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Saturday, July 03, 2010

New weather monitor

I would really like to set up a personal weather station here at W2LJ. It's another thing on my "To Do" list - or should I say another thing on my "To Save For" list. The good ones are very expensive.

In the meantime, I picked up from a discount house a little LaCrosse Technologies - "WeatherDirect" station.


This device is not a personal weather station, per se, but it does pick up local weather information via the Internet and the sends it to the display unit, pictured above. It does have an outdoor temperature sensor which takes my readings and places them on a map. It is quite interesting to look at the temperatures surrounding the South Plainfield area, to see how they compare to mine.

I guess I'm just a gadget junky at heart; but someday I really would like to put up a full blown weather station and then hook that up to APRS. I never really had a big yen to get involved with APRS; but for weather data, I think that would be ideal.

72 de Larry W2LJ
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5 comments:

  1. Unknown12:55 PM

    With my interest in APRS (and even my XYL is always watching the weather) I agree that would be a cool thing to do, but I did have a problem with the remote sensor of a weather station causing QRM on 433MHz so I decided to give it a miss for the time being.

    The one I have is also by LaCrosse but it receives the weather forecasts from a time and frequency standard station in Germany on 75kHz, so no nasty UHF links to cause interference.

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  2. John AE5X2:42 PM

    Larry, if you want to get your feet wet in wx-related activity without spending a lot, check out these links:
    http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=22

    http://www.weathertoys.net/weathertoys/main.html

    You can di it a sensor at a time, learning along the way.

    And there is more to what is available even with a simple 1-wire sensor than just APRS. I may make a future post about it to my blog, as the learning curve seemed steep at first...

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  3. Larry W2LJ2:56 PM

    Thanks, John! I purchased the book for starters.

    Larry W2LJ

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  4. John AE5X3:32 PM

    Larry, I bought that book too and to be honest with you it seems a bit more in depth than I (and maybe you) want with source code and all that.

    I still have it and no longer need it now that I'm set up - if you can cancel your order for it, let me know and I'll have it on the way to you like a giant QSL...

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  5. Larry W2LJ9:48 PM

    John,

    Thanks for the order; but it cannot be canceled at this point. And that's OK - books are good things.

    Larry W2LJ

    ReplyDelete