Sunny Rhyl Sea Fishing Diary

Project - Weather Station

Having spent too many hours over the summer checking local weather conditions on various online weather sites, I took the decision to cut out the middle man and install my own weather station. The plan, is to purchase a suitable 'professional' station, install it and ftp the live weather to this Sunnyrhyl website.

From a starting point of zero knowledge in this field, the coming months should prove interesting to say the least......................

Update - 21/09/2006

Having browsed, searched and researched online into what weather station would be suitable for my needs, I decided that an Oregon setup was for me. I narrowed it down to 3 units....... The 918, 928 and the 968.

Having spotted a few on eBay, I plumped for the WMR928NX. On sale for £229 + £15 shipping from Germany. A good price when compared to the £399 price tag from most UK based suppliers. Just hope it works :)

I did a Buy It Now on Sunday night. I paid via Paypal immediately. Just had to sit back and wait to see if anything would arrive...........

It did!!!!!!!!!! 3 days after winning the auction, it arrived. What a fantastic service for an international transaction. FYI, the sellers ID was 'world-pay'.

Only got as far as opening the box tonight, but will take a good look at the gear tomorrow.

The fun starts here :).

Update - 24/09/2006

I spent Saturday unpacking, testing and installing the various components of the Weather Station.

Everything appeared intact and new looking as I removed it all from the box. I switched the control unit on and it fired up to display the required fields, albeit with reading of --.-- in every location.

All 4 sensors were carefully unpacked and assembled/switched on. One by one, readings started to appear on the display. All items appear to be working :)

Next up was a trip to B+Q. The shopping list included 3 wooden stakes and a cheap shelf. 

The Thermo Hygrometer was mounted on a wooden stake along with its wireless transmitter.

The Anemometer + transmitter were both mounted on a stake, located in the middle of the garden. Only a temporary fix to ensure the unit is operating as expected. The plan is to get this sensor mounted on a pole attatched to the top of my chimney stack.

The shelf was fitted to my back wall, with the rain guage mounted on top.

The Baro-Thermo-Hygrometer was switched on and place in my hallway to read the internal temperature of Sunny Rhyl headquarters

Everthing seems to work so far. The cotrol panel is fully populated and max/mins are all accesable. I am still geting to grips with the operations of this unit. Hopefully when I am sure everything is fine, I will take the next step of looking into the PC software and also getting the Anemometer fitted on the roof.

Update - 06/10/2006

A few days ago I realised that my laptop didn't have a RS232 port. So the only way to connect the control unit to my PC was to purchase a Serial to USB adaptor. £9.99 and a few days later, my latest eBay purchase arrived.

I connected the USB adaptor to the supplied Serial cable and attatched it all to my laptop. Having already installed the supplied software, Virtual Weather Station, I was hopefull that it would all work first time.

Wrong!

The software fired up as expected, but it was reporting that no connection could be established with the weather station. I checked the instructions which simply called for the weather station to have the AC adaptor connected and switched on, as opposed to running it solely off the AA batteries. 

Lots of head scratching later and just about to give up for the day, I reconnected the cables for the umteenth time and to my surprise, the software started to see the individual sensors. One by one, the green lights lit and the system was up and running. All sensors were reporting readings and the laptop was displaying all manner of data and graphs. 

I eventually found out why the system had started working all of a sudden............. I forgot to switch the AC adaptor on! Despite all instructions, my setup will only operate WITHOUT the adaptor connected. More research required on this one, but for the time being, I am happy with the current situation.

So currently, I have a local connection to my PC enabling me to see all the data captured. Next step is to upgrade the software from the basic package to the 'Internet' option. This will cost in the region of £50. With this upgrade, I should be able to get a beta version of the Sunny Rhyl Live Weather page up and running.

In addition to the software upgrade, I still need to arrange a local aerial fitter to come and install the anemometer on the roof and also purchase a suitable 2nd hand PC to run the weather station 24/7. 

Update 11/11/2006

Philcol Aerials came to my rescue today. With my vertigo kicking in at 3ft above sea level, I had no other option than to call in the professionals to install the Anemometer on the roof of Sunny Rhyl HQ.

With compas and spirit level in hand, Phil, or was it Col, mounted a pole on my chimney breast. 

The Anemometer was mounted horizontal with a bearing of due south.

After a quick check to see if the control unit was still reading the wind information, the job was done.

Next step for me is to get the info displayed on the net and to find a permanent PC for the whole system to run from.............

Update 30/06/2007

It's been a while since I progressed this project.

The momentum was dashed when, after a few weeks of the station working correctly, the Anemometer started to give incorrect readings.

Intermittantly, the wind speed was being returned as 0mph. After a while, the wind speed reading was consistantly reading 0mph.

Bum!!!!!!!!!

With it being mounted to the roof, it was the sensor that was going to be the most difficult to maintain.

Admittidly, I did lose interest for a while. Although I did manage to buy a 2nd hand PC to use as a dedicated weather staion relay unit.

Recently, the wind speed reading has returned. The direction information is and has always been correct, but now the correct wind speed is back, allbeit still slightly intermittant.

So yesterday, I fired up the dedicated PC and installed all of the software. After remembering how to set up the internet connectivity, the system is now functional.

The main problem now is the noise generated by the PC!

I have never heard such a racket from a computer in my life!

I guess that is what you get for buying 2nd hand.

As this PC has to remain on 24/7, it is going to drive me mad.

I am looking into replacing it with a fanless, Mini ITX system 

These are tiny PC's that operate on low power. As a result, you can get away with heatsinks for the cooling rather than having the drone of a fan.

For the time being, I am 'Beta' testing the system. I'll probably give it until the end of the weekend, or until I take a sledgehammer to the PC :)