How To Set Up a Personal Weather Station (Updated)

Update: 2016-05-18
Just stoping by to post this useful article about diffrent type of weather stations you may find while browsing around https://bitglow.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/types-of-home-weather-stations/

Hi I'm BeeJ and I am going to show you how to put together a personal weather station and put it on the internet. This way you can show anyone anywhere what the weather conditions are like at your home.

You can find how hot it got, how cold it was, how much rained and that has a lot of fun.

I am not going to talk about each sensor and what it does. If you are not familiar with them check out this page for more info.

Once you decide how much information you need and evaluate your home layout you'll probably need at least 10 different things:

• the outside weather sensors
• something to hang onto
• decide whether you need wireless or a cable unit
• four and inside receiving console unit
• logging device to record the information from the console
• then and wire to connect the logger to a computer
• a computer
• software to collect the information and send it to the weather web sites
• webcam whether it's wired or wireless
• webcam software said the images to the Internet

It seems a bit complicated but it is fairly logical depends on what your locations like.

First you will need o a place to put your sensors, you'll need a side that is as far away from trees and buildings as possible and as far away from anything that prevents it from collecting rain or measuring the wind.

I have a rocky hillside with a lot of trees so I wound up putting a tripod on top my deck roof. The tripod screwed into the word and it's just fine.

The anemometer for wind direction I had to put up higher attaching it to the chimney about 40 feet away so that would catch the wind.

If you have to do this though please be careful this part is downright dangerous.

I am on my second anemometer though after a direct lightning strike about a year ago.

I am using a wireless Vantage Pro 2 system because my computer is not very close by and it would have been dangerous to cable it. This unit has a solar panel on it to keep the battery charged.

This is the inside

This is the rain collector, which needs to be kept clean. It works by the water falling down and making this little see-saw rock back and forth for each one one-hundredth of an inch of rain.

This bottom unit is the temperature and humidity meter. There is a little fan that keeps the temperature even from not overheating with direct sunlight.

The wireless range is one thousand feet line-of-sight or about 200 feet it could goes through a wall which mine does. With repeaters though you could have your unit well over a mile away.

Inside I have a very nice receiver console unit that could be mounted on a wall, if I really just wanted the information and did not want to mess with theInternet.

I put my next to my computer though so that I could mess with the Internet.

The first step was to install data logger a flash memory device that collects the information from the sensors so that it can be recalled by your computer at any time - specially if your computer is offline anytime.

I'm pretty happy with my personal web station and I've had it for a couple of years now, the only real problem I've had is Windows, and software sometimes stops, usually resetting it helps.

You know I mentioned that webcam that turned out to be fairly easy though. I had purchased web Campbell from Marshall electronics because it is weatherproof and easy to install.

It's really made for surveillance purposes but is weatherproof. It does come with sixty feet cable that powers the cam and brings the signal inside.

This computer needs a TV capture card that brings the signal into the computer. I looked around for a while and found webcam software that will read the camera and uploaded to the "Weather Underground" website that I use. The program is called "Yet Another Webcam" or "Yawcam". It's free and it does the job very well and it's fairly easy to set up. It was also the only one I found that worked with my board.

Weather Underground" marries the webcam picture with the weather information and makes it easy to use for other folks. If you don't want to mess with all that wiring in expansion card you can get a USB webcam as they could just go about anywhere that's convenient. It all depends on what is close by and what do you want to see online.

You can use the wireless webcam if you wish. "Yawcam" or some of the other inexpensive programs should serve you fine. My biggest problem was getting a reasonably priced webcam that has a sharp picture of the landscape, as most webcams are made for message chats or surveillance.

I hope this short guide can help you get an idea what you're getting yourself into. I know I've enjoyed for the last couple years, by the way if you do find a high-definition earlier really sharp clear webcam it doesn't cost a whole lots money I'd sure like to know about it.

I'm BeeJ, over and out.