About This Weather Station

My weather station is comprised of the following components:

1. An outdoor Thermo-hygro sensor which measures 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, particularily 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

4. A barometer which measures barometric pressure. The barometer is installed inside the house alongside the 1-wire hub. It is calbrated to our altitude of 216 metres above sea level.

5. A Solar Radiation sensor. This sensor measures sunlight level, so the intensity and duration of sunlight can be measured. It detects light in the visible to infrared portion of the spectrum, with peak detection at 850nm.

6. A UV sensor. This device detects and measures Ultra Violet 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 near real time.

7. A lightning detector. This 1-wire lightning sensor can detect lightning strikes up to 100km away. It counts individual strikes to ground giving an indication of the intensity of a 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!

8. An indoor Thermo-hygro sensor which measures indoor temperature and humidity

9. 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.

10. A USB adapter which connects the data cable from the hub to the laptop.

11. 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.

12. A UPS. I have a small uninterruptible power supply which helps protect from power surges, brown out problems and will run the laptop, 1-wire hub and modem router for up to 30 minutes if there is a power failure.

13. 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.

14. Web hosting service. I am using Bravenet for my web hosting. I have used them exclusively for over three years and have found them to be extremely reliable and well priced.

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 ASL at its highest point 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.

Helensburgh was first known as Camp Creek, a tent town of railway workers constructing the Illawarra railway line

About This Website

This site is a template design by CarterLake.org with PHP conversion by Saratoga-Weather.org.

Thanks to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather for his work on the original Carterlake templates, and his design for the common website PHP management.

Thanks to Mike Challis at 642weather.com for his wind-rose generator and CSS styling.

Thanks to Ken True at Saratoga-Weather.org for the AJAX conditions display, dashboard and integration of the TNET Weather common PHP site design for this site.

Thanks to WebsterWeatherLIVE for the alternative Ajax-Dashboard on the home page.

Thanks to Wildwood Weather for the temperature, rain and wind data scripts.

Thanks to NewtonandNoss.com for the tide chart script.

Thanks to Bashewa Weather for the cloud base graphic, gradient thermometer and mobile phone script.

Thanks to Sietse Visser for the Weather display WebApp for the iPhone.

Thanks to Hobby Boards for the 1-wire sensors and related equipment.

And lastly a big thankyou to Brian Hamilton for creating the Weather Display personal weather station software. Without his software none of this website would be possible!

This website template is originally based on Designs by Haran.

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