I'd like to dip my toe in getting current weather conditions from a wireless
weather station. Ideally I'd like it to be wireless (802.11), solar powered
and have Macintosh client-side sofwtare.

And cheap. Sub-100quid would be very, very nice.

It doesn't need to collect a lot of data - to be honest I'm mainly
interesting in temperature, and it doesn't even have to keep a log, current
values are fine.

I suspect I'm basically asking for the moon on a stick, but I thought I'd
ask.

Many thanks.

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
"My idea of a fair fight: I'm in a main battle tank. My opponent
is 3 miles away, on a hill top, armed with a pistol."
- Dave the Australian.

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:04:26 +0000, Jim wrote:

I'd like to dip my toe in getting current weather conditions from a wireless
weather station. Ideally I'd like it to be wireless (802.11), solar powered
and have Macintosh client-side sofwtare.

And cheap. Sub-100quid would be very, very nice.

It doesn't need to collect a lot of data - to be honest I'm mainly
interesting in temperature, and it doesn't even have to keep a log, current
values are fine.

I suspect I'm basically asking for the moon on a stick, but I thought I'd
ask.

Many thanks.

Jim

I suggest you have a look at http://www.aceselectronics.co.uk/ where there
is a large range of stations ranging from £30 upwards. to get one that
links to a computer you are looking at £100 upwards as far as I could see.
You may well have a problem in getting a low cost station that works with
Mac software.

There are many other suppliers but this one gives an idea of what is on the
market.

Alan

On 2009-01-22, Alan Gardiner wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:04:26 +0000, Jim wrote:

I suggest you have a look at http://www.aceselectronics.co.uk/ where there
is a large range of stations ranging from £30 upwards. to get one that
links to a computer you are looking at £100 upwards as far as I could see.
You may well have a problem in getting a low cost station that works with
Mac software.

There are many other suppliers but this one gives an idea of what is on the
market.

Many thanks for that.

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
"My idea of a fair fight: I'm in a main battle tank. My opponent
is 3 miles away, on a hill top, armed with a pistol."
- Dave the Australian.

"Jim" wrote in message
...
On 2009-01-22, Alan Gardiner wrote:
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:04:26 +0000, Jim wrote:

I suggest you have a look at http://www.aceselectronics.co.uk/ where
there
is a large range of stations ranging from £30 upwards. to get one that
links to a computer you are looking at £100 upwards as far as I could
see.
You may well have a problem in getting a low cost station that works with
Mac software.

There are many other suppliers but this one gives an idea of what is on
the
market.

Many thanks for that.

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
"My idea of a fair fight: I'm in a main battle tank. My opponent
is 3 miles away, on a hill top, armed with a pistol."
- Dave the Australian.
-----------------------
No MAC software available for below as far as I know so ignore if essential
!
If money is a major issue there is The Fine Offset range which are rebadged
as a number of names including Watson, Maplins and others. These cost about
£70 and are widely available on eBay Shops, Maplins and many other shops.
They are wireless at 866 ghz, have a good range and have a USB interface to
the PC and come with not very good software but Steve Loft's Cumulus free
software is excellent (www.sandaysoft.com). Will do wind, rain, humidity,
dew point, temperature, pressure etc. Sensors run off 2 AA batteries so
could easily be solar powered as a mod. I have had one for about 6 months
and it has been excellent. The wind gauge needs some mods to get the best
out of it. It is quite plasticky and others have reported some problems but
most users on the forum like it and say it is superior to the more expensive
Lacrosse equivalent.
I wouldn't be able to say that it is as good as more expensive professional
stations but as it is calibratable from the software some very good data can
be produced with correct siting and screening.
See the website it easily generates he- e.g.
www.laindonweather.co.uk or here http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thorpeweather/
(ignore the wind data - I'm playing around with that at the moment)

Dave, S.Essex

On 2009-01-22, Dave Cornwell wrote:
-----------------------
No MAC software available for below as far as I know so ignore if essential
!
If money is a major issue there is The Fine Offset range which are rebadged
as a number of names including Watson, Maplins and others. These cost about
£70 and are widely available on eBay Shops, Maplins and many other shops.
They are wireless at 866 ghz, have a good range and have a USB interface to
the PC and come with not very good software but Steve Loft's Cumulus free
software is excellent (www.sandaysoft.com). Will do wind, rain, humidity,
dew point, temperature, pressure etc. Sensors run off 2 AA batteries so
could easily be solar powered as a mod. I have had one for about 6 months
and it has been excellent. The wind gauge needs some mods to get the best
out of it. It is quite plasticky and others have reported some problems but
most users on the forum like it and say it is superior to the more expensive
Lacrosse equivalent.
I wouldn't be able to say that it is as good as more expensive professional
stations but as it is calibratable from the software some very good data can
be produced with correct siting and screening.
See the website it easily generates he- e.g.
www.laindonweather.co.uk or here http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thorpeweather/
(ignore the wind data - I'm playing around with that at the moment)

Dave, S.Essex



Thanks for that. The software side of things is less important as, at a
push, I _might_ be able to write my own.

Time to brush up on my Objective-C and learn about USB stuff..!

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
"My idea of a fair fight: I'm in a main battle tank. My opponent
is 3 miles away, on a hill top, armed with a pistol."
- Dave the Australian.

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:04:26 +0000, Jim wrote:

I'd like to dip my toe in getting current weather conditions from a
wireless weather station. Ideally I'd like it to be wireless (802.11),
solar powered and have Macintosh client-side sofwtare.

I don't think you'll find an 802.11 based one. They use the wireless for
the remote sensors to send data to the console that interprets their
information into human readable form on the display.

Ths console then connects to a computer via a serial or USB connection. I
don't think there are any ethernet ones about.

It doesn't need to collect a lot of data - to be honest I'm mainly
interesting in temperature, and it doesn't even have to keep a log,
current values are fine.

Plenty of remote reading, non-logging, non-computer connected,
thermometers about for £30 or less.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...
On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:04:26 +0000, Jim wrote:

I'd like to dip my toe in getting current weather conditions from a
wireless weather station. Ideally I'd like it to be wireless (802.11),
solar powered and have Macintosh client-side sofwtare.

I don't think you'll find an 802.11 based one. They use the wireless for
the remote sensors to send data to the console that interprets their
information into human readable form on the display.

Ths console then connects to a computer via a serial or USB connection. I
don't think there are any ethernet ones about.

It doesn't need to collect a lot of data - to be honest I'm mainly
interesting in temperature, and it doesn't even have to keep a log,
current values are fine.

Plenty of remote reading, non-logging, non-computer connected,
thermometers about for £30 or less.

--
Cheers
Dave.
---------------
Indeed - £6-35 for a very good radio sensor outdoor /indoor thermometer in
Lidl next week. !
Dave

,Steve Woodford ] wrote:
Jim writes:

On 2009-01-22, Dave Cornwell wrote:
If money is a major issue there is The Fine Offset range which are rebadged
as a number of names including Watson, Maplins and others. These cost about
£70 and are widely available on eBay Shops, Maplins and many other shops.

Thanks for that. The software side of things is less important as, at a
push, I _might_ be able to write my own.

[de-lurk]

See http://www.wviewweather.com/ for some free Mac-compatible software
which supports a decent range of stations. It may soon also support the
above-mentioned Fine Offset WH-1080 on Mac OS if I can find someone to
test my patches which currently work well under NetBSD.

I got my WH-1080 from Maplin while they were on offer for around 70 pounds
a month or two ago. The radiation shield is not too good, but spraying
mine with several coats of white enamel paint has improved things
considerably.

See http://www.mctavish.co.uk/weather/ for the kind of data available
using the Wview software with WH-1080.

Cheers, Steve

Hi Steve,

I have one of these weather stations up in Scotland. I hacked
together a small C program to read data from the USB interface on the unit
and shove it into graphs. The server runs NetBSD 4.0. It seems to to work
OK most of the time, but my station quite frequently generates duff values
and so I have quite a bit of filtering. The cowl blew off the outside unit
in a gales a few weeks ago and I think that knackered the humidity sensor
which now reads very low (10-50) rather that what I would expect 60-100). I
would be quite interested to try out your patches for NetBSD as the current
pages I generate as pretty naff compared to the norm.

Regards,
Dave

================================================== ===================
Phone: 07772420022
WWW: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~dtyson
Open Source O/S: www.netbsd.org
Caving: www.wirralcavinggroup.org.uk
================================================== ===================

Felly sgrifennodd Jim :
Thanks for that. The software side of things is less important as, at a
push, I _might_ be able to write my own.

Time to brush up on my Objective-C and learn about USB stuff..!

There is some software about for some of the LaCrosse stations. I use
Open3600 on Linux for my WS-3600. If you're going to write your own, you
might want to start by looking at what's already written. With any luck,
it might even compile for Mac without too much hassle!

Adrian
--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk

On 2009-01-29, Adrian D. Shaw wrote:
Felly sgrifennodd Jim :
Thanks for that. The software side of things is less important as, at a
push, I _might_ be able to write my own.

Time to brush up on my Objective-C and learn about USB stuff..!

There is some software about for some of the LaCrosse stations. I use
Open3600 on Linux for my WS-3600. If you're going to write your own, you
might want to start by looking at what's already written. With any luck,
it might even compile for Mac without too much hassle!

Thanks for that. My forays into wireless weather stations/temp. monitors
might have to be shelved for now, but I'll store all the recommendations.

Thanks everyone. Appreciated.

Jim
--
http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK
Please help save Bletchley Park - sign the petition for
Government funding at: (open to UK residents and ex.pats)
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/ Thank you.