Thursday 3 January 2008

Weather Station

A while ago I purchased a cheap and cheerless weather station from Maplins

Atech Weather Station

Maplins used to be a wonderful hobby electronics store, usually situated out of town, where after an exciting bus ride you could buy all manner of components, toys and kits to build yourself but has over recent years turned into a modern facsimile of the old Tandy stores. Maplin now seem to spend most of their efforts opening high street stores selling expensive computer components and consumer electronics of dubious quality for ridiculous prices. But I still cannot pass by one without popping in. They recently opened a store in Lincoln and what a dump it is, it's dark, it smells (mostly of body odour) and you have to negotiate big piles of damaged cardboard boxes.

But I digress, it was on a visit to my parents that I passed one of the bigger, better stores in Walsall that I picked up this little weather station on a whim, I think it cost me about £15 in a sale. This little unit has in/out temperature monitoring, the outdoor being from a remote wireless sensor and a rudimentary barometer showing trend information. The humidity sensor is on the display unit so is next to useless in a centrally heated house!

It had proved quite reliable and informative when wanting to know the outside temperature. However recently the outdoor sensor has become unreliable, I suspect due to poor weather proofing.

My wife has always had a bit of a fixation on the weather, temperatures and forecasts. Some of this is due to her having to drive 90 miles a day into South Yorkshire for work. So this Christmas I was struggling for a present for her and decided to kill two birds with one stone and upgrade to a better weather station which she could have all the information she wanted and I could connect to a PC and monitor. There is a wide variety of systems out available and have opted for a budget LaCrosse WM-2350 station which I purchased from Aces Electronics.

LaCrosse WM-2350

The unit has a number of outdoor sensors, for temperature and humidty, wind speed and direction and rainfall.

Temp Sensor
Photobucket
Rain Sensor

I have yet to get to set up, delayed due to bad weather! But hopefully it will be up soon and I hope the supplied software will allow me to have a website up soon with live readings!

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