The Weather Station

After wanting a weather station for many years, I decided to take the plunge and buy one. The station that I have bought is classed as professional in the mid range of weather stations, although a mid range station it is by no means inferior and is a state of the art, fully featured weather station. The station is an Oregon Scientific WMR928NX. and the data is collected using Weather Display Software and uploaded to this site and various other sites. The station comprises of the sensors below of which are all situated in optimal positions for the best accuracy achievable in my garden, more sensors will be added as time and money permits

The Mast, Anemometer & Solar are situated at the top of a 33ft pole at the bottom of the garden. The Solar sensor is the light bulb looking object attached to the very top and measures the Solar Radiation, it also lets us know the current conditions, i.e. is it cloudy or sunny. The pole is secured by 3 (3 secondary) main guy lines.

The Console is a Oregon Scientific WMR 928 NX and is the heart of the station, this records all the data and sends it to the computer via RS232 serial cable, then a program called Weather Display configures the data into graphs, charts, reports and much more, then finally its sent via 20mb broadband to this site.

Transmitters for the solar and anemometer, they both have a 100 meter range and are positioned lower down the pole, they send the data to the console every so many seconds, The wind transmitter is solar powered with a battery backup

Solar Transmitters from the Fars and the Rain Bucket. They are good from a distance of 100 meters in line of sight, so this is probably reduced to about 60 meters due to walls and other obstacles

The Rain Gauge has been modified. It now has a funnel of 200mm diameter, this means we can record rainfall from as little as 0.16mm. This is a great improvement over the original bucket that only recorded rainfall from 1.0mm

Rain Duration tells us exactly when it starts and finishes raining. It will also tell us on the graphs how long it actually rained for, it will also update the current conditions text and icon, for more information please click here

The Stevenson Screen  is a home built unit. The Stevenson Screen is what houses the thermometer/hygrometer sensor. The unit  limits, if not prevents the suns radiation & heat from harming or interfering with the  the sensor readings. the fan draws any remaining heat up and out of the unit giving a more accurate sensor reading.