Chinese Weather Station

[FLICK]

A weather station has been on my wish list for a long time, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a Wireless Touch Screen Weather Station with PC interface....

The one I got is a Chinese rip-off of the La-Crosse WS-3600 and cost about 1/3 the price of the LaCrosse.


I'm not expecting it to be as sturdy or as accurate as a name brand station, but it's a starting point...

[FLICK]

I'm quite impressed with it, it's better quality than your average cheap Chinese electronic gadgets, and fairly accurate from what I've seen so far.

It's a Maxkon WS-1081pc

Outdoor Data
Transmission Distance in Open Field 150m
Frequency 433 MHz
Temperature Range -40°C to +65°C
Resolution 0.2°C
Measuring Range Rel. Humidity 1% ~ 99%
Rain Volume Display 0 ~ 9999m
Resolution 0.1mm (if rain volume < 1000mm)
1mm (if rain volume > 1000m)
Wind Speed 0 ~ 100 mph
Measuring Interval Thermo-hygro Sensor 48 sec
Water Proof Level IPX3
Indoor Data
Measuring Interval Pressure/ Temperature 48 sec
Indoor Temperature Measure Range 0°C to +60°C
Resolution 0.2°C
Measuring Range Rel. Humidity 1%~99%
Resolution 1%
Measuring Range Air Pressure 27.13inHg – 31.89inHg
Resolution/Accuracy 0.01inHg
Alarm Duration 120sec.
Power Consumption
Base Station 3 x AA Alkaline Batteries
Thermo-hygro Sensor 2 x AA Alkaline Batteries
Battery Life Minimum 12 Months for Base Station
Minimum 24 Months for Thermo-hygro Sensor
Base Station Dimension
(L x W x H) 23 x 14.5 x 7 cm (Included Stand)
Thermo-hygro Sensor
(L x H) 42 x 73 cm

The indoor touch screen unit is larger than I thought (included an AA cell for size comparison)


The sensor tree is just duct taped to my ute at the moment, I'll relocate it later today)


Here's the PC interface screen, (the PC software occasionally causes graphics corruption on my computer so I have to restart it now n then, I'll sort out that bug later)


At the moment I'm running a trial version of "Weather Display" software ( www.weather-display.com ) to FTP upload the data to one of my domains:

www.gratas.org

I've just chucked all the info on there for the moment, I'll tidy it up and make a decent site once I decide which software I'm going to use in the long term.

I'll add it to Weather-underground once I mount the sensor tree in a permanent position...

[FLICK]

The rain gauge seems to read about 25% low....

The mouth of the rain gauge is only 4.5" x 2" which I think is to small to accurately measure the rainfall, and the angle of the funnel is quite shallow so light rain doesn't flow down through the hole in the middle, it just sits on the funnel in beeds... It reads significantly less than my manual rain gauge...

At some stage I might make a funnel that has 10 times the surface area (about 10" diameter) and have that funnel feed into the existing unit, this should give me 0.01mm increments (it may not like heavy rain though)...

I believe certified rain gauges must be at least 8" diameter so they read accurately...

[FLICK]

Concreted a 2" pipe into the ground the other day for the sensors to mount on:

The bed rock is only 8" down, which isn't deep enough IMO, so I drilled a couple 1/2" holes into the rock and hammered rio into the holes, then tied the pole to the rio before filling the hole with concrete.


I'll be screwing another length of pipe to it in the near future to make it higher, I just need to weld some mounts to it first to hold the rain guage and temperature/humidity sensors (the existing plastc arms are too flimsy IMO)...

(the pole doesn't look straight due to the star picket holding the manual rain gauge to the left being at an angle, the manual rain guage will end up on the new pole once I extend it)

Matthew.

[FLICK]

The software for the station had a couple of bugs so I contacted the Chinese makers, they sent new software a couple of days later (excellent service)

Then part of the touch screen stopped working so I had to send it back to the retailer to be replaced...

It all works good now ... I just need to do a decent webpage for the info...

Matthew.

[psj12]

Where did you get it?

[FLICK]

An Aussie company:
www.crazysales.com.au/index.php?productID=847
$139aus ($125us)

Looking at eBay-US it appears there's a couple of different model La Crosse stations available over there for a similar price to my Chinese one (La Crosse ws-1611, ws-2308, ws-2315) ... La Crosse are well known for good weather stations, if they were available here in Aus at a decent price I would have purchased one of them

Another good affordable brand is Oregon Scientific.... and if your not a cheap skate like me I believe "Davis" and "Honeywell" are the best, but they'll cost you

Matthew.

[carld]

Man, I've been thinking about getting something like that for a while now.

I think I'll google some of the names you listed. This kicked my interest up a notch or two.

[GuglioLS]

Nice weather station Matthew it seems to be packed with all kinds of sensors and gadgets. The touch screen is pretty cool.

The sensor tree is just duct taped to my ute at the moment LOL, did you ever take it for a test drive to compare the wind speed VS the speedometer of your ute?

Larry

[FLICK]

Larry:
did you ever take it for a test drive to compare the wind speed VS the speedometer of your ute?

Not yet I'll get to it eventually....

My speedo reads about 10% high so I'll have to use the GPS to get the correct speed (gotta love technology)


Matthew.