Maplin Weather Stations

Discodog

Maplin have reduced the prices on their weather stations.

Does anyone have any of these & are they any good ?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=85874

Villain

I had the USB Wireless Weather Forecaster that they have £119 for a while, its a great station to get going with and is pretty accurate except for the temp sensor in the summer, it heats up very badly and can give false readings of up to +5c but you can do a DIY job and help reduce that. It really depends on what you want from it and how much you want to spend

Discodog

That's down to €100. I was just wondering if the dearer ones were a bit more durable. Also some seem to have batteries on the mast which is a bit inconvenient as I would be mounting it on a chimney. I suppose that I could always run a power lead.

Just spotted that the software will not run on my Mac

Villain

I think all have batteries on the mast and mounting all the station sensors on a Chinmey isn't a good idea imo as while the wind data will be accurate but the temp sensor will suffer and it will hard to access for cleaning etc.

All those stationd are pretty simalar, if you can push the budget http://www.ukweathershop.co.uk/acatalog/info_1_DI_6250UK.html would be a great station to start with but it depends what you want from it, are you in a rural or Urban location?

Discodog

Rural bungalow close to the sea. I would only want to put anemometer plus direction on to chimney - to overcome high hedge. I would need to try & keep rain & salt spray out !.

Villain

http://www.weathershack.com/weather-station-comparison-chart.html is good for comparing stations and I would look at getting Weather Display it works with most stations and runs on a MAC http://www.weather-display.com/supported.php

bogman

Discodog wrote: »

Maplin have reduced the prices on their weather stations.

Does anyone have any of these & are they any good ?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=85874

Not in Cork they dont, phoned them today and they are selling them, for 197.99€ :-) N96FY

£119.99 in the UK site


Any idea what this is like its the newer WH1090
http://www.signatrol.com/data-loggers/low_cost_weather_stations.php

Villain

Apart from the poor temp shield its good, great one to start with

bogman

Thank you very much, had a WM-918 and its past its sell by date, would this be better, probably ?

Villain

Much of the same imo

bogman

Ordered the WH1090, let you know how it works out, was considering one of the far more expensive Davis/Vantage units but for what I want it does not warrant spending the extra money, hope this isn't a waste of money at the same time, have ham radio masts up and I like to keep abreast of the weather Villain

Mylow

bogman wrote: »

Not in Cork they dont, phoned them today and they are selling them, for 197.99€ :-) N96FY

£119.99 in the UK site

The original post was in November. Maplin sent out email with the N96FY offered at £69.99. See attached image.

Irish Steve

Have a Maplin station here, and so far, it's not bad, but it's been more than a little modified on the basis of some reports on the web.

The anemometer was balanced (Cable ties in the right place), in horizontal mode, and the bearing lubricated.

The wind vane had a larger tail fitted to it ( Estate agent corry sign board, attached with duct tape) to reduce the swinging in the wind.

The temperature sender had an additional cylinder (length of 4" sewer pipe) mounted around it to prevent the sensor from being heated by direct sunlight.

A long wire was fitted to the battery box to supply power from the ground, and it's supplied by a MAPLIN converter and supported by a couple of batteries also so that if the mains fails for any reason, the sender is still live.

The rain guage was modified to fit an extra shroud around the body to prevent wind from blowing the rain measure over in gusts, and to prevent spiders and the like from crawling in through the slots in the base.

It's mounted at several levels on a 6Mtr pole on the chimney of our dormer bungalow, and with the exception of the wind speed, that's underreading due to the position of the house, we're relatively low and sheltered, and the distortions being caused by updraughts off the dormer roof, and the only answer to that will be to make it much higher, but that's going to require some serious work to make the mast safe and stable.

I'm using rhe Cumulus software from Sandaysoft, and so far, I like it, and it has the potential to be usable for a weather web with uploading, and once I get a permanent computer on line, I will probably do something of that sort.

The first one I got from Maplin failed within a week, and was returned under warranty, so I was happy that I hadn't made any modifications to it. While I was waiting for the new one to arrive, I found the web site that talks about the issues, and also gives details of some of the modification ideas (Will post the URL when I am on the other computer), and the mods make sense.

There are some limitations. The wind direction is not brilliant, the resolution is lower than some stations, and I'm not sure about the wind gust reporting accuracy. It's not possible to change the gust parameters that much.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of the internal temperature sensor.

The initial unit was a pain to get synchronised, but that might have been related to the fact that it failed completely less than a week later, the replacement has been fine.

I'm 7 miles from Dublin Airport, and the reports I'm getting seem to be reasonably in sync with their information, apart from the known issue with wind speed, which is the location of the sensor here.

Hope that helps anyone that's thinking about it, my own impression after a couple of months live is that for the price, it's not a bad started station, as long as your'e not expecting to get Met office levels of accuracy, and are prepared to spend a bit of time getting the set up right.

Steve

Hope that helps anyone who's thinking about it, what the long term reliability will be like I don't know, but hopefully, the availability of spares will mean that I won't have to think of moving to a Davis station for a while.