2.16.2015

Real-time weather (for my birthday!)


The bride gifted me with a weather station for my birthday! I loves me some data, so getting weather information on the live (and via the interwebs) is cool pool. The system is made by Davis Electronics and called Vantage VUE. By using a piece of software called WeatherSnoop, we're able to upload weather info to Weather Underground. Awesome. Installation was fairly a breeze, taking a couple hours in all soup to nuts including hardware, software, and live reporting (had a glitch at the end I couldn't figure out, restarted the computer, and all was good).

This system is pretty sweet. It has a built-in solar panel with a solar-charged battery back-up and a radio antennae. It records the basics: Temperature, rainfall, atmospheric pressure, and humidity as well as UV (probably based on the solar panel). I installed the station off the end of the back garage parapet where there's minimal interference from the house and nearby trees. The control/receiver panel, which sits inside near our computer, also measures indoor temperature and humidity. We can also monitor battery status of the station and the console.

I had to install it through the stucco, something I wouldn't be willing to do on the house but on the garage, mum: OK. The mounting bracket came with some nice sealing material, so hopefully that will keep moisture out of the structure. Be sure to use special masonry bits to get through the stucco if you do the same.

Here's a link to our station on Weather Underground!

Been fun watching the 20 degree drop in less than an hour:











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