Lucan Weather Station

irishmotorist

Just to add to the growing number of weather stations, I've got mine up and running for Lucan, Co Dublin. The details/dashboard can be accessed from here:
http://irishmotorist.wordpress.com/lucan-weather-live/

The rainfall for today is a bit arsed. When I was moving the station to it's permanent pole, there was a bit of sloshing around which I think made it think there had been rainfall today. Apart from that, I think it's doing pretty OK.

I think I'll have a bit of work to do on the formatting of the details pages, but I'll get to that over the coming days hopefully. Also, I'll see if I can get it included on the IWO page.

Iancar29

Looks well man, fair play.

DO u have ur station hooked up to ur pc , leaving it always on now?

irishmotorist

That's the plan. The PC would often be on for the day anyway, so unless I get a really bad ESB bill, it will stay on

Iancar29

irishmotorist wrote: »

That's the plan. The PC would often be on for the day anyway, so unless I get a really bad ESB bill, it will stay on

See this is the only thing thats stopping me having my own similar site. , would be afraid the pc would over heat, coz it couldnt be good for the motherboard to be ALWAYS on... ya know?

irishmotorist

Iancar29 wrote: »

See this is the only thing thats stopping me having my own similar site. , would be afraid the pc would over heat, coz it couldnt be good for the motherboard to be ALWAYS on... ya know?

I know what you mean, but if you look at most offices, PCs are often left on 24/7. The main problem is that the OS would need the occasional reboot. I wouldn't be too worried about anything giving up the ghost.

Matt Simis

Iancar29 wrote: »

See this is the only thing thats stopping me having my own similar site. , would be afraid the pc would over heat, coz it couldnt be good for the motherboard to be ALWAYS on... ya know?

If your PC overheats sitting there doing effectively nothing (no CPU load) then its broken. Electronics tend to work better left on, they dont just keep getting hotter the longer they are on either, once it gets to its operating temp, it will pretty much stay at it unless the ambient room temp changes (ie dont put it beside the radiator).

I run my WS off a Netbook, so low power draw. There are also tiny PCs with similar low power draw like the Acer Revo that make an excellent Weather Station (and file server, email station, media player etc).

PauloMN

Irishmotorist, the CSS page should sort out your formatting for the details page, make sure it's copied up to the right location. Nice to have another station to check!

Iancar29 - I have a PC running 24/7 as a home server. I run the Cumulus software off that. I tend to use my previous PCs as the server, so once I retire my main machine, it becomes my home server. My electricity bill isn't bad at all, I'd guess that the PC uses under 100W with its current workload.

As for the reboots, not a bother - just stick a shortcut to Cumulus in the Startup folder and away you go. I've my BIOS set to power up automatically after a power cut as well. Absolutely no chance of it overheating, it does very little processing now compared with my main PC - it's enjoying retirement with a little leisurely weather data processing. It's been on continuously for years solid at this stage.

Oliver1985

Op what equipment you using? Any pics?

irishmotorist

PauloMN wrote: »

Irishmotorist, the CSS page should sort out your formatting for the details page, make sure it's copied up to the right location. Nice to have another station to check!

I'm not that much of a web head - would I find the CSS file somewhere under the cumulus directories on my PC and just copy that up to the Images folder on the site? Don't worry if you don't know offhand - I'm sure I can find it.

irishmotorist

Oliver1985 wrote: »

Op what equipment you using? Any pics?

It's a WH1090 purchased for me as a pressie from a place in England, www.signatrol.com, as far as I remember.

Here's a pic of the pole in my garden that obviously needs painting!

Iancar29

Ill give it a trial run so , see how it goes ...

now, wheres that fecking cable for mine?....... hmmm

Cumlus doesnt have my station tpye on it... Its an Irox pro... any suggestions anyone?

vonbarracuda

Thats a good pole you got for that! Whats it 10 foot? Is it ok in the ground?

irishmotorist

Iancar29 wrote: »

Ill give it a trial run so , see how it goes ...

now, wheres that fecking cable for mine?....... hmmm

Cumlus doesnt have my station tpye on it... Its an Irox pro... any suggestions anyone?

Mine wasn't specifically mentioned so I went for the fine offset. It picked it up immediately, but you may have to unplug/replug and then start the s/w again if you've tried some of the others.

irishmotorist

Just to give another little update, I had originally made a bit of a hash of putting the website together and didn't have the CSS or formatting put up correctly. Anyway, it's back now and looking a bit proper this time. Particularly, on the gauges page, things are more complete now.

http://irishmotorist.wordpress.com/lucan-weather-live/

Matt Simis

vonbarracuda wrote: »

Thats a good pole you got for that! Whats it 10 foot? Is it ok in the ground?

I got lucky in my house, they had an old TV Antenna thing up (the big old long type) on a 1.5" diameter 15foot (at least) steel pipe, the base of which is mounted on the garage apex. I took the antenna off and put the Weather Station sensors on it, it easily clears my house and also the surrounding trees (though just barely). Looks somewhat professsional way up there too!

I think its location gives me quite accurate Wind readings when considering the Wind Turbine (reason Im monitoring the weather).