About This Weather Station
This weather station is comprised of the following components.
1. An outdoor Thermo-hydro sensor which reads temperature and humidity. I have installed this 1-wire sensor in a Davis passive radiation shield and customised it to become a Fan Aspirated Radiation Shield (FARS). This tends to give more accurate temperature and humidity readings when there is little or no wind.
2. An anemometer which collects wind speed and direction. The Anemometer is made by AAG using 1-wire technology and is from hobbyboards.com.
3. A rain gauge which collects rainfall totals. It is made by Rainwise and has a 20cm (8") diameter collector for statistical accuracy. It measures in 0.25mm increments. Again using 1-wire technology from hobbyboards.com. This rain gauge has been in operation for over 2 years and has been very accurate
Rain Gauge by Rainwise |
4. A barometer which measures barometric pressure. This sensor is calbrated to our altitude of 217 metres ASL.
5. A UV sensor. This device detects and measures UV radiation in both the UVA and UVB spectrum, with peak detection at a wavelength of approximately 365 nm. The UV sensor reports results as a UV Index (standard scale 0-16) in real time, updated to my website every 6 seconds.
4. A lightning detector. This 1-wire lightning sensor can detect lightning strikes to ground up to 100km away. It counts individual strikes to ground giving an indication of the intensity of an impending storm. Please note that false strikes are common in low numbers as the sensor detects any relay or switch in the home that creates a spark. This does not really matter because when a storm is building you will see hundreds of strikes in a short period! (offline, will be back online soon).
5. An indoor Thermo-hydro sensor.
6. A 1-wire hub. A hub allows the sensors to be connected using a star topology. In my situation I could not run all my sensors in series so the hub allows for more flexibility with the sensor installation.
7. A USB adapter which connects the data cable from the hub to the laptop.
8. A laptop computer. I was using my desktop computer but found it was using too much electricity as it needed to be on 24/7. So for environmental and cost reasons I purchased an old Pentium 3 1GHz laptop with 1GB of ram. It works great and is only consuming 28 watts compared to 140 watts for the desktop. I plan to install a small Photovoltaic panel with battery backup to make my weather station "carbon Neutral" if there is such a thing! Or even better still install a 1.5kW+ system for the entire house.
9. A UPS. I have a small uninterruptible power supply which prevents power surges, brown out problems and will run the laptop and 1-wire hub for about 30 minutes if there is a power failure.
10. Software. I am running Windows XP and the data from the sensors is collected by Weather Display and then uploaded to a web hosting service.
This weather station is located at the northern end of Helensburgh. The data from the 2 nearest official weather stations can be quite different, one is at sea level and on the coast (Bellambi) and the other is further inland than Helensburgh (Lucas Heights). All data from this station is quite accurate except wind from the SE/S/SW reads lower than you would get at the top end of town because we are somewhat protected from the southerly winds.
All the sensors are situated in optimal positions for highest accuracy possible. The sensors are connected via cat-5e cable to minimise interference.
About Helensburgh
Helensburgh is a township with a population of approximately 5000 people, 50km southwest of Sydney and bordered to the north by the Royal National Park , the worlds second oldest national park. Helensburgh is about 4km (as the crow flies) from the Pacific ocean, just inland from the Illawarra escarpment, perched at 280m above sea level which gives the area some unique weather conditions.
Right on our doorstep are some great bushwalks leading through rainforest and past waterfalls. Also there are a number of surf beaches only minutes drive away. All of this about one hour by car or train from Sydney.
More to come.....
About This Website
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