constants and read and display the station data. It provides temperature, wind speed and direction, light intensity, and power supply voltage. There is also an elaborate protocol available for flashing the LEDs in every imaginable way but I haven't done anything with that except turn it off.
I'll post the sketch for anyone who is interested in how I did the RS485 interface. On the hardware side, I just wired the proper voltages to an RJ45 breakout from Sparkfun and used a MAX3486E RS485 driver for the half-duplex connection. I wired the driver and receiver enables together and drive them with a digital pin on the Arduino. I am using the latest SoftwareSerial library at 9600 baud for communication.
As always, any comments or criticisms are welcome.
I have exceeded the character limit for one post so I'll post the code separately.