I was wanting to get weather station for xmas. Something that I can set up so that I can publish the data to the internet through my wireless broadband.

There are so many available on Ebay but not really sure about whats good quality and whats bad.

Anyone have experience with this sort of stuff and can steer me in the right direction.

I live right next to the beach next to a popular windsurfing spot, so I am sure the guys in my area would be keen to get a wind reading from there if one was available.

I set up a weather station five years ago at my work. Its still working but needs a bit of maintenance. Its a Davis brand. I don't think the battery charger works anymore. Periodically the unit doesn't send any data at night until the battery is changed. Maybe they are using non rechargable batteries. With this station we got an application call Weather Display Live (WDL). It was pretty easy setting up WDL to update a webpage displaying the weather data. It updates every two seconds, pushing up the data via FTP. The site uses Flash so I don't think it will display on an IOS device. I have not tried it though.

I had a look at the Davis website and their stuff isn't cheap. So it may not be what you are looking for. The station I helped with costs about $850. Getting the data to a website cost extra. You buy a serial number to put in an XML file to remove a demo watermark plastered across the screen.

I don't have any experience with what are probably cheaper weather stations on eBay.

eh?

What u guys talkin about??

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Mobydisc said..

I set up a weather station five years ago at my work. Its still working but needs a bit of maintenance. Its a Davis brand. I don't think the battery charger works anymore. Periodically the unit doesn't send any data at night until the battery is changed. Maybe they are using non rechargable batteries. With this station we got an application call Weather Display Live (WDL). It was pretty easy setting up WDL to update a webpage displaying the weather data. It updates every two seconds, pushing up the data via FTP. The site uses Flash so I don't think it will display on an IOS device. I have not tried it though.

I had a look at the Davis website and their stuff isn't cheap. So it may not be what you are looking for. The station I helped with costs about $850. Getting the data to a website cost extra. You buy a serial number to put in an XML file to remove a demo watermark plastered across the screen.

I don't have any experience with what are probably cheaper weather stations on eBay.

Gee. Just checked out the site and its seems that its quite specialist. Was looking for something in the 300ish range tops.

Yeah its a bit expensive.

I think weather stations in themselves are quite cheap. Its not that complicated. The issue will arise when you try to get the data across to a webpage. Unless you are very technical and are good at programming and electronics then it could be impossible to update a site from a weather station that is not designed to export data. Even if you are good in these areas it will be quite a challenge.

However what i did was five years ago and a lot of technology has changed in that time. So perhaps the cheaper ones have a fairly straight forward way to export and then display data.

Check out Oregon scientific. 189 for the box then 150 for the anemometer. You will need a wireless bridge as well to connect into your wifi.

http://au.oregonscientific.com/cat-Weather-sub-Professional-prod-Anywhere-Weather-Station.html

I bought a weather station from Jaycar 3 years ago. It cost about $140 and came with the weather station part and a base station tracking the incoming data. You could store the data either on a memory card or have it logged via USB. The USB cable was plugged into the base station. It didn't come with any software. There are a few options around for Windows but only a couple for Mac.

It looks like they increased the cost to $179. Here the direct link: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=XC0348&w=weather+station&form=KEYWORD

FYI, I had it running for about 3 years without any issues.

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jamesf said..

Check out Oregon scientific. 189 for the box then 150 for the anemometer. You will need a wireless bridge as well to connect into your wifi.

http://au.oregonscientific.com/cat-Weather-sub-Professional-prod-Anywhere-Weather-Station.html

This looks like a decent option. Total cost will be a bit under $400. I checked eBay and it doesn't look like any of the cheaper ones there, less than $200 offer any sort of online data upload. I saw there are Davis weather stations on eBay for a similar price from America such as this one:

www.ebay.com.au/itm/Davis-6250-Vantage-Vue-Wireless-Weather-Station-/310805215137?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item485d6f37a1

The ad mentions Weatherlink. This software is only for PC and does not have an online upload component. I'm not sure whether this particular station works with Weather Station Live. If it does it would be a good option. There is a forum for WDL and a good knowledge base. I checked and WDL costs extra. So total costs might be getting up towards $500.

National Geographic or DSE used to sell them J dawg.

Bunnings have been advertising a wireless weather station had a wind spinny thing - made by the company that makes the retracting hose reels - saw it on tele last night can't remember brand

Edit - it's a Holman wireless $98

Have you considered where you are going to put the data online? Possibly www.windfinder.com/contact/contribute_weatherdata.htm?utm_source=www.windfinder.com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=redirect is an option as they have a fairly simple data format. If you find a device that outputs the weather data in some format I can probably help you to get it converted and upload automated.

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sav911 said..

Have you considered where you are going to put the data online? Possibly www.windfinder.com/contact/contribute_weatherdata.htm?utm_source=www.windfinder.com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=redirect is an option as they have a fairly simple data format. If you find a device that outputs the weather data in some format I can probably help you to get it converted and upload automated.

..and of course the obvious place may be to chat to the seabreeze admin, I'm guessing the real time weather used for the graphs on the weather page comes from the BOM data feeds which are reasonably simple to match. Perhaps they would add a graph of your weather data?

I don't think that this would be by any means a commercial grade system.

I know a few people that run "wind apps" locally and may ask on their info on output format.

Microme looks interesting but whats the cost on these things? Looks like it would be expensive?

Holman at Bunnings - Can it be trusted? Does it do what I need?

Seems that its a cost vs quality tradeoff.

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jermaldan said..

Microme looks interesting but whats the cost on these things? Looks like it would be expensive?

Email Nick and he will let you know costs involved. He has been doing special offers in recent times.

slightly off topic but perhaps it will help: check out www.wunderground.com looks like lot of people are publishing data from their weather stations. Perhaps there will be one near you already?

I think people also publish their data on pachube/cosm/xively but I'm not sure how accessible it is since it became xively.com.

Another idea (if you like making stuff) is to build it yourself based on Arduino or Raspberry PI.

Just google arduino or raspberry weather station, you should get quite a few hits.

I have no experience with either but did some reading on both (out of interest) and remember seeing lot of projects where people do similar things. You should be able to publish data to the net with both AFAIK.

I dont know what hardware they use but these guys

www.tkup.net/data/

use this software which seems to support a lot of different devices and the web site it costs $70

www.weather-display.com/supported.php

this display looks pretty nice (its flash based)

www.tkup.net/liveweather/

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gs12 said..

slightly off topic but perhaps it will help: check out www.wunderground.com looks like lot of people are publishing data from their weather stations. Perhaps there will be one near you already?

I think people also publish their data on pachube/cosm/xively but I'm not sure how accessible it is since it became xively.com.

Another idea (if you like making stuff) is to build it yourself based on Arduino or Raspberry PI.

Just google arduino or raspberry weather station, you should get quite a few hits.

I have no experience with either but did some reading on both (out of interest) and remember seeing lot of projects where people do similar things. You should be able to publish data to the net with both AFAIK.

This is great and it has something close to me too!

Any idea on how you change kph/mph to knots?

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jermaldan said..

This is great and it has something close to me too!

Any idea on how you change kph/mph to knots?

sorry I don't. there is a settings tab but this only allows switching between km/h and mph. You could try logging in (it's free to sign in) and see if that gives you more options or log a support request with them?

Also have a look at www.bom.gov.au/australia/meteye/ - they seem to publish more data than the observations page, it does wind speed in knots and color coded in a nice map format.
Again you may get lucky and there is enough stations near you

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gs12 said..
... check out www.wunderground.com looks like lot of people are publishing data from their weather stations.

Yep, using a site like this allows everyone to see your live station (live= better than BOM's 30min updates).
I've used the cheap Fine Offset stations for years. WH or WS variety. Ebay cheapies like WH1091 or WH3081 are great ~$100-130.
Just put one online at a mates house, in testing stages, but will provide a dozen of us live weather using wunderground. Using free software like Cumulus and Cumulus toolbox I've configured it to email us based on live conditions. They currently only offer km or mph, although are implementing knots soon hopefully. It made me learn 30km/hr=16knots!

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JohnnyHuett said..

gs12 said..
... check out www.wunderground.com looks like lot of people are publishing data from their weather stations.

Yep, using a site like this allows everyone to see your live station (live= better than BOM's 30min updates).
I've used the cheap Fine Offset stations for years. WH or WS variety. Ebay cheapies like WH1091 or WH3081 are great ~$100-130.
Just put one online at a mates house, in testing stages, but will provide a dozen of us live weather using wunderground. Using free software like Cumulus and Cumulus toolbox I've configured it to email us based on live conditions. They currently only offer km or mph, although are implementing knots soon hopefully. It made me learn 30km/hr=16knots!

Can you give more information or links on setting up with these cheaper weather stations? It sounds like a great solution.

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Mobydisc said...

JohnnyHuett said..

gs12 said..
... check out www.wunderground.com looks like lot of people are publishing data from their weather stations.

Yep, using a site like this allows everyone to see your live station (live= better than BOM's 30min updates).
I've used the cheap Fine Offset stations for years. WH or WS variety. Ebay cheapies like WH1091 or WH3081 are great ~$100-130.
Just put one online at a mates house, in testing stages, but will provide a dozen of us live weather using wunderground. Using free software like Cumulus and Cumulus toolbox I've configured it to email us based on live conditions. They currently only offer km or mph, although are implementing knots soon hopefully. It made me learn 30km/hr=16knots!

Can you give more information or links on setting up with these cheaper weather stations? It sounds like a great solution.

Agree! More informing how we can do this would be great! Does the pc need to be on 24/7

Sorry guys - forgot about this thread - stupid no notifications forum program

OK, so I just bought two WH3100 from crazysales.com.au for $130 each delivered. There are many very similar rebranded one's.
They all use "fine offset", and all ship with the same contents, EasyWeather Software etc.
I think from memory they are also branded WS3100 or WH3100 - but basically the same unit.

If you have linux skills you can use a NAS box/high spec ADSL modem (like a Fritzbox) and plug the "display" via USB into it and program it to upload to a site like Wunderground.
Or, I use an old laptop running XP, which I've setup to turn the screen off, run at lowest power settings, and close the lid. It uses very little power, runs the weather station via USB which saves batteries.
I use cumulus (sandaysoft.com) which you can configure to upload RapidFire (near enough to realtime) to Wunderground or a few other sites.
You can also use cumulus toolbox, which you can configure to email you alerts based upon rules that you can set. So eg. gusts to 15knots for example trigger "the seabreeze has come in" email.
The plan is to have these "strategically" placed.. our latest Beta station will be excellent to tell us if the seabreeze has turned on at our favourite spot

Tried a few variations over the years with mixed results.

Putting aside all the techie stuff to transmit the data to the world it is just as important to set the weather station up to give accurate results.

1.. You will need to select a mounting location that has the least amount of interference from surrounding objects. Most people seem to use their TV antenna mask but also usually comes with turbulence from wind off the roof etc.

2.. The mast needs to be really stable. Most TV masts, unless braced, will wobble around as the wind picks up, particularly if sharing with an antenna. In my experience this wobble tends to impact on the anemometer ability to spin properly or above a certain speed.

3.. If you live close to the salt air you will need to clean everything down with fresh water, brushing etc on a regular basis. The build up of salt crud will impact on your readings over time. Also look at how you can better seal any cable joints, battery boxes, etc as the salt air causes electralisis and corrosion leading to loss of signals etc.

Good luck...