I've always been fascinated by weather trends, especially given how strange our British weather can be, and noticed that our local Maplins were stocking many different weather stations, but most of the really useful ones that interfaced with a PC were very expensive, and often I couldn't justify the expense. However I was lucky enough to get an attendance bonus from my employer at Christmas (2009) and this gave me the opportunity to treat myself to a christmas present.

The unit comprises of a set of remote sensors for temperature, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall and pressure. These communicate wirelessly to a base unit that looks like a digital picture frame, only the screen is touch screen to allow setting up and changing views etc. The best bit is that it connects via USB to a PC and using software on the PC you can view the current readings and historical data.

The image bottom left shows a recent (13/2/2010) modification to the original sensor installation. Due to a back injury I had help from a friend to install the wind monitors at the top of an eight foot alloy mast. This places them at around 15 feet (half the "official" height of 30). The rain sensor and thermo sensors have been lowered so as not to read an vibrations on extremely windy days.

The software supplied is basic and has it limitations, however I discovered an excellent and very professional application called Cumulus and is available from http://sandaysoft.com/. This not only displays the data on the PC, but also ftp the results to a web site, and includes a set of templates for a decent web site. My site can be seen here.

The last set of data from my weather station can be seen below. - This may not be current as I don't leave my PC on 24/7 !