Weather station

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curtis cutter
Posts: 559
Joined: Fri May 18, 2012 11:46 pm
Location: Curtis, WA

Weather station

Post by curtis cutter »

Does anyone here have a good home weather station that has computer access and records results?

Gregg
Gregg
Just let go of it, it will eventually unplug itself.
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warmstrong1955
Posts: 3568
Joined: Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:05 pm
Location: Northern Nevada

Re: Weather station

Post by warmstrong1955 »

I have an AccuRite model 1036 weather station. It was a gift from a friend.
It is connected to my computer, but I have to tell it to download from the Display at least every two weeks. If not, the display will run out of memory. It makes a entry every 10 minutes.
All in all, pretty cool.
Things I don't like.....
-the excel format it downloads is an odd one, called CSV. If I want to change anything on it, I have to "save as" a regular excel worksheet. I don't bother. I did the first few months I had it, but I learned how to deal with it as is.
-You can't add the total rainfall on the spreadsheet. If it starts to rain at say 9:00 AM.....and continues to rain until 12:00, the downloaded excel sheet will show a progressive accumulation from 9:00 AM till the rain stops for a bit, ie. at 9.00, .10", at 9.10, .11", and on and on to noon....so if you add it up....a lot more than you got. Meaning...you cannot really get a total from the spreadsheet. The display however, will give you an actual total, by month, and for the year.

Has good range. My display is at least 100 ft from the sensor. I just changed the batteries in the sensor for the first time a couple weeks ago, because the signal was on & off, so 3 years and 4 months on (4) AA batteries....not bad.

I can't compare to other brands....this is the only one I've been around.

Bill
Today's solutions are tomorrow's problems.
John Hasler
Posts: 1852
Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:05 pm
Location: Elmwood, Wisconsin

Re: Weather station

Post by John Hasler »

CSV is a standard spreadsheet format that is older than Excel. As is always the case with standards Microsoft support for it is broken. However, the fact that the station provides data in CSV format rather than is some arcane proprietary format means that you are not tied to some buggy, unsupported application supplied by the manufacturer (or to any other proprietary software such as Excel.)
Russ Hanscom
Posts: 1955
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:10 pm
Location: Farmington, NM

Re: Weather station

Post by Russ Hanscom »

I have a Davis Vantage system that has been working fine for 10 years. Remote has solar cells so the battery lasts forever.
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ctwo
Posts: 2996
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:37 pm
Location: Silly Cone Valley

Re: Weather station

Post by ctwo »

A small aside, many ham radio guys use an APRS network to connect their home weather stations (tracking beacons, messaging, etc...).

APRS.FI is one server that collects this data and puts it on a google map. You can see the details of each weather station and whatever else that station is sending to the network.

https://aprs.fi/#!lat=37.17470&lng=-121.65180 should land close to Curtis, WA, for example. There are two weather station east of HWY 5 and a couple up by 12. There is not much of this activity specifically in Curtis; however, you will see tons of stations in the bigger cities all around you...

Click the blue WX icons and click more info in the balloon or other links. There's lots of info. Here are some weather plots from one of the stations there:

https://aprs.fi/weather/a/DW8787

Looks like the server keeps one year of data.
Standards are so important that everyone must have their own...
To measure is to know - Lord Kelvin
Disclaimer: I'm just a guy with a few machines...
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