Field Weather Station

Today our field weather station went live!

We live in a city where wind conditions are often different just a 15 minute drive away. Often we would get to the field and find a lot of wind or none at all. So we had the wrong planes or didn't bring any because we thought it was too windy. We often go to the field to socialise.

So why does installing a weather station rate an article? The biggest hurdle so far has been the lack of internet access. Someone had to figure out how to get internet access at a reasonable cost.

Equipment:

- Acurite 5-in-1 sensor (wind, direction, rain, temperature, humidity)

- Acurite Internet Bridge (also has a pressure sensor)

- Old netbook

- USB Mobile/Cellular Internet/Data stick/modem

- Very, very old router

Setup:

USB Internet Stick > Netbook > Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) > Router WAN port

Acurite Bridge  > Router LAN port

The netbook is configured to never go to sleep, even when the lid is closed. The modem is set to redial if the connection is lost. For some reason connecting the Acurite Bridge directly to the laptop did not work; I've emailed Acurite support about this.

Acurite 5-in-1 sensor > modified to run of a 3V DC transformer > mounted on a pole

Access:

- Weather underground website and apps, widget code to imbed the club website

http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IONTARIO859

- Acurite app

Cost:

Approximately CDN $450 / US $400

Monthly Data Cost CDN $17 / US $15 (taxes inc.) for 1GB

Estimated data usage per month is 0.75GB if updates are set to "Rapid Fire" (every 2-4 seconds).