Getting weather data from my Acurite sensors was shockingly easy

I've had a Pi and SDR earmarked for 'getting weather data from my weather station' for a long time now. I don't know why I waited so long, because it was shockingly easy.

I have a Acurite 5-in-1 weather station (with separate lightning detector) mounted about 15' in the air in my back yard. It comes with a fancy little LCD display to show all the stats it transmits over the 433 MHz wireless frequency.

But I want to ingest that data into my Home Assistant installation, so I can have better access to historical data, set up alerts (like if wind speed is above 50 mph, or there's lightnining less than 10 miles away), etc.

I'll work on the HA integration later, likely using MQTT. But for now, just getting the data to decode on a Raspberry Pi 5 was quick:

1. Plug my Nooelec NESDR into my Pi, and the cheap dipole antenna that came in the kit into the NESDR's antenna jack
2. Install rtl_433 on the Pi: sudo apt install -y rtl-433
3. Run it: rtl_433

Bingo! It automatically picked up both of my Acurite sensors, and started displaying the data every few seconds:

It's a rare treat to just install something and have it work immediately. Especially if it uses RF!