Tuesday 27 October 2009

Setting up my weather station

Setting up my new weather station this week has been interesting. Not as simple as the instructions would have you believe. I may still move some of the equipment to obtain more accurate readings.

Outdoor Thermometer
I'm hoping the outdoor thermometer is now positioned out of the sun should there be any.

From Weather Station


The protection around the thermometer is more to protect against bird droppings rather than sunshine. It’s mounted under our bird feeders!

Anemometer
I didn't fancy erecting a 10m (the official mounting height) high pole in the garden which would need climbing each week to keep the anemometer clean.

From Weather Station


It's mounted on the top of a pergola to measure wind speed at tall shrub height rather than tall tree height.

Rain Gauge
I've mounted my rain gauge on top of the pergola too. This will need cleaning each week to remove any debris trapped in the collecting funnel.

From Weather Station


I’d like some proper rain now rather than the drizzly stuff we’ve had over the last week to check that the gauge is working properly. Initially out of impatience I tipped a drop of water into the top of the gauge and recorded a rainfall of 1.4mm. I’m now not sure of how to remove this amount from the database. Still if my figures are within 1mm I’m not too fussed.

Data Logger & PC connection
Once these bits of equipment were set up it was just a matter of ensuring that the wireless connections worked and that I could download data from the equipment to my PC for editing. As the station can work all over the world it needs to be set up for a city in the UK. I’ve used Liverpool from the choices available.

From Weather Station


Downloading to my PC didn’t go quite as planned or as described in the instructions. The problem was the length of computer file names. I think I have the measure of the kit now (apart from that experimental 1.4mm of rainfall). Just for good measure the clocks went back 1 hour at the weekend and I’ve no idea what happened to the lost hour’s weather.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and leaving a comment - it is great to know that there are people out there actually reading what I write! Come back soon.
(By the way any comments just to promote a commercial site, or any comments not directly linked to the theme of my blog, will be deleted as soon as I spot them) Please do not follow links from any comments that appear to be spam - if in doubt ignore.