April 24, 2008
Upperchurch Weather Station
I now have a WH1080 weather station up and running in the back garden. Local and visitors will tell you that it is windy in upperchurch. We will now know how windy, rainy, temperature etc.
The unit records wind, temp, pressure and rain using two double AA batteries and sends the info to a touch screen wireless controller in the house. The touch screen uses 3 double AA batteries and has a USB port.
Data is averaged out over 5 mins and can be downloaded via usb using the easy weather app that ships with the weather station
The weather station is 4 metres above ground and was purchased from the ukweatherstore on ebay.
I hope to configure a low power minature linux box to post the data to the internet.
Last night we had a peak gust of 11.9 metres per second and 4.8 mm of rain fall. The kitchen dropped in temp from 25 to a low of 16.3 degrees C.
WH1080 Weather Station Kit
Liam I really appreciate you photographing and documenting your setup and progress. My brother John will find this information invaluable. I'm emailing him this link now.
Posted by: James Corbett at April 24, 2008 09:29 PMLook's great Liam. Looking forward to your weather forecasts.
Posted by: John at April 24, 2008 10:28 PMThanks for the comments guys.
Data logging is working away nicely.
Not so sure about weather forecasting John, wind and rain pretty much describes every day at the moment :-)
Posted by: Liam at April 25, 2008 03:58 PMLiam, thanks for the info, I'm thinking of doing the same thing for Draycott in the English midlands where I live. Have you fond any native OS X software available to process the data stream or is it Windows only? I suppose if there is a data definition you could designa filemaker database to do this? Any thoughts would be really helpful. Good luck with the project. Chris.
Posted by: Chris Bampton at April 27, 2008 09:23 AMHi Chris,
Easyweather is a windows app, it updates a file called easyweather.dat.
There is a linux port of the app to poll the device.
If you were a mac os coder you could probably take the C code and port it across. If not you need to resurrect a very low spec pc with windows xp and a usb port to record the data.
The data will need to be exported every time the buffer fills.
Easyweather.dat is plain text and imports fine into spreadsheet sw etc
Liam
Posted by: Liam at April 27, 2008 07:23 PMHi Liam,
It looks very interesting.
What sort of pole did you mount the equipment on? Can you give us an idea of what it cost you in total to install.
Is this a precursor to installing a domestic wind turbine?
Thanks,
Shane
Posted by: Shane McEneaney at May 30, 2008 11:19 AMHi Chris,
I used a 2 inch waste water pipe which is ok but not completely rigid.
I should really be using a 1.5 inch steel pipe embedded in concrete etc.
I am considering the idea of a wind turbine, but will have to wait until more details emerge on smart metering and how it will work.
This won't happen until 2009. Also capital grants will make it more feasible.
Liam
Posted by: Liam at June 4, 2008 12:51 PMLiam
Met you at the tipp energy agency conference. Would you recommend the Nexus over the Wh1080. I'm looking to gather data for an exposed coastal site in Mayo and need a unit that can survive on 10 metres on scaffold pole.
www.save-energy.ie
Posted by: Archie at July 15, 2008 03:05 AMIs this weather sttion better than the nexus, particularly for a west of ireland exposed site
Posted by: Archie at July 15, 2008 03:08 AM