My weather station consists of a Vantage Pro 2 Plus system from Davis Instruments. A console with a data logger sits near my computer, and relays the sensor data to another console hung on the kitchen wall.
The sensors are mounted on a 16' 4x4 in the most open part of my back yard. The anemometer is mounted at the top of the post, and the rest of the sensors are mounted 5' above ground level.
As you can see from the picture, I don't have a lot of room between the trees, so my wind speed tends to read low. I'm certainly not into removing trees, so just figure that my wind report will reflect what you'd feel standing in a small clearing. I thought about putting the anemometer on the roof until I got to the top of the ladder.
The software
Collecting weather data is a full-time occupation, so my computer runs the GNU/Linux operating system for maximum reliability.
Weather data is collected using programs written by Joe Jaworski. Data is logged into round-robin databases using rrdtool, which is also used to generate the graphs. Web pages are generated using Joe Jaworski's code and my own custom scripts.
Uploading to the Weather Underground is accomplished with a script provided with the meteo package.
I hand code my own HTML so my web pages will display with any browser.
Yeah, I'm a do-it-yourself'er. Gotta love open-source software :).
The warmware
Me? I'm Bluejay. For money I tend non-Windows computers for a large manufacturing operation. For fun, I fool with computers, weather, airplanes, and bicycles (not necessarily in that order). You can email me at bluejay@prtcnet.com.
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