Weather Geeks

[T_Minus]

Davis? AcuRite?

Or?

Looking to take the next step in my weather monitoring and data collection

I see them on Amazon ranging from $190 to $900 or so, and every1 has negative reviews about having reception/transmission issues or simply completely stopping in 1 year or so... I also noticed the expensive Davis units apparently (based on reviews) are really old tech / software.

Currently I use a couple AcuRite outdoor temp/humidity monitors as well indoor with ExTech too... I'd like to monitor wind, rain, etc... as much data as I can.


Any other weather geeks out there?

What are you using, how long has it lasted? Snow fall an issue?

Does anyone know what the gov / weather service uses at airports, etc? Are those completely out of price range of individuals?

 

[T_Minus]

For the $ these units seems to be well reviewed:

A-
B-

I haven't looked into the data collection / raw access, etc... one looks to be hard wired, while one is WiFi.

I don't want to send my data to the Internet / WUG, but would rather prepare my own graphs / website from the raw data.

At the $300 or less price point I can also get a 2nd unit at a later time for redundancy and making sure 1 doesn't go out of config.


We live in a microclimate so retrieving and sharing weather from the Internet is 100% useless.
For reference in less than a mile there may be 6-8" of snow on the ground where we'll have 2 feet.

 

[Dawg10]

I installed a Davis Vantage 2 about 7 years ago; northern Alberta with -40 to +35C and about 350mm of rain/year. I didn't get the heater required to melt/measure snowfall as there wasn't AC power to the array at the time.

The sensor array/solar panel/transmitter is about 100' from the receiver unit in the shop; never any issues with connectivity. The receiver either runs on batteries (3xC cells; awkward) or on AC adapter which is highly sensitive to emf interference; mine was loosing USB port communications every once in a while when the mini-fridge compressor would kick in. Solved this by adding a small UPS to smooth out the bumps.

I did have to replace the anemometer/weather vane sensor a year ago; was not impressed with the $150USD price tag but what do you do? The system is useless without wind data.

I send the data to a simple web page hosted by my internet provider and add in some cams and weather maps; this way all the info is readily available on iPhone; the page is publicly available but not indexed by search engines so no issues with privacy. Can send you the link if you'd like to have a peek.

 

[dandanio]

I have an Oregon outside and I am using rtl_433 to gather the measurements, put them in InfluxDB and graph them with Grafana. All you need is a RTL-SDR usb dongle, a raspberry pi (a Zero W is great for it) and you are all set. Should you have any questions, lmk.