As many people know, weather stations are my specialty. I’ve been busy with inventing a number of things as of late, trying to stay competitive. So thought I’d drop this out there in case anyone has a use for either of these new solar powered weather station systems mentioned below. The US Fish and Wildlife Service just bought one of these for a special project to monitor the weather long term at a sensitive wildlife area. Nothing else would do the job for them. The software is off the shelf, but the system design and production is of my own design.
New Solar Powered Cellular Weather Station allows you to put weather data online from almost anywhere.
Full featured weather monitoring capability, supports all basic weather data, plus can be expanded for additional data such as solar radiation, evapo-transpiration, etc. Uses the rugged Vantage Pro2 and Vantage Pro2 Plus cabled models. Includes iPhone and Android apps.
Guaranteed compatibility with 3G/4G cellular networks in the USA plus international cellular networks including Canada and the UK.
The Cellular Weather Station Features:
- Full featured weather monitoring capability, supports all basic weather data, plus can be expanded for additional data such as solar radiation, evapo-transpiration, etc. Uses the rugged Vantage Pro2 and Vantage Pro2 Plus cabled models.
- Guaranteed compatibility with 3G/4G cellular networks supported in this list. Supports international cellular networks including Canada and the UK.
- Dual panel solar power battery system will power weather station and transceiver for up to 4 days in total darkness.
- A complete ready to run weather station web page showing the most recent data, plus automatic data archiving.
- No FCC license is required to use these stations.
- Plug and Play operation. No specialized setup or tuning is required to establish the cellular data link.
- All system electronics come pre-assembled in a NEMA rated weatherproof case with o-ring seal and locking hardware. Includes internal electronics ambient temperature monitor that reports automatically with other data.
- Ruggedized high quality construction – designed to withstand harsh remote environments.
- Modular design allows for easy shipping and transport.
- Complete systems with a weather station include WeatherView32 Professional weather monitoring software for additional data logging, web output, report generation, and alerting via email, pager, cell phone when weather conditions exceed levels you specify.
- iPhone and Android weather data display apps included
- Comes with guy wire kit for stability
The system includes a LIVE WEATHER WEB PAGE with automatic data logging that you can check from anywhere.
Setup and view on any computer, PC/Mac/Linux/Android/iPhone and post your weather data directly to the Internet without a dedicated always on PC. Once the CWS is operating, within minutes, you’ll be able to see your weather data live on the Internet.
Data display features:
- Selectable data logging intervals from 1 minute to hours.
- Automatically upload data to third-party weather sites including CWOP, the GLOBE Program, and Weather Underground..
- Download the data to your PC for all the powerful charting, graphing, and analysis.
- Apps for iPhone and Android monitoring included
- Add extra user license kit to download the data independently to multiple PCs—ideal for schools, agriculture, scientific fieldwork, and remote locations.
See the full details on the Cellular Weather Station
The CWS complements our Solar powered Long Range Wireless Stations – with point to point range up to 30 miles. See the details
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Only thing I’d miss for a long term deployment would be monitoring for the battery state (charge level and an alert when it is recommended to swap it out due to aging). Very nice kit otherwise.
Looks great, can we get a version without the tripod? It looks like a stiff wind would knock it over.
Maybe a stake in the ground and a fitting to mount it to the stake.
Way ahead of you – we supply a guy wire kit standard…but we can also supply these sans poles, guy, and tripod for mounting to your own fixtures
Another observation, does the heat generated by the dark solar cells effect the readings?
Very nice!
Where is the secondary wind power generator?®
;+)
John from CA says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:03 am
Looks great, can we get a version without the tripod? It looks like a stiff wind would knock it over.
Thats probably why it “Comes with guy wire kit for stability.”
great for those hard to reach locations on the airport tarmac.
What – not coal powered?
How have you compensated for the rising heat from the solar panels – surely as bad as tarmac? Solar panels are designed to absorb as much solar as possible and convert less than 40% to electricity leaving the rest as heat!
[Moderator’s Note: jj, you are still posting using an anonymous proxy server. Please check our policy page here. You have been commenting here as “Bob Gaddrod”, “Joe Priestleigh”, “Cameron Taylor”, “Lincoln Sparrow”, “R Kcin”, “Marcella Twixt”, “Evangeline Maergulis”, “Jphilips”, and “John Majikthise”, amongst others. One would think that UofG would keep you too busy for this sort of childishness. Reform or be snipped. -REP]
Don’t quite know what a guy wire is, but can I specify the kind of guy I want?
What does the kit weight?
If it can be back packed to remote hiking locations in Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Yosemite National Parks etc. then it could serve weather information and as an emergency call station where cell coverage is nonexistent.
Pretty cleaver, a closed loop regional weather system that climate models can’t screw up.
RTD or Thermistor?
What is your recommended calibration interval?
Will you have bearing kits for the anemometer?
Batteries? Rechargeable lithium?
GeoLurking says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:08 am
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Good point, I missed the “Comes with guy wire kit for stability” bullet point.
I’m not being critical, its very cleaver.
Tripod base would be better if the cross supports were at ground level were they could be staked into the ground which would also allow the vertical support to be supported at ground level.
FYI, the page you linked to for the list of 3G/4G carriers has a couple of issues – there was server-side ASP code appearing in the header and footer, and “too allow” should be “to allow” in the first paragraph.
I’ve seen weather setups along the interstate here in Ohio. Are any of them yours?
That is awesome. If I had an extra 4-grand lying around I’d put one in the backyard so I could check my weather on the internet!
And looking at the equipment you have at weathershop, a person could actually do a residential setup much cheaper. Really neat stuff Anthony.
Anthony has provided a cool way for individuals to engage in the study of weather. Why are you anti-science JJ?
Very nice setup there! Enough isolated farms all over the world and hooked into the internet linked WUWTGCN and we’d all be set for some real turkey. Wouldn’t it be great to have an real time hourly updated global average, actual temperature now, no anomalies, across the entire world. One large government could put that into existence on what they spill in a few days to “green” environmentalists.
But when you say “■ Dual panel solar power battery system will power weather station and transceiver for up to 4 days in total darkness.” lets all hope ol’ Sol never tests that for you. ☺
I’ll add it to my list of applications for which current PV technology is price-competitive against the alternatives. Admittedly, it is not a large niche in the electricity market.
😉
You have been commenting here as “Bob Gaddrod”, “…”, and “John Majikthise”, amongst others.
Sorry none of these are me. Nor is UofG anything I recognise,
I thought my post was reasonable – a bit of humour with a real question at the end. I see I am not the only one to question the heat from the panels.
[REPLY: Sorry, jj, but you really are those others and I’m really surprised that U of G is not anything you recognize since it is probably the largest employer in Cheltenham (oh, and in the event you don’t recognize “Cheltenham”, that is the source of the IP address your first 32 comments on this blog came from before you got stupid with anonymous proxy servers). It really doesn’t matter whether a post is reasonable or not: comments originating from anonymous proxy servers are subject to deletion….. unless of course, the commenter is FOIA. So, jj, you can step out or be snipped. -REP]
Anthony, Are you the WeatherShop? I fly into a remote airstrip and it would be cool to get the current weather for this “private” strip accessing it on the radio – like I can at most other municipal airports. I need to get some other matters in hand first but I seriously might be able to use this. The nearst station is over thirty miles away. I can’t hear it on the ground anyway.
Pamela Gray says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:20 am
Don’t quite know what a guy wire is, but can I specify the kind of guy I want?
===============================================
As long as he’s wired?
Pamela Gray says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:20 am
“Don’t quite know what a guy wire is, but can I specify the kind of guy I want?”
Pamela.
Retro-guy wire comes only in raw iron: tough, malleable, but work hardens if you try to bend it too many times. Modern guy-wire can be acquired as soft and weak as pure lead or as strong and durable as braided stainless steel. Choose carefully….
Conversely, gal-wire only comes in silver, gold, or platinum, in my experience.
MtK
@Rich Tubbs
> .. If I had an extra 4-grand lying around I’d put one in the backyard …
You certainly don’t have to spend $4K to have a personal weather station in your back yard, hooked up to the Internet. I did it for less than $500, using the Davis Vantage Vue, the Vantage Pro2’s cheaper little brother (but the same very high quality engineering as the Pro2)
http://www.weathershop.com/davis_vvue.htm
My station has been in operation for over a year, sending CWOP reports to NWS every ten minutes which can be monitored over the Internet: http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=AF4EX
Yes, I’m a ham operator, so my station is registered under my call sign. But you don’t need a ham license to participate in CWOP if you hook your station directly to the Internet via a serial interface.
The Davis serial interface (WeatherLink) was a bit pricey for me (I was trying to keep the price of the whole station setup under $500). So I built my own serial interface and use some free software (Cumulus) to make the CWOP link:
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=10721.0
I’ve learned a lot about meteorology by running my own weather station, and derive a satisfaction knowing that my reports are actually used by NWS/NOAA for mesoscale forecasting.
There is a free web site, mesowest.utah.edu, run by the Unversity of Utah, which provides an interactive geo-spatial map interface to all of the mesonets, including CWOP. I monitor it all the time to track winds, rain, fires and hurriscanes. And of course, to see my little station chugging out its reports, 24/7.
http://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/my_login.cgi?came_from=/cgi-bin/droman/mesomap.cgi?profile_id=iugN8K5281JtjXS [Click on “View profile without logging in” to see my station situated in the Florida east-coast CWOP mesonet]
Mesoscale forecasting reports on a much smaller scale than your typical weather.com synoptic forecasts, ideally down to a kilometer or so. So there’s a great need to for additional stations to populate the meso networks.
I think Anthony’s kit above is a very cost-effective way for weather organizations (academic, govt etc) to increase the number of stations with very good data and minimal overhead.
😐
Anthony
Compliments. Looks about ready to apply for a NAS grant to install 10,000 around the world to provide quantitative temperature data away from urban heat islands. They would be cheaper, more reliable and last longer than weather satellites.
Rich Tubbs says:
June 23, 2012 at 11:57 am
That is awesome. If I had an extra 4-grand lying around I’d put one in the backyard so I could check my weather on the internet!
___________________________________
I just wish I had the extra 4-grand lying around too so I could put one in my pasture. I am near a rural airport ~ 3 miles and it would be interesting to track the difference between my pasture and the airport as it expands as it keeps on doing.
I know a couple of PERFECT places for such a station to do real climate monitoring. One is in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. NOTHING changes for miles around for hundreds of years and they now have cellular service in Gerlach (except maybe during Burning Man when the cell site would be flooded). That would be a perfect place and even if you had to move the station a mile at some point the conditions wouldn’t change. It would need strong guys, though, as winds can easily reach 70MPH and it can be extremely dusty with flour fine dust.