The weather station thread

I have had a Technoline WS2350 for around 16-17 years. Back in November when we had storm Bessie (or whatever name they gave the second storm) we had a almighty gust of wind just as I opened the back door and went outside. It picked me up and blew me off the steps like I was a feather. The anemometer measured a gust of 119mph and hasn't worked since. The temps sensors have been playing up as well and keeps giving a minimum reading of -19 degrees C even after a full reset so in the Black Friday sales I bought a new weather station. I found the ACCUR8 DWS7100 7-in-1 Complete Solar-Powered WiFi Weather Station with Light Intensity, UV Monitoring & Weather Alerts for a bargain £139.95 and as it has the capability of several extra sensors I bought a couple of extra temp sensors as well, something I always felt was missing from my Technoline. It's still on offer now but at £40 more than I paid for it. I haven't had the chance to put it up yet as it's been awful weatherwise up here with either strong wind or pouring rain, often both and now it's snowing again. I want to make my own pole that goes into the actual sensor unit as the one that came with it (exactly the same as Mr bainbridge's including the clamp) is plastic and I don't trust it as the sensor unit is heavy and we are quite exposed to high winds here plus I don't want to have to worry about the plastic pole degrading due to UV exposure which has made many a plastic item around here crumble. I have bought a 700mm long 30mm thick solid aluminium pole that I have to modify on one end so that it fits into the mount on the sensor unit. The additional temp sensors will be scattered around the garden, back and front. The sensor unit on top of the pole takes 3x AA lithium batteries but these are only a backup to the solar power it has and the batteries are expected to last a year or so. The sensors take a pair of AAA lithium batteries each and the base unit is mains powered with 3x lithium AA batteries as backup.

The downside with this station is that unlike the Technoline I can't back it up and download the data to my laptop. It does publish to the internet using wunderground.com and/or Weathercloud.net so I will be able to give my father the web address so that he can see our weather instead of worrying and phoning me up everytime the news and weather forecasters overhype the weather we are having. He is 82 and recovering from a stroke and worries about us all the time especially when the weather forecasters give us severe warnings, most of which turn out to be no more than a fart in a thunderstorm. It doesn't help that we are at opposite ends of the country with him back home in Newlyn, Cornwall and me up here in Aberlour, NE Scotland some 720 miles away. Hopefully I will get it up and running this month providing I get a calm rain/snow/wind free day.
 
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@pastymuncher Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

15 years plus for the Technoline sounds great. My unit has a 5 year warranty which I've just emailed to set up.

That 119mph event you described sounds terrifying! Since mine has been set up I've had a max of 5.5mph :) We've had a spell of high pressure sitting above though, and no doubt this will change.

The plastic extension on my weather station does indeed seem like a weak link, I'll monitor it and if there are any issues I'll look at squaring off the end of the aluminium pole and using that. It certainly won't be as strong as your solid aluminium pole, but better than a bit of plastic.
 
Well this thread fulfils my "show me something I didn't know I wanted" requirement for the day :D

Saying that, I'm trying to find an actual need... If there was any ability for it to help predict the weather I might be more inclined, but I'm struggling to find the value in this. How do people find it benefits them, or is it more of a curiosity?
 
bainbridge said:
@pastymuncher Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

15 years plus for the Technoline sounds great. My unit has a 5 year warranty which I've just emailed to set up.

That 119mph event you described sounds terrifying! Since mine has been set up I've had a max of 5.5mph :) We've had a spell of high pressure sitting above though, and no doubt this will change.

The plastic extension on my weather station does indeed seem like a weak link, I'll monitor it and if there are any issues I'll look at squaring off the end of the aluminium pole and using that. It certainly won't be as strong as your solid aluminium pole, but better than a bit of plastic.
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Using a solid aluminium pole won't completely make it stronger because where the sensor unit mounts to the pole is plastic with only a small single bolt to fix it to the pole. I am not sure I trust that either as it seems a potential point of failure to me. That's a big unit to be mounted 20 feet up and only held by a single bolt through a plastic collar and I am not sure that's going to hold up in the exposed position it will be mounted. It's not uncommon for us to have sustained 70mph + winds up here so I will see if there is anything I can do to strengthen it. At the moment I am considering a metal sleeve to slip over the plastic mounting point. If it's tight enough it should strengthen the part where the bolt goes through in case the unit twists in a strong wind. I don't know really and will have to think about it some more.
 
pastymuncher said:
Using a solid aluminium pole won't completely make it stronger because where the sensor unit mounts to the pole is plastic with only a small single bolt to fix it to the pole. I am not sure I trust that either as it seems a potential point of failure to me. That's a big unit to be mounted 20 feet up and only held by a single bolt through a plastic collar and I am not sure that's going to hold up in the exposed position it will be mounted. It's not uncommon for us to have sustained 70mph + winds up here so I will see if there is anything I can do to strengthen it. At the moment I am considering a metal sleeve to slip over the plastic mounting point. If it's tight enough it should strengthen the part where the bolt goes through in case the unit twists in a strong wind. I don't know really and will have to think about it some more.
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An aluminium band going up and around the whole unit with a boss to accept the pole would be rock solid and withstand the elements for a long time.
 
I hadn't thought of doing it that way so thanks for that idea. Making it work may be tricky though as I have a UV sensor on top right above where the pole fits. Maybe I could do two bands as in one closer to the front and another closer to the rear? I will have to see what I can make work.

I keep forgetting we have a like button on here now!!
 
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The Bresser display unit has a history button that recalls what was going on an hour earlier with each press of the button, for the past 24 hours.

At 4 AM this morning we had a low temp of -6.8c then it slowly started warming up again. Not exactly arctic, but pretty cold.

The spinny thing on top of the weather station outside literally has not moved for 3 days. The unit has recorded 0mph average wind speed with a maximum gust of 0mph.

However, we have strong winds forecast for Sunday with expected gusts of 47mph.

How exciting!
 
I got one last year just for something Techy, I’m close enough to a small airfield which has its own, but what the hell..

So I bought an Ecowitt Wittboy GW2001, and put it 1M above the apex of the roof, which involved putting a ladder on my shed roof (it’s a sturdy shed!).. very very sketchy.. but once up, I powered it remotely with a 12v supply into the loft..

its been on Wunderground for ages and helped me figure out (so far) some measured some solar info to guesstimate energy production if I get solar later (probably being ignorant here)..

Being so high up I found the temperature obviously differs from ground level, so added an Ecowitt wn32_ep humidity/temp sensor with remote sensor which is outside the shed in a shield..

A bit useless, but interesting and with the wittboy being no maintenance (has inbuilt heater, and no moving parts) should hopefully be fine for a while before doing my comedy sketch of ladder on a shed…
 
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