Weather Station

For my 30th birthday a group of my friends bought me a La Crosse WS2355 weather station. Over the weekend I installed it. I mounted the wind speed (anemometer) and and direction sensors to the mast of our TV antenna.

The roof of the house seemed like the logical place for the rain gauge since there’s trees overhead on most of the rest of our block. I bolted the rain gauge to a piece of aluminium that Dad had lying the around in his shed. I put a slight bend at the end to get the gauge level. I then pop-riveted the bracket to the roof.

The thermomometer/hygrometer under the eave of the house, near the TV antenna. I bundled up the metres of extra cable between the thermomometer/hygrometer and the other two sensors with left over cable ties. The bundles hang on a cheap hook that I had in the shed. The end result is relatively tidy and tucked away from the elements.

I opted to have the sensors talk to the display via the 433Mhz wireless connection to save having to run wires in through the wall or roof. The downside of this is readings every ~130 seconds instead of every 8 seconds. This is mainly an issue for the wind speed/direction but the temperature is what I’m most interested in.

To log and upload the weather readings I’m using the wview weather station software. wview is running on the Mac mini connected to our TV. The site layout is pretty basic so I hope to come up with a cleaner design in the coming weeks.

Update: I built a custom logging and charting solution. See the post, Weather Station Software.