Thursday 1 January 2015

Yet Another Weather Station

Caught sight of a weather station on Maplin. Their Professional Solar Powered WiFi Weather Station. Looked impressive and seemed to have decent reviews so ordered one which arrived late yesterday. Quickly assembled and set it up to make sure it was working OK.  It has a temporary location above my shed until I design the fixings to mount it on the main mast.

What I like is its all-in-one design, rechargeable alkaline batteries charged with the solar panel at the front of the unit, a colour display with about 2.5GB of memory so it can display past data in graphical form.

The outdoor unit:

DSCN3783

The display unit: (silver grey and not dirty brown)

DSCN3790

DSCN3792

Also the unit can send its readings to Wunderground where results are also stored and can be seen in graphical form. Finally a widgit near the top right of this blog shows the latest wind, temperature, rainfall and pressure readings. Clicking on that opens a new tab showing my weather readings in graphical form. There is a sudden jump in the pressure reading where I made an adjustment to correct the pressure. Wunderground seems to be owned by The Weather Channel.

So far I am very impressed and pleased with this set up.

11 comments:

  1. I am very envious. This looks perfect. I expect it has a compass built in to the vane or do you have to align it manually?

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    Replies
    1. Adrian. Orientation has to be set manually. It's the most sophisticated one I have had. Only time will tell how robust it is.

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  2. I have had the Maplin Weather Wireless Station, not the professional one, for many years now and have had no problems. Great fun.

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    1. Thanks. That's good to know Dave. My previous cheap ones haven't lasted more than a couple of years each. In fact the last one didn't work fully at all.

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  3. Happy New Year, John! Your new weather station looks very impressive and I'm sure you'll have fun tracking the stats, including graphs! Enjoyed seeing Penny's head adorning 2015 :) Here's to a happy and healthy 2015!

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  4. Hello John,
    I have been hunting around for a new weather station and fancied the Davis Vue but after you have made it internet ready it works out very expensive. My second choice is Maplin Professional WiFi. I have struggled to find good user info on it until I found your entry on Wunderstation. How are you getting on with it? would you by it again?

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    Replies
    1. Hello Mykagria,
      It's been running about seven months now so time enough to find any kinks.
      It is supposed to reset the timing from the internet once a day but on three occasions, for some unknown reason, the time has been a long way out. Easy enough to go through the menus and force it to collect the correct time.
      A couple of times it has apparently locked up and stopped sending data to the Wunderstation site. They send an email if it disappears for more than two hours. A reboot brings everything back to normal. Rebooting clears the on screen graph but all data in memory is retained.

      I do wonder whether the above may be caused by spikes in the electricity supply.

      On the whole I am 90%+ happy with it. My previous one would store the data on my computer but this one doesn't though all the data can be seen on the Wunderstation site as well as being able to see graphs on the unit. This one can save all data to a memory card which can be loaded in a spread sheet on the computer but I haven't tried that.

      Like you I would have liked a Davis but baulked at the initial cost. I am not a 'serious' weather watcher but like to see what is going on and this one does the job for me and it's great to be able to access the data from anywhere over the internet from the Wunderstation site. Yes, I would buy it again.

      Hope this helps.

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  5. Hi john,
    Thank you for your reply, I also am not a serious weather watcher but being British it is always nice to know what the weather is either doing or going to do. I think we can expect the odd hiccup with this type of equipment, the Internet is not the most stable medium.
    Anyway I have been out and made the purchase so let's see how I get on. Just need the rain to stop now so that I can get things set up outside.
    Thanks again for your help.

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  6. I have had mine for about a month. It is excellent, easy to install. I erected it on the pole used for my last ws, a Davis Vantage vu.
    I was never happy with the Davis, which lined to my PC. They want stupid money for the wifi link. IAlso the Maplin display is infinitely better than the Davis.
    Davis want silly money for the wifi add-on.

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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