Cool Weather Station For The Internet Age
I always wanted a weather station. Well, not really: I wanted a weather station since stumbling over wunderground.com, the privately run weathersite which gets part of its weather information from private enthusiasts. As I was not really sessile in any way, there was really no reason to get one of these gadgets for me, as I normally would not have stayed longer than a couple of months in one place before moving on to a different country, so carrying a bunch of sensors around the world with me was not really an option. Then I found a little cottage on the pacific ocean somewhere on New Zealand's South Island and found the location perfect for a little extended stay, et voila: a weather station really had to be acquired.
After some deliberation, I went for a La Crosse 2315, as there seemed to be good support out for it on the net, the control unit has a small footprint, fitting perfectly on my desk and there was a serial connection to a PC. As I recently built myself my first Windows machine ever to play Doom 3, the opportunity was good to use it to something else then frag Zombies. After a little hunt around on ebay I had a brandnew 2315 shipped to NZ and after it arrived, of course set it up stante pede.
The retail version comes with:
Assembly is dead easy: Mount the thermo - hygro sensor somewhere on the outside (it's on the outside weatherboard of my cottage] and connect it to the rain - and the wind sensor via the plentyful cabling (10 m each). Add the batteries to the thermo - hygro and shazam!: it transmits the data from the sensors wirelessly to the desktop unit. After connecting it and switching it on, the main unit will automatically start displaying the data and transmit it to the PC (if the necessary software is installed). From there you can obviously do with the data whatever you wat to: send it via ftp to one of the big weather sites or your own homepage (or both). The data collected is:
So far, so good. But why in the world would one like to have a weather station in one's garden? Well, to quote Edmund Hillary: "Because it's there" (In this case the weather, that is).
And of course to achieve ultimate geekdom.
http://www.lacrossetechnology.com