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6. Weather Stations

Where can I find out more information about owning my own weather station?

Ambient Weather has a great guide on comparisons of the various Weather Stations out there.

Weather Station Review, Purchase, and Installation Guide

If you want a starter weather station and have a Meijer's nearby they offer a Weather Channel edition of the LaCross WS-2310 for under $200. I started out with this very station myself. After 6 months I found I was no longer satisfied with it and bought my first Davis Vantage Pro from Ambient. Great place to buy from.

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by fire100 edited by Axilla
last modified: 2005-10-04 08:30:58

What software is available to run with a Weather Station?

Ambients Virtual Weather Station

Lots of plugins here including up to the second uploading to your webpage with add-ons like Weather Flash.

Weather Display

Another popular desktop weather station program

Lacross Technology Heavy Weather

This is the software that comes with their weather stations

David Instruments WeatherLink

Software for Davis Weather stations that have the optional Data Logger.

Open2300 software for La Crosse 2300 series

Runs on Linux. Can be used for Weather Underground and CWOP updates.

WeatherView

From drjim

I'm running "WeatherView" on Linux for my Davis Vantage Pro2. It works great, and is under active development. The developer is a pretty OK guy, and the forum for it is a nice place to get help.

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by fire100 edited by Axilla
last modified: 2006-03-19 11:54:35

How to I get detailed data from Wx stations?

These sites deserve attention as a group as they are cooperative in function and geared toward the technically inclined. There are gigs of data available from thousands of stations across the continent and Hawaii. Here's a way to use them to find stations and see data.

First, check out Findu.com - Data here comes from CWOP and APRS stations and includes some CWOPs and APRSs that aren't listed in the wxqa site.

»www.findu.com/

Next, see the APRS page - There's a nice zoomable map that displays station callsigns and IDs but at this time you can't click on them to go to the station(s).

»www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/aprs.html

However, you can get to the stations by entering the callsign/IDs you find in findu and APRS into the search fields on the following wulfden page;

»www.wulfden.org/APRSQuery.shtml

Another way to access the stations and also bring up associated web pages not found in APRS or the wulfden query results is to Google on the callsign or ID of the station.

Note that on the wulfden page, there's a wealth of links to some really neat things like Wx stations reporting through ISS.

For a simpler view of weather stations, the University of Utah has a nice graphical locator at
»www.met.utah.edu/droman/ (requires Java)

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by EGeezer edited by Axilla
last modified: 2007-06-16 12:48:28

What will a weather station cost?

Expect to pay around $275 to $500 for a really good home weather station with outside sensors, rain gauges etc. There are systems available for less, but they are not full featured weather stations. Among the best is Davis. Davis tech support is typically top notch, sometimes sending replacement parts for free for stations many years out of warranty.

Scientific American has some nice equipment as well, and are a little cheaper on their basic equipment but quite expensive on their high end wireless weather tools.

A web search is a good idea. Prices can be found much below MSRP. One site that our users turned up is »www.provantage.com/

The current price (April 2009) on a cabled Davis system is in the $330's.

(This FAQ entry was extracted from posts by ghostpainter and tstolze )

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by KeysCapt

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