New station at South Laois

Danno

Cheers Snowbie!

Where is the best place to purchase NexStorm as the "Lite" version included does not generate maps or upload to a webpage like weatherlink.

If I purchased Weather-Display instead can it take the data from the Boltek PCI card, put it on a map and upload the data?

Or would I be better off just purchasing NexStorm for the Boltek now and consider Weather-Display at a later stage - I am happy for the time being with WeatherLink and WeatherUnderground.

Ah, the dillemas of decisions decisions!

Snowbie

What you need is the map in BMP format. I use the full Nexstorm software (with Lightning 2000 being another less popular software with the Boltek detector).

The developer, Relko can do the map for you.Register on the forum first.

Weather display works with Nexstorm for lightning also.(you must have nexstorm in order to upload lightning to WD).

Check out my weather display live and click the lightning tab on the end.
This is the two software working together.

Also on my webpage you will see Stormvue and the map capture stats. This is nexstorm FTP'ing directly to the webpage without the use and seperatly to Weather display.

So basically, weather display can be purchased at a later stage.Weather display is FTP'ing from my datalogger on my VP2 to my webpage, WD just lets you integrate your lightning capture into the WD program if you so wish to down the road.

Danno

In other news, my weather webpage - http://durrow.athost.net will feature a second weather station located 2 miles north of Durrow by mid-June. This station belongs to my cousin and is far far more advanced than my Davis station. It measures sunlight, UV, leaf wetness, maximum growing conditions etc...

Interesting times ahead. As his station is totally rural it will be interesting to see the difference between town edge data and rural data.

Danno

Just to add to the last post. I was speaking to my cousin and this is his weather station: http://www.adcon.at/english/produkte_sensoren_en.html - Anyone on here have experience with this stuff?

Supercell

Looks pretty high end, interesting, their pro temp sensor for example claims accuracy of +/- 0.2°C which is very impressive.

Danno

Five months on, and some interesting data to pour (litterally - after THAT summer) over...

http://durrow.athost.net/weather/NOAAYR.TXT <--- Data from here:

MONTHLY AVERAGE TEMPERATURES:
May - 13.2
Birr Avg - 10.4
KK Avg - 10.3

June - 13.6
Birr Avg - 13.2
KK Avg - 13.3

July - 15.4
Birr Avg - 14.9
KK Avg - 15.2

August - 15.6
Birr Avg - 14.6
KK Avg - 14.7

September - 12.7
Birr Avg - 12.6
KK Avg - 12.6

May and August stand out as two months much higher than nearby climate station averages. Interestingly, my highest day was 23.7c which would be considered a poor return for a summer max.

http://www.met.ie/about/weatherobservingstations/kilkenny.asp wrote:

The maximum daily rainfall recorded at Kilkenny station was 66.4 mm on 17 July 1983.

On August 16th a total of 63.8mm was recorded here - very close to Kilkenny's all time record.

The 5th of August saw a dewpoint of 20.0c recorded.

Danno

Was busy down the end of the garden today altering the weather station. I have seperated the Wind Vane from the rest of the setup. The wind vane is now 5 metres north of the previous site. The rest has been reduced in height to 45 inches above ground level.

I suspected that the last 6 months temperature and rain data may have been slightly incorrect as the whole station was lofted 2m overhead. One thing that surprised me was how immaculate the interior under the rain bucket was. Only two spiders made it home!

Here is a photo of my afternoons labour which included digging a new 2ft deep hole to accomodate all the concrete I put around the wind vane pole. I dug a trench 5m long and buried the cable from the wind vane inside some wavin pipe and connected it back into the ISS.



All appears to be working nicely. Brrr, it was a cool afternoon out there.

Danno

Earlier this week I noticed that the console had stopped transmitting to the PC and i was wondering would http://www.provantage.com/davis-instruments-7764~7DAVS028.htm be a good investment?

Snowbie

For how long Danno? could it have been something else to do with your PC knocking off by itself recently(i think you posted that somewhere recently)

Danno

Very rarely happens. Sometimes there is the grey box with the yellow exclamation mark saying connection lost!

Though it probably is the crappy PC

BTW, am I right in saying that there is no 24hr FARS available for my Davis system?

Just a footnote to add: if anyone has a Dell Optiplex desktop (not tower) for sale please advise me.

Snowbie

Danno wrote: »

BTW, am I right in saying that there is no 24hr FARS available for my Davis system?

Correct, you can only modify it by adding the daytime FARS unit. The 24hrs FARS(fan aspirated radiation sheild) is a VP2 unit you have to buy seperately unfortunately.

Danno

Hmmm, I am seriously considering running a fan inside the shield. My previous DIY job failed.
If I were to run a cable down the garden taking power off the motherboard in the PC... sounds a bit mad, but do-able. The only worry would be rain water shorting the fan and then blowing the shyte out of the PC.

Snowbie

What about the linky i sent you before?
Yer man uses a transformer to power that fan from a mains.

Danno

Is that the one where he uses flower pots to create a shield?

Villain

Why are you looking for an optiplex in particular danno is for low noise? If so some simple mods to most pc's can deliver that

Danno

The business desktop (not mini or midi tower) were a fantastic build (even for a Dell) with low heat, low noise and low power consumption. A decent second hand one would suit my weather station down to the ground.



This is the KIND OF one I am on the look out for. Something capable of running a 40gb or a 80 gb HDD and 512mb RAM.

Villain

Oh I know that one, stripped a few down and rebuilt them over the years don't have any around at the min though.

I do have a self contained PC in a wooden box that I use and its actually very quite, as there is now fans except for the small fan on the heatsink, I have it in my bedroom and I can sleep with it on without a problem.

Heres a pic:

Danno

Very creative Villain! Why two PCs?

Villain

Well I use one for downloading my linux Torrents and what ever crap and I just re-image it every couple of months to rid it of any crap and the other was be to used for streaming movies and music to my XBOX360 through media centre but I only use the one now, its very quite

Danno

One year old today! New website to celebrate... www.laoisweather.com