My husband gave me an early birthday gift this week. Now my birthday isn't until January but I'm not complaining. He figured if he was getting it, earlier was better than later. And I so agree. He gave me a gardener's dream gift.
I've now got my own personal weather station. He originally got me some hardware that automatically posts to the web at the Davis instruments site. I nixed that really quickly. Do you know they only keep a limited history and if I use that, there is no way to get it to my computer. So we went for the Weatherlink software instead. Then I downloaded the DLL to make it connect up with Weather Underground. Now everyone can see my data and Weather Underground will keep history forever (though the location is off by a block and I'm still trying to figure out how to fix it). In addition I have all the data stored on my computer. Whoohoo!
The station is sends out signals to my inside unit. We don't need power to it however since it has a solar panel on it. We figure that is how it tells if it is cloudy or not.
The station was put above our fence. We talked to the adjoining neighbors to make sure they wouldn't hate a weather station there. They were fine with it. It isn't a perfect location. If you look to see where you are supposed to put it (not near black top, over grass, no buildings in the way, etc., you will probably understand that East Arlington only had about one spot like that in its whole area - at the park and soccer fields. Mine isn't up to NOAAs standards maybe but it does reflect the true conditions in our neighborhood.
WU even has a little widget to add to a web page reflecting local conditions. So I've added that to my sidebar. So now you can see how cold it is here. The bad part is the page takes longer to load. The bad part about the weather station? Well it won't measure snowfall. Rain yes. Snowfall no. Still an awesome gift.
That's awesome! A gardeners dream, lol.
ReplyDeleteThat is too cool! I'd love my own wind measuring thing-a-ma-bob for biking season.
ReplyDeleteWOAH! COOL! That's really an amazing gift. Happy early birthday!!!
ReplyDeleteI am so jealous! What a great hubby!
ReplyDeleteThat's a great gift!!
ReplyDeleteThat is such a neat gift! I had a weather station when I was a kid (before the internet was around). It had wires that ran from the outside to the console inside. Your is way cooler!
ReplyDeleteThat is just about the perfect gift. That was so thoughtful. Happy (early) Birthday!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your husband was too excited about the gift to wait for your birthday! LOL! What a great gift!
ReplyDeleteWas that your suggestion to him or his idea? Either way its a neat addition to the garden.
ReplyDeleteHow cool is that? Do you need a college degree to read it, LOL? I get confused setting my digital sprinkler timer.
ReplyDeleteMichelle, Now I'll know just how much it rained or how hot it got HERE. I've been using the other weather station in Arlington, but it is up on a hill and has different weather. It seems obvious to me how different it is when they say they got an inch of rain and I didn't get a drop.
ReplyDeleteKaren, lol I hadn't thought about that use.
Barbie, thanks
The Mom, He is a great hubby. At least when he is in town. His flaw is he travels too much for work.
Robin, I'm loving it.
villager, oh how technology has changed. Everything is wireless nowadays.
GoneferalinID, it was a good gift. He is actually really good at them. I'm not nearly as good of a gift giver.
GrafixMuse, oh he was. He is a nerd just like me and loves to see the graphs of the weather.
Marcia, well he did it because he he noticed that I complained about how off the local weather station was. I did say I would like one, but it cost too much. So he did the research and found one that at least wasn't as expensive as the ones I had seen. But it still does all the things I need for the garden. I am a weather lover. I have five different links to weather on my browser. Well now I have six. A gardener lives for weather. And now I'll be able to look at the weather stats.
Granny, lol no but it did to set it up. Weather Underground took my computer down. Some javascript was really messing with it. At least I think it was them. But it is done now. Now all I have to do is keep the station clean (the rain is measured with a little spoon like thing - when it gets heavy enough it empties. So if it get too dirty or spiders make their webs there it can throw off the measurements. I won't worry about it in the winter since it can't measure snow, but once it warms up.
Very cool! It will be interesting to look at the data from year to year and see how it varies.
ReplyDeleteThat's so geeky cool.
ReplyDeleteHow neat is that.:)Do you know how far away from the outside device your inside console can be? I would love to have one of these out in the gardens but they are a couple hundred feet from our house.
ReplyDeleteVery nice gift! I'd love to have one too. ;)
ReplyDeleteMary
Totally awesome gift! Very useful information to have and should be an interesting thing to monitor.
ReplyDeleteWow, cool! The first pic looks like something NASA would have on its lawn :)
ReplyDelete