El cheapo weather station. - Page 7

Sausageman (Mike Boggan) · #**121** 03-05-2008, 04:04 AM

wireless weather stations are wonderful, unless you happen to have a radio telescope or two just hanging around listening to the Universe.
They all seem to work around 420-435Mh which will interfere with the freq's we receive.
any frequency that multiplies up to around 1420Mh is no good for us.
Our normal operating freq's are from 1200 to 1600Mh
Where can I get a hard wired system from?

We need an anemometer mostly so it can auto-park the dishes when the wind gets too strong, but it needs to be hard wired into our computer.
Any ideas?

Mike.

snowyskiesau · #**122** 03-05-2008, 09:28 AM

One of the wireless weather stations listed on eBay has a brand name of BIOS.
These models supported a wired as well as a wireless option.

Here's a link to one of them.

thoona · #**123** 03-05-2008, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTB_an_Owl

new version of weather display now available for ws1081

geoff

Hi there - just new to this forum; have just got a ws1080 and doing some googling trying to get updated software. i see you have been able to get a new version of it, just wondering if you'd be able to let me know how / where to get it from?
cheers,
rob

acropolite (Phil) · #**124** 03-05-2008, 10:31 AM

Weather display isn't the WS1081's native application, it's a third part application that supposts most commonly available weather stations and is very powerful. It can be downloaded at http://www.weather-display.com/files.php

Back on the USB interface, WD dowloaded just one set of data last night but doesn't seem to want to read the data now, of course it will still work with the data file. I might PM the author and see if he has any ideas. The help file says to use Xp device manager to find the com port used, I couldn't find any USB/com port association whatsoever, in fact the weather station doesn't even show anywhere in my device manager.

Mike FYO the WS1081 specs say this weather station operates on 868Mhz(Europe) or 915Mhz(North America)

xstream (John) · #**125** 03-05-2008, 10:58 AM

Mike, Davis instruments transmit and receive at 915-928Mhz in their wireless models But they also have cabled models.

Davis Net Shop.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausageman

wireless weather stations are wonderful, unless you happen to have a radio telescope or two just hanging around listening to the Universe.
They all seem to work around 420-435Mh which will interfere with the freq's we receive.
any frequency that multiplies up to around 1420Mh is no good for us.
Our normal operating freq's are from 1200 to 1600Mh
Where can I get a hard wired system from?

We need an anemometer mostly so it can auto-park the dishes when the wind gets too strong, but it needs to be hard wired into our computer.
Any ideas?

Mike.

acropolite (Phil) · #**126** 03-05-2008, 06:13 PM

Mike, I'd have to agree with John, if you want accuracy and reliability, for an application like that the Davis models would be a better option.

acropolite (Phil) · #**127** 03-05-2008, 06:29 PM

Mine doesn't seem to be working correcly with WD, some of the data is correct, some including wind speed and direction is incorrect; my indoor temp is also incorrect with WD. Is your indoor temp displayed correctly on your local (non web) display Geoff??

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**128** 04-05-2008, 02:44 PM

wind speed and direction seems to lag a bit i think Phil

other looks ok

geoff

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**129** 04-05-2008, 03:22 PM

getting erroneous rain readings now to-day ?

geoff

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**130** 04-05-2008, 09:03 PM

there is another update for weather display on their website

geoff

astroron (Ron) · #**131** 04-05-2008, 09:07 PM

We have only had 5,4 mm of rain since March. so still no serious test.

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**132** 04-05-2008, 09:55 PM

what program are you using Ron

geoff

astroron (Ron) · #**133** 04-05-2008, 10:28 PM

Weather display, I have also joined weather underground.
Steve has just downloaded the latest software, but it is not communicating with the weather station, it just comes up with data not available.
Ron

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**134** 04-05-2008, 10:32 PM

that's no good

did you close down weather display before you ran the new install ?

geoff

acropolite (Phil) · #**135** 05-05-2008, 08:05 AM

WD is communicating with my station, I suspect Brian hasn't got the I/F quite right or I've got something set wrongly, it reads data but the data is all over the place and missing in some cases, I've emailed Brian re the problem. I've been unable to find the com port number associated with the weatherstation, despite the fact that WD indicates that you should be able to find it in Xp's device manager.

turbo_pascale (Rob) · #**136** 06-05-2008, 11:28 PM

Seems to work, but I've got some weird stuff going on....

Every 1.5 hours I get a "blip" in the readings.

Also, my rainfall is climbing out of control, also on the 1.5 hour mark.

I'm going to have to write to Brian, although I just read above there is a revised version. The native software seems to be reading fine.
There should be no reason to find a com port at all. It finds the device on the USB automagically for me.

to view my site to see the problem look here: http://turbopascale.sytes.net

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**137** 06-05-2008, 11:48 PM

latest version is 18 that i have downloaded and running

having the same problem as you Rob

rain readings are out - recording when there is no rain
i found a little test program that you can run to see if it is reading the correct data

project1080.zip - found on the forum

geoff

acropolite (Phil) · #**138** 07-05-2008, 04:15 PM

I have a reply from the author, Brian Hamilton.

Quote:

i am still working on the direct support
(which at the moment does get missed data)
the latest update handles better when the data comes through as all zeros....which i need to try and figure out why that is happening
Cheers
Brian

So it will be fixed. On the plus side, the application can be minimised to the systray, which is nice, and when left running doesn't grind the machine to a halt.

turbo_pascale (Rob) · #**139** 07-05-2008, 11:22 PM

I got the little reader program - interesting.
I did note in the same thread there are some discussions about the fact that depending on how you configure the unit (ie km/h or mph etc), that readings come back different. I would have thought that the readings would all be "arbitrary" numbers that reflect the sensor readings rather than something that changes with the internal configuration. Must make it a bit of a bugger to interpret the data stream.

I must say that leaving it chugging in the system tray is nice - my computer was having fits regularly with the easyweather software - and it's a pretty new machine so when it bogged down constantly (recalculating rain data) it made all my graphs look like a staircase for huge chunks of time.

It is somewhat interesting that there is a "recalculating rain data" step in the easyweather software that takes forever, and the fact that rain readings are out of control. Perhaps there is a fundamental problem with it and that was some kind of software kludge to get around it?? Just speculation on my part.

GTB_an_Owl (Geoff) · #**140** 08-05-2008, 12:08 PM

OK - don't say too much - but

on the console - make sure the time is set to 24hr (and the same in weather display) and that the date is showing as 8.5.08 and not 8.5.th(ursday)

my rain figures have remained zero since i changed those settings

geoff