DIY Weather station

[Somnium (Aidan)]

Since i successfully developed my roof control system and wrote a ASCOM driver for it i am getting a little brave. rather than spending a minimum of $500 US (and up to $2k) to get a weather station i have spent a grand total of $12 for all the gear i need to build my own. the plan is to monitor temperature (inside and outside of the ob) and humidity, atmospheric pressure and also the power from my mains. the ASCOM driver basically sends either True or False to an isSafe get request, asking whether the parameters for observing (defined by me) have been met. so if humidity is above 80%, pressure below 1100 (something like that) or power from mains is out then the weather station will report via the ASCOM driver to CCD autopilot and cause the session to pause, the roof to close and wait for conditions to clear up. i will also display the raw data and save it to a file so i can monitor the conditions. this is a bit of an experiment, it may be absolutely rubbish at predicting cloud and rain but hey, i can afford the $12 and if it works i will be extremely pleased.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

Have you had a look at the Arduino sensors for rain and remote IR temperature? - you should be able to sense when the sky is clear or clouds are about (from zenith sky temp) and when it's raining, to make up a full capability environment sensor.

[Somnium (Aidan)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

Have you had a look at the Arduino sensors for rain and remote IR temperature? - you should be able to sense when the sky is clear or clouds are about (from zenith sky temp) and when it's raining, to make up a full capability environment sensor.

Yeah, since posting this I have bought the ir sensor and I already have a rain sensor. I am interested to see how well it performs