Weather station?

[Camelopardalis]

Can anyone recommend a home weather station?

I'm interested in something that would show me temperature and humidity, be interested in wind speed also but I can stick to looking at the trees for that :D ideally wirelessly to a display indoors or via web page.

Any suggestions appreciated!

[RB]

Check out this thread.

El Cheapo Weather Station. (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=29959&highlight=cheapo+weatherstation)

:)

[mithrandir]

Unless you have proper screening and a clear space of at least 50m around the station you should treat any reading as a suggestion. With the winds over the last week the highest speed my WH3081 weather station had recorded was 8.2m/sec (29km/h) - about a third of the official figure. If the winds had been from the north it would have been more accurate. It normally reads maxima two or three degrees higher than the nearest BOM weather station.

[Astroman]

I have the WS-3081, one like this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Solar-Powered-Professional-Weather-Station-WH3081-with-PC-Interface-/230968867152?pt=AU_Gadgets&hash=item35c6d13950&_uhb=1

I have it connected to the net most of the time, but just waiting to get everything installed onto a new computer to run 24/7. I use a program called Cumulus, only because the supplied software is rubbish.

http://users.adam.com.au/astroman/new

I also made a new weather shield for the temp and humidity sensor and have it mounted on a pole with the wind sensors 7m above the ground. Works reasonably well.

[Camelopardalis]

Great! Thanks for all the suggestions...El cheaply definitely looks a good place to start :thumbsup:

[Meru]

Andrew has made a good point, all depends on where you locate it. Not sure how good these are or if they are in your budget, but I've always wondered about getting these jaycar models (first three results):

http://search.jaycar.com.au/search?w=weather%20station&view=list

[mithrandir]

The inside units of the XC0348 and XC0346 are different but the outside parts of them look identical to my WH3081.

[Camelopardalis]

Cumulus looks interesting too :)

[RB]

Phil (acropolite) put me onto the weather station and Geoff (GTB_an_Owl) put me onto Cumulus and thanks to them I've got my setup up and running.
I still need to tweak it a bit but I restarted my station back in August with the new Cumulus setup including an iPhone version (see links).

Really handy and I love using it, Geoff also got me started on a web cam page (Sky Cam) for cumulus.
I don't run the skycam all the time but when I do it updates every minute during daylight hours.

http://www.mangroveweather.com/

iPhone link (http://iimagespace.com/page/weather/iphone/index.html#_home)

RB
:thumbsup:

[Astroman]

Yeah I am still yet to put in a skycam, but might end up being a Observatory Cam :D

[Camelopardalis]

Pretty cool stuff IMO :)

[bkm2304]

We had a great station on our farm. We are on the brow of a hill and one windy, no make that really windy day, I was enthusiastically watching the gusts on the computer when it stopped transmitting. I looked out the window to where the station was - I say was because the last gust it recorded which was 103 km/hr, lifted the whole show and threw it across the paddock!


Moral = Bolt the bugger down real good!

Richard the weatherless.:windy::windy::windy:

[acropolite]

Just to add to the debate, my WS1081 is still going strong after all these years, the original thread was started in March 2008. There have been a few people who bought these weather stations that have had problems but the vast majority have been reliable. As Andrew says, the housing around the outdoor unit is a little undersized and tends to heat up a little, other than that they work well. It's worth reading through the original thread, the unit has some quirks, I found it best to empty the buffer before it gets too full, plus the supplied easyweather software was a resource hog and could grind the host PC to a halt in short time if left running, hence the switch to other software applications for data gathering.

[mithrandir]

Phil, I had a WS1081 but it started getting unreliable with corrosion on the battery contacts being a major contributor. The newer model has a solar panel to keep the batteries charged.

What I have found with the WS3081 is that it occasionally locks up the USB connection and the only cure is to unplug the USB cable and then remove and reinsert a battery (or the power cable if you are using a wall wart). This loses anything in its memory and the date/time settings.

My alternative solution is to not run Cumulus continuously, but stop/start it every now and then. This might be something to do with running it on XP, but who can tell.

[Meru]

Ah ha! That's quite interesting that they use the same plastics but different electronics. I suppose Dunk just go with whatever suits your budget, perhaps keep warranty in mind :) Good luck with your purchase!

[Astroman]

My Wx Station has gone offline for some reason. Took some pretty strong wind the other night which may have resulted in the plugs coming lose or something, I get the Lux reading and the pressure reading, but no Wind, rain or temperature readings, my guess is that it has a lose connection somewhere...

[Wavytone]

Dunk,

IMHO its easier - and more convenient - to use a smartphone weather app that can pick off the live data from a BOM weather station near you - there are several across the Sydney basin - see http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/observations/sydneymap.shtml

For example I use 'OzWeather', for iOS. The apps are cheaper than a home weather station, and the best part is no tinkering - the BOM maintains it for you !

With respect to wind, home weather stations are likely to be very inaccurate because of the effects of local terrain around them - starting with the topography (not much good if you are in valley), your roof, surrounding buildings and trees. By way of example the BOM puts their anemometers on a 10 metre pole, but even then they can be affected by terrain. Over the past few years while paragliding I've made many measurements with anemometers at 3-4 locations and compared them with the data from the BOM AWS... For example the readings at the Mt Boyce AWS are generally accurate, but the North Head AWS reads low by 50% in winds from E to N (compare with Bellambi, which is pretty accurate).

[Camelopardalis]

Where's the fun in that ;) :D I just want to get an idea of what the conditions are in my nearest observing area, to go along with my logs.

Will take a look at the app too, thanks for the tip.