Anyone here operating their own personal weather station?

[MannDude]

Curious if anyone here is operating their own weather station or participating in wunderground's Personal Weather Station program. Seems like it could be something fun and interesting to do. If you're unfamiliar with it, you can read more here: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/about.asp

Anyone here into stuff like that?

 

[KuJoe]

I don't but thanks to their amazingly accurate map on there website I know where I can get some free hardware to start my own.  :lol:

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Haha that's a really cool and awesome idea to do! 

My only real issue with it is that while it does provide more data that can be useful for analysis, I think the variability where the actual sensor is placed (e.g. in sunlight vs in shade, on the ground vs on the roof) would fluctuate a ton for this. 

Awesome idea though thats for sure 

 

[scott2020]

I have a older Honeywell TE 923 setup.  The accuracy of the wind sensor is questionable, but OK.  Temperature and rain seem to be OK.  They don't make them anymore and they sell under many brands.  I have it connected to a Sheevaplug small box which runs Debian and the great WView software.  Wview generates HTML that can be uploaded to your own web server, and also supports things like Wunderground, APRS reporting, CWOP, things like that.

My brother has one of these:  http://www.ambientweather.com/amws1000wifi.html

They are a little hard to come by.  Seem to be out of stock a lot.  But the sensor is decent and easily configures to your wifi to auto upload to Weatherunderground with no big fuss.

 

[nunim]

I'd like to but

A. I live in a basement suite so I don't have a good place for a anemometer

B. Finding good equipment is difficult/expensive

C. The stuff I do see is incompatible with everything else

I've settled for a cheap Walmart "Weather station" with 2 remote sensors, mostly so I can know how cold it actually is outside/should I open the window.  

@HalfEatenPie point is correct, there is tremendous variation in temperature depending on where the sensors are placed.  I've attempted to place mine out of direct sunlight/covered by the root to avoid rain but I still see large [SIZE=14.4444446563721px]temperature [/SIZE]swings during the day.

Finding affordable USB sensors would be a big step in the right direction.

 

[MannDude]

Thanks for the updates, certainly some good points made. Reviewing my immediate area available to me, probably wouldn't be super wise to do anything here unless I could get some of the sensors above the tree that is nearest my house which wouldn't be very economical unless I built an antenna tower.... then I could mount some cool stuff on there like my RC radio gear, HAM radio stuff and of course weather station sensors...

Maybe... some day.

 

[nunim]

...unless I could get some of the sensors above the tree that is nearest my house which wouldn't be very economical unless I built an antenna tower.... then I could mount some cool stuff on there like my RC radio gear, HAM radio stuff and of course weather station sensors.....

It depends on what kind of tree it is but I would use it as the antenna tower.  

When I lived in FL, I had more than one neighbor with an antenna tower made from a palm tree and some PVC pipe.  You just run the PVC next to the tree and anchor it to the tree, then run your cables through the pipe to the antenna/whatever.  I would imagine it works better with palm trees as they're reasonably straight but I'm sure it would work with any kind of tree, you may need to cut the PVC into sections.

Cheap + relatively easy + non-permanent so when you're ready to move you just remove the pipe and anchors from the tree.

 

[dave]

I've been running a Davis VantageVue weather station for the last 3 years.  I don't upload the data to the weather underground, but I've got it on my own website (sfcweather.com).

 

[MannDude]

I've been running a Davis VantageVue weather station for the last 3 years.  I don't upload the data to the weather underground, but I've got it on my own website (sfcweather.com).

That's pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Jasson.Pass]

I always did. This thread encourages me to want to do one now