Low-Budget Home Weather Stations?

Toby Truman asks: "Working at the Fenwick Island Weather Station, I already have access to million-dollar meteorology equipment. However, some tinkerlusting college friends have been asking me about home weather stations, a subject I don't have a lot of experience with. Have any Slashdot users experimented with DIY weather stations, and if so, what do they recommend?"

Comments

wunderground.com

[ghamerly]

I've been interested in this since I found out about weather underground, which lets you feed your own weather information (gathered from your instruments) to their site for others to look at. They have thousands of people feeding them information. Besides this, they carry National Weather Service and they have a lot of other information that other sites don't seem to have. However, still being a graduate student, I gasped at the prices for a mid-range personal weather station (~$500, from my brief search).

See wunderground's page on personal weather stations here .

OT: Wireless conn. of all these Wx Stations...

[ivi]

Announcement: OpenAVL is an Open Source
project intended to provide services to
(among other telemetry applications) use
Amateur Radio (as well as other wireless
technologies) to connect users to such
Weather stations... this has applications
to emergency services...

The tasks include:

- Adapt an existing Open Source system
(in Linux/C) to the purpose

- Design & Develope a new one (Linux &
Windows)

Have a look:

groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenAVL

(There is also a SourceForge project area
(details at the above Yahoo site).

For those who know it, we envisage an Open
Source counterpart to the closed-source
UI-View - from the UK - (whose -extensions-
to the open APRS protocol seem -yet- to be
published), combining ideas from the Austrian
program with an extended feature-list.

New talent always welcome... both to [try to]
break it (i.e. test releases) and to fix it.

Dallas Semiconductor's 1-Wire Weather Station

[codehead]

Take a look into http://www.ibutton.com/weather/index.html.

Brian C Lane's digitemp?

[Ripper]

Brian C Lane has Linux software available for measuring temperatures. It uses the Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire thermometer and includes directions for building & connecting it to the serial port. You can find it here.

weatherstamp

[cr@ckwhore]

Check out www.weatherstamp.com.

The weather stamp is a project kit based on the Basic Stamp microcontroller. If you're not familiar with the Basic Stamps, they're easy to program and very versatile. The weather station is good for a few measurements and only costs between $30 and $50.

Super-cheap DIY Thermometer

[whatnotever]

I recently hacked a temperature sensor out of an old <a href="http://www.atarimagazines.com/v7n6/gravis.j<nobr>p<wbr></wbr></nobr> g">Gravis joystick</a> and a broken diode. I had to calibrate it "by hand" (in the code to read from the joystick port), of course, but it seems to be accurate to within a degree (F) or so. So for the cost of one diode (on the order of one cent?) and one ancient joystick (free from a friend), I got myself a handy little temperature sensor. Oh, and with <a href="http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/<nobr>r<wbr></wbr></nobr> rdtool/">rrdtool</a>, I get nifty graphs, too!

Many options with many costs....

[squeegee-me]

Just a bit of info that I have come up wiht in the past 3 months or so that I have been looking into this type of thing myself.

Cabela's (Outfitter for hunting and fishing) has a few options from Origon Scientific like a few other users have mentioned, and I have also see the ones by Davis like your link show. My first recogmendation is find out if they are looking to spend $20 or $700. Then find our what they want to see on it. Temp only or humdity, wind speed with direction, barometer, UV index, and rain fall? Then look into seeing how their home is setup. Can they use wired or should they go with wireless - most wireless transmits on 433Mhz +/- a bit. Not a concern for users of WIFI and whatnot, but might cause trouble with their garage remote system, but I have heard nothing of this sort yet.

I live in an apartment, and I for now and for the past 3 years have used a $20 indoor outdoor thermometer that Radio Shack sells that was designed for automobiles. Works fine, but only delivers the temp. It also has a backlight for early morning/late night viewing. (Helps me decide if it is worth going out to try to see a meteor shower or two this winter dispite all the light polution in the Twin Cities.) It does all I need for now, but when I get a house, I would love to get a wireless system that has wind speed and direction, as well as humidity. BTW, I think the newer version of the Radio Shack Auto thermometer has a "freezing alert" pico buzzer in it now. Might get anoying at times, like 3AM.

One warning about mounting remote sensors, keep them in the shade if they are temp sensors for the obvious reason. Most people forget that though when mounting them. Under a deck, or on the shaded side of the house (usualy the north side if you are north of the equator,) works better than the sunny side. Also remember that the remote transmitters will use and eat batteries unless you buy the solar kits with the rechargable packs on them. They get pricy though. Wires may be a pain, but they are cheeper. That and when it's 20 below and a windchill of 30 below, you will be happy not to have to go outside to change the batteries so you know how cold it is.

Also, check out Target and other discount stores. I have seen a few with remote sensors for under $100 there. Not the top of the line, but still, they give internal temp, humidity and barametric preasure, and I think I saw one with the same three measurement for outside.

Also remind them that they will not be walking around the house/apt. with the reciever after the first week as they will loose the novelty of it. There is no point, IMO, to spen $500+ on something that will be forgotten about in a few weeks. Also, I hate the concept of these programs for windows based computers, but lots of local TV stations will offer a "weather bug" that will sit on the systray and show the current temp outside at the TV station. Drawback, internet connection needed for updates, computer needs to be on, resources are consumed, and most have adds built in to offset the cost of the data feed bandwidth and the development of the program.