I am on a rural property with extensive orchards and gardens in eastern
Australia. Temperature and rainfall are of quite some interest to me and I
wouldn't mind having data for wind and humidity, so far I have been
monitoring and manually recording rainfall and temperature. I am
considering some form of automation at this stage I don't know yet how
elaborate I want the gear to be, it would depend on price to some extent.
It would also be handy if the data could be downloaded to my computer as
easily as possible. I am more interested in the equipment being reliable
and no fuss rather than the ultimate in accuracy, trends and seasonal
patterns are more value than knowing the temperature to +- 0.1C.

Can anybody give me some advice on how to approach the issue and which
brands/styles of equipment are reliable and good value?

Is there a FAQ that I can read?

David

On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 09:56:02 +1100, David Hare-Scott wrote:

I am on a rural property with extensive orchards and gardens in eastern
Australia. Temperature and rainfall are of quite some interest to me
and I wouldn't mind having data for wind and humidity, ...

What Mr Cornwell has said is very good. Plenty of Automatic Weather
Stations (AWS) about from "budget" to "how deep is your pocket". B-)

The major gotchas are probably the computer interface/software. Does
the AWS talk to a computer directly or do you need another
"logging/interface" box? Is data format and/or the software
proprietary?

Are you wanting lots of sensors dotted about your "extensive orchards
and gardens", which combined with "Australia" conjures up images of
100's of acres and distances well beyond your average wireless
sensor. Or would a single set at or near the house suffice?

--
Cheers Dave.
Nr Garrigill, Cumbria. 421m ASL.

The more professional users seem to favour the Davis Vantage range which
were really the trailblazers in this field I think. They are highly
regarded and probably the best but very expensive for what you get
compared to the others, in my opinion.

Hope this is of some help,

Dave

Clearly the original post was asking about equipment for semi-domestic
use but I kind of felt 'left out' of the list of suppliers as a
representative of a top end meteorological equipment manufacturer.
Davis are not competitors of ours, we serve quite different markets;
but they are not at the top of the scale if considering weather
stations overall - their prices finish well below where our start.

I am sure our equipment would be overkill and well beyond the budget
for this application but, just in case, my colleagues at CS Australia
would be happy to help (based in Townsville, QLD - survived YASI,
power now back on!).

Iain Thornton
Campbell Scientific Europe
ww.campbellsci.eu

Iain Thornton wrote:

use but I kind of felt 'left out' of the list of suppliers as a
representative of a top end meteorological equipment manufacturer.
Davis are not competitors of ours, we serve quite different markets;
but they are not at the top of the scale if considering weather
stations overall - their prices finish well below where our start.

and this is a fact that you are proud of? In my opinion, just like much
"scientific" equipment, prices are ridiculous.

On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 at 21:06:38, I.M.Sutherland
wrote in uk.sci.weather :

Iain Thornton wrote:

use but I kind of felt 'left out' of the list of suppliers as a
representative of a top end meteorological equipment manufacturer.
Davis are not competitors of ours, we serve quite different markets;
but they are not at the top of the scale if considering weather
stations overall - their prices finish well below where our start.

and this is a fact that you are proud of? In my opinion, just like much
"scientific" equipment, prices are ridiculous.

At least most manufacturers have finally realised that USB exists.

Whenever I peruse mid-range weather stations though, they seem to have
ridiculously low internal data storage. What's the point of having the
capability for storing at say, 1 minute intervals, if you only have
enough capacity for 24 hours at that resolution? IMO, 1 week should be
the minimum!
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email me)

On Feb 12, 9:36*am, Paul Hyett wrote:
At least most manufacturers have finally realised that USB exists.

Although I think that it's generally accepted that for real-time data
feeds in real world situations serial (or possibly Ethernet) is still
slightly more robust than USB. (Or serial to the PC location and then
a serial-to-USB adapter at the PC.) USB is always going to be more
prone to noise and RFI than serial. Also USB leads need to be as
direct and as short as possible for robust operation whereas serial is
much more flexible.) Of course if you just want to download logged
data once a day/week/whatever then USB is fine.


Whenever I peruse mid-range weather stations though, they seem to have
ridiculously low internal data storage.

That's not true of the Davis loggers, for example (especially not of
the new Envoy8X with 32x the memory of the standard Weatherlink
loggers and which can log a year's worth of data at 15min intervals
and - I haven't checked this but by extrapolation - 8 years' worth at
a 2hr interval). If anyone hasn't come across the Envoy8x so far,
there's a preliminary description on our website at:

http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/envoy8x.htm

What's the point of having the
capability for storing at say, 1 minute intervals, if you only have
enough capacity for 24 hours at that resolution?

Just in passing, I'm never quite sure why anyone would want to use a 1-
minute interval (unless I guess you're keen to capture those rare
frontal passages where the detailed pressure profile is of interest).
The only weather parameter that generally changes very frequently is
wind speed and direction and 1 minute is far too long to capture any
real structure in the wind data - you would need logging at 3-second
intervals to do justice to wind gust data. Personally I think that
logging at 5- or 10-minute intervals strikes a good balance between
decent granularity in the data record while not submerging the user in
reams of highly redundant data that you tend to get with 1-minute
logging. And on a logging architecture like the one Davis use, you'll
still log values for eg the max gust speed, max rainfall rate etc,
irrespective of the logging interval chosen. But each to their own.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 02:27:32 -0800 (PST), prodata wrote:

On Feb 12, 9:36*am, Paul Hyett wrote:
At least most manufacturers have finally realised that USB exists.

Although I think that it's generally accepted that for real-time data
feeds in real world situations serial (or possibly Ethernet) is still
slightly more robust than USB. (Or serial to the PC location and then
a serial-to-USB adapter at the PC.) USB is always going to be more
prone to noise and RFI than serial. Also USB leads need to be as
direct and as short as possible for robust operation whereas serial is
much more flexible.) Of course if you just want to download logged
data once a day/week/whatever then USB is fine.


Whenever I peruse mid-range weather stations though, they seem to have
ridiculously low internal data storage.

That's not true of the Davis loggers, for example (especially not of
the new Envoy8X with 32x the memory of the standard Weatherlink
loggers and which can log a year's worth of data at 15min intervals
and - I haven't checked this but by extrapolation - 8 years' worth at
a 2hr interval). If anyone hasn't come across the Envoy8x so far,
there's a preliminary description on our website at:

http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/envoy8x.htm

What's the point of having the
capability for storing at say, 1 minute intervals, if you only have
enough capacity for 24 hours at that resolution?

Just in passing, I'm never quite sure why anyone would want to use a 1-
minute interval (unless I guess you're keen to capture those rare
frontal passages where the detailed pressure profile is of interest).
The only weather parameter that generally changes very frequently is
wind speed and direction and 1 minute is far too long to capture any
real structure in the wind data - you would need logging at 3-second
intervals to do justice to wind gust data. Personally I think that
logging at 5- or 10-minute intervals strikes a good balance between
decent granularity in the data record while not submerging the user in
reams of highly redundant data that you tend to get with 1-minute
logging. And on a logging architecture like the one Davis use, you'll
still log values for eg the max gust speed, max rainfall rate etc,
irrespective of the logging interval chosen. But each to their own.

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk

I used to use 15min intervals on my VP1 but switched to 30mins when I went
to New Zealand for an extended holiday. On 15 mins I could only hold about
28 days data which was not enough. To be fair the data capacity is
perfectly adequate athough it would be nice to have a bit more on the
standard Davis loggers.

I found that Maplins serial to USB adaptor works well on both Windows XP
and Vista and presumably Windows 7 as well.

As a final comment I have had my Davis VP1 for almost 10 years and in that
time I have had to sort out the anemometer reed switch twice and the
rainguage reed switch once. The external humidity sensor is starting to
deteriorate so I may well have do something there soon. I have no
complaints at all about the overall performance of the station.


Alan Gardiner
Chiswell Green, St Albans
101m ASL
12/02/2011 15:11:04
https://sites.google.com/site/alangardinersinfo/

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 at 02:27:32, prodata wrote in
uk.sci.weather :

On Feb 12, 9:36*am, Paul Hyett wrote:
At least most manufacturers have finally realised that USB exists.

Although I think that it's generally accepted that for real-time data
feeds in real world situations serial (or possibly Ethernet) is still
slightly more robust than USB. (Or serial to the PC location and then
a serial-to-USB adapter at the PC.)

I tried one of those, but it crashed my PC.

USB is always going to be more
prone to noise and RFI than serial. Also USB leads need to be as
direct and as short as possible for robust operation whereas serial is
much more flexible.)

Of course if you just want to download logged
data once a day/week/whatever then USB is fine.

That's how I do it.

Whenever I peruse mid-range weather stations though, they seem to have
ridiculously low internal data storage.

That's not true of the Davis loggers, for example (especially not of
the new Envoy8X with 32x the memory of the standard Weatherlink
loggers and which can log a year's worth of data at 15min intervals
and - I haven't checked this but by extrapolation - 8 years' worth at
a 2hr interval). If anyone hasn't come across the Envoy8x so far,
there's a preliminary description on our website at:

http://www.weatherstations.co.uk/envoy8x.htm

But that page refers to Vantage Pro's - which I definitely wouldn't
describe as *mid-price-range*!

What's the point of having the
capability for storing at say, 1 minute intervals, if you only have
enough capacity for 24 hours at that resolution?

Just in passing, I'm never quite sure why anyone would want to use a 1-
minute interval (unless I guess you're keen to capture those rare
frontal passages where the detailed pressure profile is of interest).

True, but if that capability is built-in, ISTM it would be only common
sense to have memory capacity that could handle it.
--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham (change 'invalid83261' to 'blueyonder' to email me)

On Feb 12, 5:40*pm, Paul Hyett wrote:
I tried one of those, but it crashed my PC.


If you choose carefully and find one that has good drivers for eg
whatever version of Windows you're using (eg ones with an FTDI
chipset) then in general they have excellent reliability. (Thats said,
I do seem to recall that one or two of the cheap stations - could be
LaCrosse models BICBW - try to play some fairly unnatural games with
their serial port wiring and that could be part of the reason for any
incompatibility with these particular models. But for example I've
never encountered a problem with a Davis station and an FTDI adapter,
provided an up-to-date driver was used.)

JGD

I tried one of those, but it crashed my PC.

I had that problem with my original serial-to-USB adapter. There seem to be
some poorly designed unit out there which is why I remarked that the
Maplin's one was OK. No doubt there are others that are equally
satisfactory.

Alan Gardiner
Chiswell Green, St Albans
101m ASL
12/02/2011 18:58:03
https://sites.google.com/site/alangardinersinfo/