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| The
Integrated Sensor Suite (ISS) mounted to the side of the house.
Away from the AC on the right (for the thermometer), yet far
enough from the trees in the backyard to prevent rain shadow
(for the rain gauge). The rain
collector
cup
extends a fair amount above the roof line to prevent splashing,
although
it's likely minor splashing will occur during severe weather. |
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| A
close-up of the ISS. The wire you see is coming from the anemometer.
The rings at the bottom make up the passive radiation shield, designed
to allow the thermometer to gauge the air temperature more accurately,
minimizing the effects of the sun. More expensive models include
a fan-aspirated radiation shield, which forces the surrounding
air past the temperature sensor for even greater accuracy. The
large black cylinder is the rain collector. The white box on the
side is the circuit board and battery housing. The Solar panel
(black area at the top of the
white box)
keeps the battery charged to power the board and wireless transmitter.
The anemometer plugs in here, as well as other optional sensors. |
The
anemometer connects via a 2-pair phone cable to the ISS. I mounted
the anemometer at the peak of the house and ran the cable
through the attic. It would be best if I used a tripod to mount
this sensor about 6 or 7 feet above the roof's ridgeline, but garnering
HOA approval for that isn't a task I'm up for. |
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| A better perspective of the anemometer/roof ornament. |
This
is the Vantage Pro2 console. This receives and logs weather data
wirelessly from the ISS outside and displays current
conditions. Also graphs
each weather variable over selectable time frames (graph is in
lower-left of display). It also measures barometric pressure,
as well as indoor
temperature and humidity. |
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| This
is the Weather Envoy. I wanted the console to live
in the kitchen, which is not near a PC. This device receives
data from the ISS just as the console does. Instead of displaying
that data, it merely sends the data to the PC via USB. The weather
envoy also measures indoor temperature, humidity and barometric
pressure. |
This
is Tyler. He monitors the weather manually by sitting in front
of the sliding glass door and looking outside. While not as high-tech,
he's much better to cuddle with and has way-more attitude.
s: "so, Ty ... what's goin' on out there?"
t: "it's raining, jackass!" |
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Frequently
Asked Questions
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| Who
makes this weather station and what model do you have? |
Davis
Instruments manufactures this Wireless Vantage Pro2 with
Standard Radiation Shield. I also have a WeatherLink
for Vantage Pro2 for Windows (USB) mounted inside a Wireless
Weather Envoy for Vantage Pro2
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| This
is cool, where can I buy a weather station like this? |
The
best place I've found is ProVantage.com (don't
get confused that the name of this retailer is coincidentally
the reversed-name of the weather station). They don't post
the prices online directly because they're lower than Davis
allows to be advertised. Just enter your email address and
they'll send you a link to the same page, except with the
prices displayed. ProVantage is a good company; they ship
fast and usually have competitive online prices.
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| Why
is this thing so expensive? What's wrong with a $xx.xx XXX
brand? |
Accuracy
and Reliability. And the ability to measure much more than
just temperature. With optional sensors, you can measure
soil temperature, water temperature, there's even a leaf-wetness
sensor so you can calculate exactly when you need to irrigate!
The Solar radiation and UV sensors deliver you the UV index,
so you know how long you can stay in the sun before burning.
Set alarms to tell you when the temperature drops low enough
that you need to keep your pool pump running (to prevent
lines from freezing). Set a high-wind alarm to notify you
when awnings need to be lowered, etc.
Davis
has a section
on their website that lists sites also reporting
weather data using Davis' products.
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| Neat.
What else can you do with this thing? |
Glad
you asked! You can also buy a WeatherLink interface
that connects to the back of the console, and then to a USB
port on your PC. With the provided software, you can upload
your data to a website (like I've done here) and participate
in
CWOP (which I do here).
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| Hunh?
What is CWOP? |
The Citizen
Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a private-public partnership
with three main goals:
1)
to collect weather data contributed by citizens;
2)
to make these data available for
weather services and homeland security; and
3)
to provide feedback to the data contributors so that they
have
the tools to check
and improve their data quality.
There are over 4,500 registered CWOP members world wide and
a graph of the number
of North American CWOP stations sending data over the past
four days is shown under the older name
APRSWXNET. The
number of world-wide citizen weather stations sending data through APRS-IS (Internet-Service) is shown for
the past 48 hours.
Every
15 minutes, the data are sent from the findu.com server to
the NOAA MADIS program to become part of the NOAA mesonet data
set, helping to create, among other things, weather models!
You
can get a map of all stations reporting to NOAA here. Wait
for all of the sites to load, then click and drag a box to
zoom in. If you look for this site, zoom into the Tampa-bay
area and hover over the different dots until you find me:
CW3909. You can even find
buoys ... click the "world" button to zoom out and see stations
around the globe.
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| How does the rain collector work? |
The
rain collector is the large black cylinder on the ISS.
It looks like a funnel inside and drops water straight down
onto
a "tipping bucket". One half of the bucket will
fill with water, causing it to tip (and drain) placing
the other
half of the bucket under the stream of water. The sensor
measures "tips" of
the bucket; each equivalent to 0.01" of rainfall.
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