Automatic weather station at the cottage
I had an interest in meteorological stations for a long time, probably since childhood when I was fond of astronomy and the problem of weather forecasting was very urgent. It was even possible to visit the local weather station, which is located at the airport (about 10 km from the city limits) in the shaggy 90s. The idea to put meteorological station at the dacha again came to me from the moment I acquired this dacha. Three years ago, I was seriously puzzled and as a result of the delights I realized that automatic weather stations that can be connected to the Internet cost about $ 1 k. So, in the past few years I have bought several household meteorological stations of different accuracy levels home and to the country, but I haven’t received much joy from them. Recently, a discussion on Twitter forced me to study the issue of weather stations with a new force, especially since before that I had read about how they set up a weather station at mail.ru.
The result of my post on eBay.com was the purchase of two positions:
In total, I paid $ 699.17 that according to the rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation +% conversion of a bank (I’m not sure of the exact percentage, so I’ll indicate an approximate price) ~ 24 TR
The key point that interested me was the availability of data from the weather station on a mobile phone and network storage with graphs, that is, in a simple meteo-cloud, since I never wanted to arrange trouble with my server. Well, respectively, I was looking for a device that can merge data into this network storage itself, without unnecessary computers. This task turned out to be not so trivial, since most even professional stations are not friendly with the Internet, preferring RS-232 or USB as an advanced version, although there is also a kit with radio extensions and modems, in short, everything that is not in peacetime applied there is widely represented, but the fact that just for people - a rarity. I’ll say right away that the station I’ve chosen, or rather the module that comes in second position, is able to send data to WeatherUnderground, CWOP and Growl itself, and it is available on port 80 (setting the address and port for returning logs) and on the selected port (on the default is 22222) from which the softphones can read logs.
')
Well, since I need a service, then I went to study such services, and here, too, everything turned out to be not very trivial. There are several state and academic meteorological data collection networks, but they are all rather strange, not to mention the presence of mobile applications or simple usability. The leaders in terms of mass and popularity on an international scale are the WeatherUnderground networks (one of the oldest such projects, which is still alive and developing, which is surprising) and WeatherBug (the latter is not so obvious and in fact has a society of meteorological stations). I liked the last one less, although the list of equipment and solutions is the most extensive, so it would be useful to get acquainted if anyone is interested in the topic.
By the way, about the solutions, I will immediately say that there are several options for using weather stations, and I consider only one of them, although it seems to me optimal. The weather station is convenient because it constantly shows the forecast for the next few hours and it is quite accurate, as practice has shown, and the family uses it. In any case, the forecast for a day or several days should be viewed on the Internet, although the weather station shows a forecast for 3 days (VantagePro2 can do this), but its accuracy will, of course, be small without taking into account the weather elsewhere, and the weather elsewhere is taken into account other services. I will not go into disputes about the value of local weather forecasters, but I can say that the same service rp5.ru in our area is 10 times more trustworthy than local weather forecasters, although the service is based on data from the authorities. By the way, it is worth noting that, in terms of weather forecasts, the British and Americans left us very far due to historical reality (the weather is critical for them and technology is much more developed).
But there’s a fly in the ointment, of course, foreigners only count for us a simple weather forecast, that is, temperature, wind and precipitation, but they do not calculate meteorological events (thunderstorm, hurricane, etc.), since this requires large resources and a large network of weather stations with weather radars, as the calculations for satellite images are not accurate without "support from the ground." Well, the network of weather stations is, to put it mildly, very modest, not to mention the fact that these stations transmit data at intervals of several hours, which is unsuitable for calculating tornadoes or hurricanes, so that they are predicted by “specially trained people” and practice shows, with unpredictable accuracy. Here, of course, the weather station does not help, here the data processing system is important, which in our country is not particularly involved, as the rollback from buying a large computer in the MSCs is convenient to put in your pocket, but the trouble with small stations or no volunteers at all the official cannot bring a prenest, so the official will not be engaged in such work, well, they are not engaged, actually.
So, our company, which worries about thunderstorms, has long used the predictions of its own “amateur”, whose forecasts are much more accurate than the local meteorological center, although, of course, he takes them into account ... well, again, we are satisfied with the warning about thunderstorm for a day or two ( here the probability is low, of course, but we don’t run anywhere, but just mentally prepared) and immediately an hour or two before the storm (there were cases when local meteorologists talked about thunderstorms, and we saw that we wouldn’t have them). Well, it is clear that the forecast point is important, and if the exact forecast from local meteorologists in real life is constantly used only by the local airline, then it is obvious that the weather is forecast there, especially since the local weather station itself is located there. In short, weather stations do not predict thunderstorms (for this you need to know where it is hot and where the cold air in the atmosphere and how fronts develop).
Probably, over time, I will still write about any improvements and "discoveries" in this area.
In the meantime, I will limit myself to a set of links with data from the weather station:
In addition, you can install the WeatherLink program on your mobile phone. Here is a link for iPhone and for Android and in it to find the ae11 weather station and watch data from it.
Now I am still testing software for a computer that can communicate with a weather station over IP.
Let me remind you that this is a temporary location of the weather station and in the near future it will be installed in accordance with the recommendations of thebest breeders of the WeatherUnderground . By the way, if you decide to buy a weather station that measures wind and precipitation, then know that it needs a special place and a city apartment, and even a country house will not always work! Since the natural barriers (in my case, the forest, for example) can distort the picture. I myself plan to raise the anemometer and wind vane on the ridge of the house, which is higher than the pines and is generally on the hill (the height of the house is more than 15 meters), and the rain, humidity and temperature sensors along with the controller should be left on the ground away from the house. For this, you may have to increase the cable, but this is not a problem.
PS: a small addition about the weather station, not the fact that I figured out the price and configuration, but still if the round-the-clock computer under Win is not a problem, then there is a radically cheaper version of the weather station Oregon Scientific WMR200 or WMRS200, which stand with a set of sensors from $ 150 Of the shortcomings there are batteries and binding to the computer via USB, that is, I rejected this option for myself immediately due to the price of ownership that is too high for me (it seems to me to be an extremely expensive event in terms of my time and effort). Even from the same opera, people sometimes use the station Fine Offset WH-1081 and La Corse WS-2812U-IT and PCE Instruments PCE-FWS 20 (this one is quite cheap!).
The result of my post on eBay.com was the purchase of two positions:
- Davis Instruments Vantage Pro-2 Wired Weather Station w / Stdard Radiation Shield for $ 365 . A large box where everything is compactly packed.
- 6555 Davis WeatherLinkIP for Vantage Vue, Vantage Pro, Vantage Pro2 for $ 232.5 . A small box where the micro-web-server is in the form of an adapter to the station, a CD disk with Windows software and documentation), registration in the WeatherLink service is performed using the MAC address of the adapter and the unique key corresponding to it.
- Well, the delivery of this cost me $ 101.67
In total, I paid $ 699.17 that according to the rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation +% conversion of a bank (I’m not sure of the exact percentage, so I’ll indicate an approximate price) ~ 24 TR
The key point that interested me was the availability of data from the weather station on a mobile phone and network storage with graphs, that is, in a simple meteo-cloud, since I never wanted to arrange trouble with my server. Well, respectively, I was looking for a device that can merge data into this network storage itself, without unnecessary computers. This task turned out to be not so trivial, since most even professional stations are not friendly with the Internet, preferring RS-232 or USB as an advanced version, although there is also a kit with radio extensions and modems, in short, everything that is not in peacetime applied there is widely represented, but the fact that just for people - a rarity. I’ll say right away that the station I’ve chosen, or rather the module that comes in second position, is able to send data to WeatherUnderground, CWOP and Growl itself, and it is available on port 80 (setting the address and port for returning logs) and on the selected port (on the default is 22222) from which the softphones can read logs.
')
Well, since I need a service, then I went to study such services, and here, too, everything turned out to be not very trivial. There are several state and academic meteorological data collection networks, but they are all rather strange, not to mention the presence of mobile applications or simple usability. The leaders in terms of mass and popularity on an international scale are the WeatherUnderground networks (one of the oldest such projects, which is still alive and developing, which is surprising) and WeatherBug (the latter is not so obvious and in fact has a society of meteorological stations). I liked the last one less, although the list of equipment and solutions is the most extensive, so it would be useful to get acquainted if anyone is interested in the topic.
By the way, about the solutions, I will immediately say that there are several options for using weather stations, and I consider only one of them, although it seems to me optimal. The weather station is convenient because it constantly shows the forecast for the next few hours and it is quite accurate, as practice has shown, and the family uses it. In any case, the forecast for a day or several days should be viewed on the Internet, although the weather station shows a forecast for 3 days (VantagePro2 can do this), but its accuracy will, of course, be small without taking into account the weather elsewhere, and the weather elsewhere is taken into account other services. I will not go into disputes about the value of local weather forecasters, but I can say that the same service rp5.ru in our area is 10 times more trustworthy than local weather forecasters, although the service is based on data from the authorities. By the way, it is worth noting that, in terms of weather forecasts, the British and Americans left us very far due to historical reality (the weather is critical for them and technology is much more developed).
But there’s a fly in the ointment, of course, foreigners only count for us a simple weather forecast, that is, temperature, wind and precipitation, but they do not calculate meteorological events (thunderstorm, hurricane, etc.), since this requires large resources and a large network of weather stations with weather radars, as the calculations for satellite images are not accurate without "support from the ground." Well, the network of weather stations is, to put it mildly, very modest, not to mention the fact that these stations transmit data at intervals of several hours, which is unsuitable for calculating tornadoes or hurricanes, so that they are predicted by “specially trained people” and practice shows, with unpredictable accuracy. Here, of course, the weather station does not help, here the data processing system is important, which in our country is not particularly involved, as the rollback from buying a large computer in the MSCs is convenient to put in your pocket, but the trouble with small stations or no volunteers at all the official cannot bring a prenest, so the official will not be engaged in such work, well, they are not engaged, actually.
So, our company, which worries about thunderstorms, has long used the predictions of its own “amateur”, whose forecasts are much more accurate than the local meteorological center, although, of course, he takes them into account ... well, again, we are satisfied with the warning about thunderstorm for a day or two ( here the probability is low, of course, but we don’t run anywhere, but just mentally prepared) and immediately an hour or two before the storm (there were cases when local meteorologists talked about thunderstorms, and we saw that we wouldn’t have them). Well, it is clear that the forecast point is important, and if the exact forecast from local meteorologists in real life is constantly used only by the local airline, then it is obvious that the weather is forecast there, especially since the local weather station itself is located there. In short, weather stations do not predict thunderstorms (for this you need to know where it is hot and where the cold air in the atmosphere and how fronts develop).
Probably, over time, I will still write about any improvements and "discoveries" in this area.
In the meantime, I will limit myself to a set of links with data from the weather station:
- Data from the weather station on the WeatherLink network (this is the network of the weather station manufacturer Dvis Instruments). There is a minimum of data.
- WeatherLink with WeatherLink
- The main page with the weather from my station on the WeatherUnderground , there if you poke a lot of interesting links, including graphs of all parameters for different periods and the ability to pump them out in a convenient form (maybe someone will come in handy;) for example, a diploma from such data write a thesis, for example, probably)
- The page of my weather station in the service of CWOP , page five is also useful with all sorts of links, although the design here is "hard."
- but the data of my meteorological station from CWOP processes and is beautifully drawn by the guys from the project http://openweathermap.org/
In addition, you can install the WeatherLink program on your mobile phone. Here is a link for iPhone and for Android and in it to find the ae11 weather station and watch data from it.
Now I am still testing software for a computer that can communicate with a weather station over IP.
Let me remind you that this is a temporary location of the weather station and in the near future it will be installed in accordance with the recommendations of the
PS: a small addition about the weather station, not the fact that I figured out the price and configuration, but still if the round-the-clock computer under Win is not a problem, then there is a radically cheaper version of the weather station Oregon Scientific WMR200 or WMRS200, which stand with a set of sensors from $ 150 Of the shortcomings there are batteries and binding to the computer via USB, that is, I rejected this option for myself immediately due to the price of ownership that is too high for me (it seems to me to be an extremely expensive event in terms of my time and effort). Even from the same opera, people sometimes use the station Fine Offset WH-1081 and La Corse WS-2812U-IT and PCE Instruments PCE-FWS 20 (this one is quite cheap!).
Some pictures
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146894/
All Articles