Weather Stations

ScottM

ScottM

Taxi to Parking
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iBazinga!
I have been thinking about getting a WX station for the house. One of the Davis or LaCrosse types. I am wondering what you all have if you have one?

I would of course want it to have wind speed and direction plus a barometer, rain gauge. What else is handy? It would be great of the senor pack could be wireless so that all I have to get tot he mounting location is power.
 
A wet and dry bulb and a written log would do better to determine the wx. That is, isn't it more important to be able to interpret what the wx WILL be doing rather that what it IS doing?

Wireless, huh? Methinks you could have good fun with your nieghbor's garage doors...intentionally or unintentionally.

Sorry to rain on your parade, I really don't know much about home wx stations although I do have an opinion! :rolleyes:
 
I have a Davis system and it works pretty well except the wind direction quit a while back (probably due to a broken wire somewhere). My setup is sorta wireless in that the display receives the information via an RF connection from the rain/temp/humidity sensor mounted on the side of my house but the anemometer is mounted on a tower about 300 ft from the house and that's wired directly to the rain/temp/humidity part. I think I could set it up with a wireless connection for the wind, but the wires were already there from a previous weather station. The Davis is my third unit, the first was a Heathkit (had a nice display but was terribly unreliable and actually started smoking once), the second was from Oregon Scientific (not particularly robust either).

The Davis is my first wireless system and the wireless portion has been pretty much flawless. I like the fact that I can move the receiver/display anywhere in the house and still get all the information from the sensors. One downside of the system is that although it has some internal data logging, there's no provision to dump the logs to a computer unless you buy a bundled adapter and their software.

I shopped around and found a source online that offered considerable discounts on the Davis stuff as well as some good technical advice. I'll see if I can dig up their name and contact info.
 
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I've got a Davis system that has been up and running since the beginning of 1999. Living here in the great Pacific Northwe(s)t I get the most enjoyment out of the rain gauge. Wires to the wind speed/direction and rain gauge sensor. I don't have the barometer function version. It has been absolutely bulletproof over the years.

And there's nothing wrong with Oregon Scientific. The indoor/outdoor thermometer in my office/ham shack is from them. I replace the battery now and then and that's about it.
 
I think wunderground.com has a list of local weather sites that aren't schools. They list them as unofficial but they are still pretty good.
If you get the wind speed indicator, there's some specific rules for mounting it so the buildings do not interfere. If you don't follow the recommendations, you'll get some pretty funky winds.
 
mikea said:
What's wrong with Oregon Scientific?
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Produc...=1&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1

I'm close enough that I could provide weather at the airport. OK, I'm on the lake and the airport is a mile away.

I had thoughts of hosting a weather bug station but I guess they just go after school sites themselves.
Click to expand...

The Oregon system I had lasted about a year before it died and the display was nowhere near as complete as the Davis Vantage Pro I have now. Plus the OS unit would eat the batteries in about 5 hrs if the power went out. The Davis seems to be able to run on batteries for at least a couple days.
 
Scott, I have a Davis Vantage Pro 2 which is wireless with inside/outside temp, humidity, barometer, rain gauge, anemometer and wind direction. I've had it 2-3 years now with no trouble. I don't particularly care for Davis software and use Ambient's Virtual Weather Station on my desktop.

This station replaces an older Davis Weather Monitor II which I probably owned for 10 years.
 
Mine is a Rainwise Mk III
solar powered, 418MHz wireless (no interference - to/from)
Dry Bulb, Dew Point, Wind Direction/Velocity, Baro, rain,

added software provides logging (interval selectable), time, date
calculates humidity, heat/cooling index (wind chill), sun/moon rise/set
windrun, DA, PA, cloudbase
predicts nearterm trend/condition
 
What kind of price range are these home weather stations with PC or even better Linux interfaces?

Joe
 
silver-eagle said:
I think wunderground.com has a list of local weather sites that aren't schools. They list them as unofficial but they are still pretty good.
If you get the wind speed indicator, there's some specific rules for mounting it so the buildings do not interfere. If you don't follow the recommendations, you'll get some pretty funky winds.
Click to expand...

Love that site and yes it has links to stations that are at home and school with a "Rapid Fire" link as well.
 
Davis is pretty much high-end, but is reportedly much more durable that the cheaper models.

I have a Lacrosse 2308 I purchased at Costco for $100. Wireless or wired, Indoor/Outdoor temp, Rel Humidity, Wind Dir & Speed, Raingage. So far (6mo +) it has functioned pretty much as advertised. I run it wired through 100 feet of standard telephone cord. Reports are more frequent and the remote gets power from the base station rather than AA batteries. The PC connection came with it enabling me to function as a ham radio APRS weather station. Software also enables publishing to a web page or to the National Weather Service.
 
I always thought it would be cool to make a "poor-man's AWOS," where the WX station feeds the data to a computer, and the computer's linked to a radio which, upon (say) eight clicks of the mike on the CTAF, would wake-up and give a voice-synthesized wind and temp report.

You would not publish it, but it would be good to have for someone with a private strip which is far enough from the nearest official station that supplemental data would be helpful.
 
SCCutler said:
I always thought it would be cool to make a "poor-man's AWOS," where the WX station feeds the data to a computer, and the computer's linked to a radio which, upon (say) eight clicks of the mike on the CTAF, would wake-up and give a voice-synthesized wind and temp report.

You would not publish it, but it would be good to have for someone with a private strip which is far enough from the nearest official station that supplemental data would be helpful.
Click to expand...

There are lots of ham radio guys that run a similar setup.

I've told you before--I think you and Tommy could have a lot of fun with ham radio.
 
SCCutler said:
I always thought it would be cool to make a "poor-man's AWOS," where the WX station feeds the data to a computer, and the computer's linked to a radio which, upon (say) eight clicks of the mike on the CTAF, would wake-up and give a voice-synthesized wind and temp report.

You would not publish it, but it would be good to have for someone with a private strip which is far enough from the nearest official station that supplemental data would be helpful.
Click to expand...

Sorry Spike, you're late to the party... ;)

http://digiwx.com/content/digiwx.cfm
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Sorry Spike, you're late to the party... ;)

http://digiwx.com/content/digiwx.cfm
Click to expand...
The DigiWx is what we're going to be installing at Clow. Apparently, we're too close to Lewis to have an AWOS, but I can't say that I understand that. However, apparently the DigiWX will allow us to report the weather to the FAA, have it broadcast over the frequency, and available via a telephone inquiry. I'm hoping that having an altimiter on the field will also allow us to lower the minima on the approaches.
 
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