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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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
All it needs is a camera to spot the ‘Barbeque’, er tampering.
If you could add a vocalization unit, and a transmitter interface it might be usable as an AWOS for a small airport.
MacTheKnife, I don’t care much for gold, silver or platinum. I prefer brass.
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.
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.
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
Are you considering making a Windows Phone app as well, if not for the current version, then for Windows Phone 8 that was just previewed?
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Windows-Phone/Summit/Keynote
“IDC: Windows Phone to surpass Apple’s iOS by 2015” :
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20070476-233.html
@ColdInOz:
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
Hey Anthony,
You may have a potential customer in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology …
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/threat-of-anao-audit-means-australias-bom-throws-out-temperature-set-starts-again-gets-same-results/
I hope you become rich and famous. You are already famous!
This country and wealth was built on innovation. Good luck.
If you will build it outside of California I would like to apply for a job.
Well I think that is an exciting investment, to teach the kids about taking measurements and making observations, and keeping careful records. I really like it. And it would be interesting to compare it with the temp announcements on the local radio stations. Hopefully the better half will agree. I will make my best pitch. (:
My dream kit would also include infrasound measurements (in particular 2-5 Hz) and would be able to measure changes in the atmospheric efield from about that high off the ground. That would be incredible to measure during storms, or before and after rain. I would love that. And it all would get archived on the computer.
@Anthoney:
One of my “someday projects” is to get a small recording thermometer set and put one over the driveway, and one over the lawn (and maybe one near the road and one in the back yard under a tree…) All inside 100 feet of each other. Then show exactly how much “microclimate” changes the results. I’m quite sure that “over the tarmac” and “near the road” would be at least a degree warmer than under the tree… But having a direct record of that from matched instruments would be ‘golden’.
Can you recommend a device for that? At one time I think you had a little recording thermometer thingy for not too much money. Any chance of a “feature” on it, too?
The solar panel doesn’t have much mass compared to tarmac which is probably why Anthony’s tests don’t show any bias.
What I need, Anthony, apart from fluency in Portuguese and knowing what Ecotretas is up to these days, (oh, and beautiful girlfriends), is a system I can mount maybe 100 feet from my home (up a tree) and still receive data, either on demand or, preferably, automatically downloaded to my PC.
WiFi will not allow placement of a personal weather station far enough away from my residence to not be contaminated by the house. Mabe a cable system from the sensors to a wifi node close to my home. A reasonale distance from my home must be 100 feet plus; but I am in a high-denisty suburb, with trees. So it should be mounted atop a tree.
do you supply a A/C unit with the kit IF not the tempt readings will be on the minus side
@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.
Just sharing,
Central spike anchor, (like a stop sign) to secure and ground the unit.
Drop the control and battery boxes to the lowest point.
Use a desulphating solar charger (does it exist?) with lead acid batteries, and you could get 5 years on the batteries.
Inventions do change the world, no?
I love it!
How do we WUWTers apply for some of that climate thingy grant money? I’d like to install a small flotilla of those sensors. That is, place a grid of sensors starting from our local town center (where our local temperature measurement sensor is for NOAA) out till sensors are mounted in rural farms and fields. This is a far easier concept to try out with a small country town than trying to grid the large eastern megalopolis centers. Just to see what the UHI ‘is/is not’ for a largely brick town, suburban edges and rural country surrounding.
I live outside the town in one of the rural areas and have been intrigued to see the local news claiming new record highs the last few years. Especially as when I first moved here we were always within a degree when the temperature was announced. Yeah, I know, my old max/min mercury thermometer just isn’t up to snuff anymore.
A few million dollars wouldn’t even be a few drops out of the billions the climsci (pronounced like clumsy) group have been spending and it would be for direct observations that avoids models, statistics and corrupt scoundrels.
It’s a shame these sensors can’t be mounted vertically for a few thousand feet. Then we could test Willis’s theory about weather having a self limiting feedback factor. Belize might be a good place to try that idea out.
Robert of Ottawa says: June 23, 2012 at 5:31 pm
WiFi will not allow placement of a personal weather station far enough away from my residence to not be contaminated by the house.
— — —
The Wi-Fi n protocol has a outdoor range of 820 ft (250m).
Anthony, as a fellow inventor with two issued patents and several pending, let me suggest….”military contracts.” They’d love this!
Looks very nice – it certainly puts my small, dirt cheap supermarket weather station in its place! Anthony, any time you need something like this soak testing in some corner of a foreign field (ok, city) … 🙂
Practical query: Despite the smallness and cheapness of my ‘supermarket grade’ weather station, I’m regularly impressed at how well it manages to forecast the next few hours’ conditions. Does anyone know where I might find some details of the sort of algorithms built into these things? Searching on the net I find mentions of b-i-g all-singing, all-dancing (commercial) programs, but I want quick’n’dirty calculations which will fit either into a PIC (like the supermarket model) or a program small enough for one (very) amateur programmer to work with. Any suggestions gratefully received!
@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
😐
A serious suggestion: for remote locations, you might want to include a level switch so if anything knocks it down, it will immediately send “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” or some such message.
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.