Weather stations, anemometers for the home

December 18, 2007

For a couple years now, I have been looking at home weather stations to measure wind speed and direction along with the other usual stuff - indoor and outdoor temparature, humidity and rainfall. I went with a WMR968 Professional Weather Station from Oregon Scientific. It uses solar to power wireless transmitters to send the data from instruments to the display. It was a bear to install, taking 6-8 hours to get the anemometer high enough and away from obstructions. The directions were so bad, I thought it would never work, but it does and fairly reliably - for now.

But I wished I had waited for the anemometer from Fascinating Electronics. It’s a homemade but cleverly fashioned together with PVC pipe. The anemometer (weather vane and cup rotor) is $100. Throw in another $25 for the temparature/humidity sensor and you all but the rain guage you get in the WMR968 which goes for $250 (I wanted Davis Vantage Pro 2, but could not justify the $500+ cost). To be fair, Fascinating’s piecemeal approach isn’t for everyone. It does not come with an electronic display so you have to build or acquire your own or use a calibration chart to translate pulses from the anemometer in MPH. But that could be a fun project.

And isn’t the weather interesting these days?

Posted by John Dodge on December 18, 2007 | Comments (3)

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February 20, 2008

In response to: Weather stations, anemometers for the home
Undetermined commented:

ther is a wounderful product on the market today the davis vantage pro 2 plus not only measures wind temp humidity and rain fall but solar radiation and uv index sensors are also included but the only problem is the 899.99$ price tag may make it imposible to buy and you would have to be lucky to find someone that carrys them i know some one that has one in his back yard and how the heak he/she got it? i dont know and some options include soil moisture temprature and leaf wetness this is your weather guy MJM saying hope you have good luck finding it see ya

January 12, 2008

In response to: Weather stations, anemometers for the home
Undetermined commented:

Matt, I think Davis is the best brand and more expensive than OS...but not sure about instrument to measure solar energy.

December 22, 2007

In response to: Weather stations, anemometers for the home
Undetermined commented:

John, I, too have been looking for a home weather station. Of greatest interst to me is a system capable of measuring incident solar energy. Do you have any recommendations? Also, wind flow in my backyard is obstructed by fences and trees, which may disrupt the anemometer. Any thoughts on how to set up weather stations to get accurate wind velocities despite obstructions?

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