DIY remote weather station

tomk358 · Since 18 Jun 2014 3 Posts Kook

Has there been any sort of effort on this forum to build a remote weather station that we could all use to get more timely and accurate weather data from the places where we like to kite? For instance, the Sauvie island wind sensor reports only once an hour, and I read that it is far inland, so often reads lower than the actual winds.

I did a little research and found someone in Argentina who had a similar problem, and solved it with a 3G connected device that tracks wind/gust, temp, pressure, and rain, stores the data, and then uploads to a website. If we had a friendly neighbor it would be even easier (and cheaper) if we could use their internet connection, and/or AC power.

Here's the link to the Argentinian project:
http://www.toptal.com/c/how-i-made-a-fully-functional-arduino-weather-station-for-300

Maybe the weather data we have is fine as is? I'm a beginner, so I'm likely making a mountain out of a molehill... but this seems like just the type of project that could benefit many, while costing little.

beech · Since 21 Aug 2010 483 Posts Longview, WA Obsessed

give it some time you will get better at using existing resources, free or paid subscrips to forecast. u would spend your time maintaining weather stations instead of kiting!

Freeride Kiter · Since 08 Jul 2011 698 Posts Alaska / PNW / Baja Instructor

If your an uber geek / database administrator / tech savy / web and SQL programmer kind of person you can do what I do.

Most weather stations are connected and polled. The weather stations here in Alaska that belong to the state and the Road Weather Information System are open for data collection and write data every 10 minutes. This applies to a majority of other stations and that is a big chunk of how third party sites get their data. They clean it up, present it nicely and easily - then charge accordingly.

Here is a link to data collected at 1310 today for state stations up here:

http://www.dot.state.ak.us/stwdplng/iways/rwis/ExpAtmos20140708.1310.txt

An email to our State IT administrator and they sent me the data structure so that I could parse the data and apply it to my own weather site - specific to kite boarding our favorite spots.

... or you could do as beech mentioned and use the tools available at hand and over time you will get dialed in.