Weather station info

There have been some requests to know about how my personal weather station works and how it is set up to send the data to Weather Underground.

I figured I'd post the information here to let folks know and to also give some tips/lessons learned to anyone who might be interested in having their own personal weather station.

There are 3 basic components to a personal weather station:
1) Outside hardware. Measures temperature, humidity, barometer, wind speed, wind direction, and rain amount.
2) Inside console display. This is the piece of equipment that displays the current (and sometimes historical) readings that are measured by the outside hardware. Typically these are fancy LCD displays.
3) Computer interface. This allows data that is measured by the outside hardware to be sent to your personal computer via a serial or USB cable that is connected to the inside console display. Weather software that is run on the PC reads and processes this data. The software can display the current weather on the local computer, send the data over the internet to other sources, generate historical graphs, view historical max/mins - just about anything you want to do with the raw data, can be handled by the software.

There are a bunch of weather stations out there. Most of the ones you find at Walmart/Target/Cosco/Sam's club provide only the outside hardware and the inside console display - these cannot be hooked up to a PC.

The one I choose was the Davis Vantage Pro. Here is a picture of what is included: http://www.davisnet.com/productpics/H-Res JPEGs/6152_PARTS.jpg
http://www.davisnet.com/productpics/H-Res JPEGs/6312_rightlcd.jpg

I have my outside hardware on my deck railing on the back of my house.

What I like about the Davis Vantage Pro is that it is wireless from the outside hardware to the inside console display. It has a mini-solar panel on the front of the rain collector that generates the power to send the data to the inside console display - no need to replace batteries or run a power cable!

The computer interface (which is really just an over-priced fancy serial cable) is not included, but can be purchased seperately as an add-on.

Davis includes free software updates.

There are also a bunch of third-party software products that you can use. For mine I use Weather Display:
http://www.weather-display.com/index.php

The software sends the data to Weather Underground, which is then collected and analyzed for my own personal weather station webpage:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KVAASHBU4

As far as cost, I paid around $650:
- $450 for the Vantage Pro
- $150 for the computer interface
- ~$50 for the Weather Display software

Here is a great resource with links to weather station and software packages:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/index.asp

Hope this helps. Let me know if you want to know anything else about my setup.

Wes

 

Wes,

Thanks for taking the time to share. Very cool. Sounds like a nice Christmas present idea.

How do you set up the data sharing with WeatherUnderground. Do they take your data and present it within a webpage they set up for you? Other than sending them data is there any other web side maintenance?

 

No problem - glad you are interested.

The Weather Display software on my PC allows data to be uploaded to various weather sites. I have it set up to update my data to Weather Underground every 5 minutes.

Weather Underground takes the data I send and presents it to a web page that they set up for me. I don't have to mess with creating the web page or customizing it.

They seem to be pretty good about adding features and data views to the data.

For example they recently added a mashup with the Google Maps API that allows you to view all personal weather stations data overlayed on a map. Check it out at:
http://www.wunderground.com/stationmaps/gmap.asp?zip=20148&magic=3&wmo=99999

Its pretty cool to watch when a cold front or big storm system is moving through our area.

Other than making sure the Weather Display software is running, there is very little work that I need to do on the web site.

Wes

 

Just have one question, Wes. Do you have your anemometer set up in a sheltered area? Seems like wind speed is a little low.

Awesome site, though, thanks.

 

No - my anemometer is on my deck. Ideally it should be placed about 8 ft. above the roof line.

I'm holding out putting it on my roof for another project.

 

Very cool! That looks like an awesome weather station package.

I have all my equipment mounted on my deck. My Davis Vantage station came with all the mounting hardware for the various components so I didn't need to buy anything extra.

Someday I'll mount the anemometer on my roof for better wind speed measurements, but for the time being its on my deck rail. Davis sells a kit for mounting it on your roof, but I don't have that.

The biggest maintenance that I have to do every few months is clean out the rain gauge debris. Its mostly a fine coat of dirt or various dead bugs that cover the tipping buckets which I wipe away with a damp cloth.

Other than that, its a great hobby and fun to watch the measurements as various fronts/systems come in.

If you want to come over and check it out, send me a PM and you can take a closer at my setup.

Wes