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. The data is collected every second and the site is updated every 4 seconds for the AJAX enable statistics on the home page and the current readings in the header and every 1 to 5 minutes depending on the page you are viewing. The data is collected using Weather Display Software. The station comprises of an anemometer, rain gauge, barometer, thermometer/hygrometer sensor, soil sensor and a solar radiation sensor of which are all situated in optimal positions for the highest accuracy possible.

I would also like to thank Gary Lowe of Desborough for kindly donating the server that we will be shortly using to run the weather software and all other aspects in relation to the station.....

The Mast, Anemometer & Solar sensor 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 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

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 bucket 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 Sensor/transmitter, 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 (Fan assisted Radiation) This is a home built unit. This Stevenson Screen is what houses the thermometer/hygrometer sensor. The unit  limits, if not prevents the suns radiation from harming the sensor. It also deflects the suns heat and the fan in side draws any remaining heat up and out of the unit thus giving a more accurate temperature reading. The data is then transferred wirelessly to the console.

    Sensor Battery Status

    Station Statistics