Weather Station Equipment

The weather station is a Davis Wireless Vantage Pro2 Weather Station console receiver with a wireless connection to an integrated sensor suite.

The sensor suite includes a weatherproof box, which protects the electronics and battery. It also includes a solar panel that recharges the battery, rain collector, temperature and humidity sensors and an anemometer. The white louvered shield at the bottom of the sensor package is designed to protect the temperature and humidity sensors from direct sunlight, which would adversely affect the sensors mounted inside. Temperature data is transmitted to the console every 10 to 12 seconds. Humidity data is transmitted to the console every 50 seconds to 1 minute.

The rain collector consists of the black upper portion of the sensor suite which is a funnel directing the rainwater into a tipping bucket. The tipping bucket is two buckets in a ‘see-saw’ configuration where each bucket will tip to empty when it is filled with .01 inches of water. Each time the tipping bucket tips to empty the rain collector will count that as .01 inches of accumulated rain. The accumulated rainfall is transmitted to the console every 10 to 12 seconds. The rain rate is transmitted to the console every 10 to 12 seconds. During periods of heavy rain, the status line of the console will display the message “It is raining cats and dogs”; guess the programmers had a sense of humor!

The anemometer determines the wind speed and the wind direction. Wind information is transmitted to the base station every 2.5 to 3 seconds. Due to the current mounting location of the anemometer (on the building with the building blocking the south east, the lake to the west and some trees to the north) there will be some discrepancies in what is reported compared to actual wind speeds on the shore of the lake. Maybe someday I will get permission to mount the sensor suite closer to the shore of the lake where it will have fewer obstructions.

A separate weatherproof box with transmitter is mounted on the permanent dock and a stainless steel temperature probe is connected to it and run along the dock to a point where it can be mounted on one of the dock legs at a depth of about 3 feet. Temperature is transmitted to the console ever 10 to 12 seconds. This temperature probe will remain in place for the summer months to monitor and report the water temperature. For the winter, this waterproof box and temperature probe will be moved into the crawl space to monitor for freezing temperatures which could freeze the water pipes running through the crawl space. For the fall / winter / spring months the water temperature will be removed from all pages visible on the public web page and moved to a private page where the inside temperatures can be read from the web.

Weather Data Collection and Web Page Generator

The weather station console is connected to a Compaq notebook computer through a serial connection. The notebook computer has a wireless connection to a router, which is connected to a cable modem on the MetroCast cable network. The notebook computer is on 24 / 7 / 365 running Virtual Weather Station Internet v14.00. This software allows configuration of tasks to be performed on a specified schedule. The first scheduled task is to run every 5 minutes to copy collected data from the console to the notebook computer. Once the data is on the notebook, WeatherLink will create the graphs used on the “One Day Data” page of the web site. Each of the graphs are generated and stored on the notebook computer with the latest up to date information then the graphs are copied to the web page on a MetroCast server. Another task is configured to run once each hour to update the graphs needed for the “One Week Data” web page and then copy those updated graphs to the MetroCast server. The third and final task is configured to run once each day to update the graphs needed for the “One Month Data” page of the web site then copy them to the MetroCast server using FTP.

Web Cam Photo

The Newfound Lake photo on the first page of the web site is taken with a Panasonic BB-HCM531A Network Camera. The camera is mounted on the end of the building and set with a home position facing northwest. The camera is configured to take photos roughly from sunrise to sunset (I need to manually change the on/off times to match sunrise and sunset times so the timing is sometimes off). The interval for taking a photo is will vary from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. The camera is connected to a router with standard CAT-5 Ethernet cable with power over Ethernet so no AC power is needed near the camera. The camera is configured with the FTP address of the web page so that every time it snaps a picture it sends it directly to the MetroCast server ready to be viewed on the internet.

The camera is a video camera not just a still shot camera, it also has pan, tilt and zoom capabilities. You may see a still shot other than the one looking up the lake if the camera happens to snap a photo when someone has moved the camera to look somewhere other than up the lake. To the far left is a pair of birch trees with the beach just beyond and to the far right is a view of one of the two buildings on the property.