CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: How About a Post Your Weather Station Thread?

My weather station is a Davis Wireless Vantage Pro. The station features an addon called a Weather Envoy, which is used to get the temp, humidity, wind speed and wind direction from the wireless outdoor unit to the weather PC. The Weather Envoy also functions as a temp humidity sensor. Since the Weather Envoy resides in the observatory it provides the climate data for inside the observatory. The Weather Envoy is connected to Weather Server PC that resides inside the house. The connection is via RS-232 at a data rate of 19200 baud. The Davis software WeatherLink 5.56 is used to process, display and upload the data from both the Envoy and the Weather Station to 3 places: My website, UnderGround Weather and the Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP).

Besides running the Davis Weatherlink software the weather server also runs other weather related software and interfaces with other hardware. One of those pieces of hardware is the Boltwood Cloud and Rain sensor. This device is used to help execute a controlled closure of the observatory’s shutters should the sky become very cloudy or if it rains or snows. The connection between the Cloud Sensor and the observatory’s shutters is via a DIY wireless link.

Another weather related device connected to the Weather Server is a Boltek Lightning Detector. It monitors lightning strikes within a 300 mile radius of the observatory. This data is uploaded to StrikeStar. StikeStar is a network of Boltek lightning detectors. That data is correlated and can be accessed via the StrikeStar website or the WASP client on your local machine.

The weather server also controls the AllSky camera. The SBIG AllSky camera is used to monitor the sky for meteors, satellites and clouds. When the AllSky camera is not in meteor mode it is setup to takes 20 second images of the sky from dark to to just before dawn via a CCDSoft and script running under SBScripte6. There is also a weather camera at the observatory. That camera can be pointed at the observatory and the eastern sky and is user controllable. Images from this camera are also uploaded to the Underground Weather website.

In addition to the local terrestrial weather, the Weather Server also monitors space weather. This is accomplished by using Solar Terrestrial Dispatch Space Weather Information Monitor software (STD SWIM). STD SWIM automatically downloads information at user defined intervals to the observatory's weather computer. This information provides alerts and data about solar activity, such as Sun Spots, Solar Flares, the Solar Wind, including real-time Aurora Borealis watches, warnings and sightings. The software can be customized to retrieve and display data or images from just about any website. The data does not have to be limited to space weather. Complete world wide terrestrial weather data, including spacecraft and radar imagery, as well as forecast maps are also retrieved every 30 minutes. Another way the STD SWIM software is used by the observatory is to retrieve images provided by Night-Sky cameras from various observatories. This allows near real-time 180 degree views of the night sky from around the world 24 hours a day.

--------------------
-Marcus

Hey what did you expect? After all, I am just a pig with a nice smile!