Some stuff I've been up to…Cellular Weather Station

Don’t quite know what a guy wire is, but can I specify the kind of guy I want?

RTD or Thermistor?
What is your recommended calibration interval?
Will you have bearing kits for the anemometer?
Batteries? Rechargeable lithium?

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.

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.

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. ☺

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]

@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.
😐

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.

Anthony,
A technical question: The accessories list for the Vantage Pro2 lists “a patented solar-powered 24-hour fan-aspirated radiation shield for maximum accuracy of temperature and humidity
readings”. What is the accuracy, with/without, for temp and humidity measurements?
Thanks!
MtK

If you could add a vocalization unit, and a transmitter interface it might be usable as an AWOS for a small airport.

Anthony, if you are hoping to sell your unit here in Australia and I see a market, be aware that solar powered relay stations commonly used here to provide telephone services in remote areas drop out after 5 or 6 days of heavy cloud cover. So you might look into additional battery backup.

Pamela Gray says:
June 23, 2012 at 2:35 pm
“MacTheKnife, I don’t care much for gold, silver or platinum. I prefer brass.”
Pamela.
Me too! That’s the difference between my experience and my preference, que lastima!
MtK

@ColdInOz:

John from ca says
“Another observation, does the heat generated by the dark solar cells effect the readings”
I suggest you revise your junior high school physics John from CA. Compare the heat sink of solar cells with that of black tarmac. Different ball park. Add to that the positioning of the various component parts, obvious in the photo.

No need to revise the laws of physics. It’s well known that black solar photo-voltaic cells generate heat as well as electricity.
http://pveducation.org/pvcdrom/modules/heat-generation-in-pv-modules
So it’s possible that the panel could get just as hot as black tarmac.
With regard to component parts positioning, it looks like the solar panel is located just inches away from the aspirator for the thermometer. Also, the panel is tilted such that air behind the panel could be heated and rise up close to the aspirator, which might affect the readings. Hopefully the kit could be assembled with the panel further away from the aspirator.
😐

REPLY: I hear you, it was a concern with me too. The kit can be assembled any way you want. In our testing, the way it is setup, we have not seen any bias from the solar panel. If it is a concern, the IR shield assembly detaches and can be mounted at any elevation on the pole, or can be mounted on a separate pole. – Anthony

@Robert of Ottawa:
> … What I need, Anthony, … is a system I can mount
> maybe 100 feet from my home (up a tree) …
The Vantage Pro2 (in Anthony’s Celluar Weather Station) and the Vantage Vue both come equipped with a solar powered transmitter with a range of 1000 feet.
http://www.weathershop.com/davis_vantage_pro2.htm
http://www.weathershop.com/davis_vvue.htm
But you don’t want to mount it in a tree. The branches will interfere with rain and wind measurements. Roof mount or on a sturdy mast, with the anemometer preferably about 20 feet above the ground, clear of obstructions.
But make sure that you have easy access to it, whereever you put it, because you’ll have to replace batteries and clean it every 18 months or so.

Anthony, as a fellow inventor with two issued patents and several pending, let me suggest….”military contracts.” They’d love this!

@Steve C
> Does anyone know where I might find some details of the
> sort of algorithms built into these things?
I believe many of these weather boxes (including the Vantage Pro) use variations of the Sager algorithm, which dates from 1942 and was originally implemented on a custom circular slide rule.
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=5970.0
The simplest algorithm of course is: barometer falling = BAD WX, barometer rising=GOOD WX
😐

Well done, Anthony. I have forwarded your post to contacts in the Wide Brown Land (Australia) which is always in need of weather monitors, especially since the BOM started cooking the figures. It’s a snip at the price. Excellent!
John Day says:
June 24, 2012 at 4:59 am
@Steve C
> Does anyone know where I might find some details of the
> sort of algorithms built into these things?
I believe many of these weather boxes (including the Vantage Pro) use variations of the Sager algorithm, which dates from 1942 and was originally implemented on a custom circular slide rule.
http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=5970.0
The simplest algorithm of course is: barometer falling = BAD WX, barometer rising=GOOD WX
😐
——————————————-
Really, a 1942 algorithm is still widely used? I am not being critical, at all, but do wonder how the newly minted algorithms that currently inform climate models will look in 70 years or so.
And yep, I have one of the simplest algorithms right in front of me every time I look up. It is a lovely circular barometer/thermometer set in an old piece of fence post. It is interesting that if you look at old movies and even old TV shows, every house had a barometer. But, in modern flats/apartments and houses, both in real life and the media, they are absent.
Two questions arise. One, where have they all gone? Are our landfills chock full of unloved barometers? And two, does it reflect urbanisation? If you live in a city, the weather matters much less. Maybe our parents only had a barometer out of tradition anyway.
The combination of my barometer, the local weather maps, and my arthritic knee consistently outperform the BOM forecasts. And I live in a small city. But, weather afficiandos, many of whom inhabit WUWT, are perhaps a bit of a species apart, or tribe.

@Johanna
> Really, a 1942 algorithm is still widely used?
Probably not used much by professional meteorologists, but seems to be used a lot in the mass-consumption, Walmart-class (and higher, like Davis) weather boxes, which tend to use low-end microprocessors like PIC, where code and data space is very limited.
The pros use codes like the NCR WRF system (http://wrf-model.org/index.php), which a decade or so ago required a Cray or similar super-computer to run. Home computers are more powerful now, so a reasonably equipped personal computer could run these codes. WRF is free software. You can download it here:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/downloads.html
… but to requires considerable skill and knowledge of FORTRAN compiling etc to get it running on real data.
A better alternative for aspiring amateur meteorologists would be to interactive with WRF on line using Joe Murgo’s nifty web page (http://webpages.charter.net/wxjoe/animator.htm) which lets you interact with different weather forecasting models and create animated weather maps. A lot of these models are WRF-based, using state of the art “Data Assimilation” algorithms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_assimilation), which take prior conditions as baseline and assimilate new observations for predicting future states of the model.

I’ve been using Open2300 (http://www.lavrsen.dk/foswiki/bin/view/Open2300/WebHome) on a LaCrosse Ws-2300 for several years now (http://classic.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=05341). The station is up on the roof with a 900 Mhz radio to the console.
Had to mod the source code to filter out errant readings, but that’s why we have access to the source…
Also built a web page for a Vantage Pro (http://www.swantown-wifi.portolympia.net/), uses a Troy Serial/Ethernet convertor to talk to the remote VWS server. you can also add a very cheap Ubiquiti WiFI link (http://www.ubnt.com/) to extend the range for at least 30 km.

@John Day – Many thanks for that, John, now I have something to hunt down and get my teeth into. I’m less surprised than some at the age of the algorithm, as it dates it firmly in the Traditional Uncorrupted Science era; better still, if it can fit on a slide rule it will probably fit in a modest memory – electronic or mine!
And I’m pleased to say that, like Johanna, I have a nice practical implementation of that ‘simplest’ algorithm, which has been doing its thing for darn near as long as the Sager algorithm. Come to think of it, do I need to make a complicated electronic thingy? … 🙂