Help with reading Wind speed/direction sensor with RPi

[Ravenstain]

Hi!

I have a problem and was wondering if anyone would be able to help me out and guide me in the right direction.
Me and a friend are trying to build a RPi (or maybe Arduino) based weather station and have a wind speed/direction meter that was decommissioned from an airport that we would like to use. Best I can tell it’s an Observator OMC-160(v2?). I’v dug up a manual for it and it looks like it outputs Currentloop ASCII coded output 20 mA or NMEA-0183 version 2.30. Screenshots from relevant parts of the manual below.

As it is right now, the sensor has been wired with the jumper in place (terminals 13 & 14) with wires going to terminals 1-4, so as I understand it should be outputting a currentloop signal with ASCII information.

Would it be possible to read the output form the sensor using a Pi/Arduino and, if yes, what additional hardware would I need to do it (converters/adaptors and such like)? Links to relevant guides or suggestions on what I should be researching would be appreciated. I’v been trying to read up on relevant topics, but so far I’m struggling to get my head around on how exactly the sensor communicates and how to make it work in our project.

Hope this makes some sense. Sorry if this is a dumb/too broad a question, but I’m very much a “n00b” when it comes to things like this and would appreciate some help.

Cheers!

P.S. Full OMC-160 manual if anyone can be bothered to look at it.

Manual_OMC-160_v2.04_.pdf

P.P.S Sorry if this in the wrong section of the forum.

[gordonthree]

I would put it into NEMA mode, then you can use something like GPSD on the RPi to decode the data and make it available to other programs. I think there’s NEMA decode libraries for Arduino too.

You’ll probably want a MAX232 chip to act as a level shifter between the output of the device (maybe 12v), and what the RPi wants (3.3 or 5v check pi datasheet!) A level shifter is definitely required for connection to arduino serial port.

Alternately with the RPi you could use a USB to RS232 dongle, which contains the level shifter.