Weather Radar Case Mod

Bill Kendrick writes "What do you get when you take a laptop LCD, a Mini-ITX case and an old marine weather radar? A self contained wireless weather radar PC appliance!" And No, it's not just squeezing a motherboard into an object smaller than that motherboard -- this is a functional weather-watching device.

Comments

Slightly misleading, Nexrad is NOT a marine radar

[Anonymous Coward]

My first reaction was: "how the hell did he get the commercial web-based storm predator software to work with a marine radar?" but then I saw where he claims to have used a special build of the program with help from the original programmer. OK, as far as that goes... The thing is, TFA contains no images of realtime data from the "marine radar" and indeed barely mentions the marine unit at all. All the pretty pictures are of data taken from NWS nexrad sites which anyone can access over the internet. I question whether the marine radar is really of any practical use with this admittedly pretty custom display.

Still, it's a neat project.

Re:Gag. APCMA

[wowbagger]

Point taken - and actually, I know of somebody who *used* to have a marine radar on his chase vehicle - note the emphasis on the past tense - it was removed for that very reason.

Although you really should have better qualified your statement "Operating marine radars on vehicles is illegal." to "Operating marine radars on vehicles other than boats on the water is illegal."

As is operating an aviation WX radar on a vehicle that is not an aircraft.

Hmmm - a thought strikes me:

Aviation WX unit.
Small computer.
GPS.
801.11
Big Wx balloon.

Now, *there's* something /worthy!

Serious answer:

[Otto]

Cut it in half and solder wires between the areas where you cut the traces. I've seen it done to fit a mobo into a case smaller (in all dimensions) than the board would fit into uncut. It worked. I wouldn't want to try it myself, but it's possible to do it as long as you pick where you cut carefully.