New weather station
 

Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get. It's now setup
(though will never give decent wind readings due to the limitations of
my back garden) and online:

www.muchty-weather.org.uk

Now I'm thinking about a low-spec, low-power PC dedicated 24x7 to it...
:)

--
Surfer!

New weather station
 

"Surfer!" wrote in message
...
Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get. It's now setup
(though will never give decent wind readings due to the limitations of my
back garden) and online:

www.muchty-weather.org.uk

Now I'm thinking about a low-spec, low-power PC dedicated 24x7 to it... :)

--
Surfer!
-----------------
Just replied to the earlier question but you've obviously succeeded! Well
done, looks good. Join the club! Your normal life is now over ;-) . The
temperature shield needs attending to in the summer - there's lots about
that on the Cumulus forum. I got a pretty good Dell PC with XP on Ebay for
£40 for mine. Doesn't even need that really.
Dave
www.laindonweather.co.uk

New weather station
 

Surfer! wrote:

Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get. It's now setup
(though will never give decent wind readings due to the limitations of
my back garden) and online:

www.muchty-weather.org.uk

Now I'm thinking about a low-spec, low-power PC dedicated 24x7 to it...
:)

You might think about running it from a Linux router or NAS box ... much
lower power consumption than dedicated PC. I have mine connected up to an
old Linksys NSLU2 (obselete now, but still doing a great job).

New weather station
 

On Dec 27, 9:09*pm, Ian Sutherland
wrote:
Surfer! wrote:
Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get. *It's now setup
(though will never give decent wind readings due to the limitations of
my back garden) and online:

www.muchty-weather.org.uk

Now I'm thinking about a low-spec, low-power PC dedicated 24x7 to it...
:)

You might think about running it from a Linux router or NAS box ... much
lower power consumption than dedicated PC. *I have mine connected up to an
old Linksys NSLU2 (obselete now, but still doing a great job).

Would have to buy said router or NAS box... I'm also not sure how
that would deal with getting information from the weather station and
periodically turning it into web pages and uploading them.

However I do it, having it available 24x7 will involve buying
*somthing*! I do have a contact I might be able to get a cheap lappie
from, and someone else has suggested a netbook.

Part of the reason for a dedicated PC is to have switching between GMT
& BST turned off - I want it in Zulu as that's what I'm used to in
aviation weather sites, and it's flying gliders that's the driver for
being interested in weather. However, the next job is amending the
HTML templates the right way - so that installing a new version of
Cumulus won't overwrite the ones I've altered, and since the host has
PHP I could possibly make use of that.

New weather station
 

"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ...
I got a pretty good Dell PC with XP on Ebay for £40 for mine. Doesn't even
need that really.
I'm using a Pentium 166 from 1995 for my weather station, running Windows
2000. It works perfectly well, although WeatherDisplay made it run out of
RAM after a couple of weeks (as the demo version I used had a memory link).

New weather station
 

Cats wrote:



You might think about running it from a Linux router or NAS box ... much
lower power consumption than dedicated PC. I have mine connected up to
an old Linksys NSLU2 (obselete now, but still doing a great job).

Would have to buy said router or NAS box... I'm also not sure how
that would deal with getting information from the weather station and
periodically turning it into web pages and uploading them.


Many people will already have a router or NAS box in use already. Weather
Display do a linux version of their software. Pywws is an opensource
alternative, which is the software that I use to log and upload data to my
website. Of course, if you really feed the need to stick to Windows, then a
PC/laptop/netbook is your only option.

New weather station
 

In message , Darren
Prescott writes
"Dave Cornwell" wrote in message ...
I got a pretty good Dell PC with XP on Ebay for £40 for mine. Doesn't
even need that really.
I'm using a Pentium 166 from 1995 for my weather station, running
Windows 2000. It works perfectly well, although WeatherDisplay made it
run out of RAM after a couple of weeks (as the demo version I used had
a memory link).

It would be nice to be able to use Win2K (no activation!) but it seems
unlikely that the Cumulus software will work with my weather station
under Win2K. Think I might inquire in it's forums if it does work or
not... I probably have most of the bits to build a basic PC so that
might be a low cost solution.

--
Surfer!

New weather station
 

On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:45:17 +0000, Surfer! wrote:

Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get.

I think this is the same one that Maplins are selling for £70, I found
some technical data on it and it states wind sampling every 42
seconds, is that correct? Seems a bit slow to me, especially during
rough or squally weather.

Paul

New weather station
 

In message , Paul
writes
On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:45:17 +0000, Surfer! wrote:

Thanks to the folks who helped over what station to get.

I think this is the same one that Maplins are selling for £70, I found
some technical data on it and it states wind sampling every 42
seconds, is that correct? Seems a bit slow to me, especially during
rough or squally weather.

Yes, it came from Maplins and cost £70. Since there is no way I can
place it far enough away from buildings and so on to get accurate wind
readings (unless it's in the middle of the field at the end of the
road!) that's quite often enough for me. After all, the website for it
only updates every 15 minutes at present!

BTW where did you find the data? There seems to be a remarkable lack of
it in the leaflet that came with it!

--
Surfer!

New weather station
 

On Dec 29, 11:31*pm, "Dave Cornwell"
wrote:
snip
My cheapo ebay PC came with XP installed. It seems that an old PC
with XP on it actually sells cheaper than Xp itself!

Ah ha! So as long as I have installation media (first thing with an
Ebay PC would be to completely reinstall it) I should be able to get a
legit, cheap XP PC, though I might end up replacing fans etc. to make
it quiet enough. Since it will be in the living room and on all the
time it *has* to be quiet.