Topic: Which weather station for home use hobby

[Blackbird]

Hello This wil be my second post
 Well, as I said in my introduction the other day I only use the Apple IMac and do not have any windows based pc's in the house.
So as I explained  I wish to take on a new hobby and think this would suite me down to the ground,and with this in mind I need a bit of help and guidance,with the purchase of a home weather station,so have a few questions to ask.
 As I use an imac I have almost certainly decided to use weather snoop to view and upload my data as this is apple friendly and have downloaded it ready,on my computer,so all I need now I think is a home weather station,and may be a data cable to get going.This is where my question comes in,WHICH WEATHER STATION,my budget would be around £140 may be a bit more but am confused as to which station to get that will work with weather snoop,and the more I search the more confused i am getting.I would like something where all the things out side  are not in one housing so I would be able to get some accurate readings to upload to a web site.     I have a couple of weeks to get something sorted out as I am at work at the moment but have a holiday in mid September ,when I would be able to get my system up and running.
Thank you for taking the time to read this ,as I would imagine this is a very well asked question,but I will look forward to any help and advice offered to me.
Thank You
               Tony.  (blackbird)
 

[DanS]

Members on here that run the Fine Offset style of weather station seem to be happy with them. They meet your requirements being in the budget, sensors are separable (extension cables between sensors), runs with Mac p.c.

You can do a search on-line under the name this type station uses in your region,

Fine Offset Electronics: WH-1080, WH-1081 (also known as Watson W-8681, WX-2008,
National Geographic 265 NE, Elecsa 6975/ 6976, Ambient Weather/WeatherWise
WS-1080/WS-1090/WS-2080, Tycon TP1080WC, Zephyr, Maplin, Froggit).

edit: updated per Bushman's experience.

[Bushman]

TANSTAAFL - you get what you pay for.  The Nat Geo station is crap.  BTDT.  I am waiting on an Acurite to see if for a bit more $$ they are better.

[wxman2003]

I have the Acurite 1055 5 in one sensor. Got it when they had a 20% off sale, so got it for around $160. Works great so far and seems to be accurate with temperature, rainfall, humidity, and pressure. Since it's an all in one sensor, wind will not be that accurate, unless you mount the whole unit quite high, which would make changing batteries a hassle. It comes with aculink, which is easy to set up. The only downside is that it connects to your router via ethernet and not to your computer, which limits what other software that will work with it, mainly none of them other than WU. You can view your weather data via Acurite's My Backyard Weather web site. If you want to get the Acurite, get the 5 in 1 that connects via usb, so that you can use other software with it.

[bwc]

 I only use the Apple IMac and do not have any windows based pc's in the house.

I can't make a recommendation in your price range. However, I am a user of the Weather Snoop software. I've interacted with the developer via email and thru his forums. He was very attentive and helpful. You could ask him directly what would work well with his software at your price.

FWIW, my first weather station is the Davis Vantage Vue. Installed it in late 2012, and it has worked great for me. I don't know what that would go for in the UK (guessing based on the £price range), but it's been excellent for me. I connect it to my Mac mini with Davis' USB data logger (their software is crap, use WS' suggested driver instead), and it uploads data to the Weather Undergound through Weather Snoop every 3 seconds, 24/7.

[smorris]

Hi Tony, and welcome to the WXForum!

Be sure to take a look in the Mac specific sub forum here: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?board=114.0 And especially my thread on Mac weather station software: http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=17584.0

Each of the three most-used applications list which hardware they work with on their site, and all three can be used free for a limited time. All three are also similarly priced at $60-$70. Try them out and see what works best for your needs. Once you settle on a hardware/software package, be sure to join the developer's user forum. They offer a lot of useful information and friendly people (although the WeatherSnoop forum is not nearly as active as the Weather Display or WeatherCat forums; two or three posts per month vs a dozen or so per day.) All three developers are active on their respective forum.

Let us know if we can help in your decision,
Steve

[EDIT] Current hardware list from each vendor's page:

WeatherCat is designed to work with the following hardware-based weather stations:
Davis Vantage, Vue, Envoy, Monitor and Wizard stations. WeatherCat also supports the WeatherLinkIP data-logger.
La Crosse WS23xx range of stations.
Oregon Scientific WMR 928/968 stations.
Oregon Scientific WMR 200 stations.
WeatherHawk stations equipped with an IP server module.
Fine Offset WH1080/1081/1090/2080/2081/3080/3081 stations. These stations are often rebranded under a variety of names, for example Ambient Weather WS-1080 or Watson W-8681 – please see our Wiki page for more information: http://wiki.trixology.com/index.php/Fine_Offset


Weather Display can be used with the following weather stations:
the Huger/Radio Shack/Oregon Scientific WM918/WX200,WMR-918/WMR-968/WMR-928N,WMR100,WMR200,WM-900H,63-1016,WMR300
the Davis WMII, Wizard III, Grow, Vantage Pro/plus/6161/VP2/Vue etc (with datalogger), supports soil temperature/moisture/leaf wetness and UV/solar (extracted data from logger too)
the ELV/Conrad/Huger WS2000/WS2010/WS2210/WS7000/WS2300/WS2305/WS2310/WS2315/Hyundai WS-05/WS2500PC/WS2510/3600
the La Crosse 2010,2110,2210,2308,2310,2315,2300,WS23XX,WS2350,2500,2510,3600/3610 (note, history data does not work with W7)
the Peet Bros Ultimeter 100,500,800,2000,2100 and II
the Maximum Instruments Weathermax (with datalogger)
the Metron UWS 3000-ws
the Rain Wise WS2000/MK III (with data logger). Now supports the new CC-3000 data logger and IP-100
the Dallas 1 wire weather station (and version 3)
the Texas Inst. WR-25 and variations and NWS
the Heathkit ID -5001
the Climatronics Ultrasonic
the Novalynx WS-16 Weather Station
the Capricorn 2000. Now supports the new micro server
a ASOS station and a RAWS station
the Weather Hawk /Weather Hawk IP
the Environdata weather master 2000
the Kestral 4000
the Instromet
the Inspeed Vortex anenometer
the Vaisala WXT510/520 ultrasonic station
the HoneyWell TE923/Irox Pro/Nexus USB
the ELV WS500/La Crosse WS550 USB
the OS WMR100,WMS200/200/WMR88/WMR180 USB
the IRDAM station via TCP
the WH1081PC/National Geographic/Zephur/Fine Offset/WX-2008,Watson/Ambient WS-1080/1081/2080 USB station
the new Davis IP data logger (direct connection for Live data)
the Airmar Ultrasonic GPS
the new AAG TAI603B 1 wire station
the new Hobby Boards ADS speed/dir board
the new La Crosse 2810 (via the curdat.lst file updated by Heavy Weather software)
the Weatherwise Pro WS-1081, Solar powered transmitter and the WH3081 with Lux and UV sensors the Acu-rite 5 in 1 01025/01035 with USB


Weather Snoop Supported Weather Stations
Ambient Weather WS-1080/WS-1090/WS-2080
Columbia Weather Systems Capricorn 2000EX
Columbia Weather Systems MicroServer
Davis Vantage Pro 2 (USB/Serial/IP Data Logger)
Davis Vantage Vue (USB/Serial/IP Data Logger)
Honeywell TE-923
IROX Pro-X
Kestrel 4000 Family of Pocket Weather Meters
LaCrosse WS-2315
Oregon Scientific WMR-100A / WMR-100N
Oregon Scientific WMR-200A
Oregon Scientific WMR-968
Peet Bros. ULTIMETER 100/800/2000/2100
RainWise CC-2000/CC-3000 Interfaces
Tycon TP1080WC
WeatherHawk
WeatherWise Solar Pro

[Blackbird]

THANK YOU
                 WOW what can i say i was not expecting such a indepth response on a question that i guess has been asked so many times before (probably a very boring question really)however there is plenty there for me to be getting my teeth into over the next few days before i make my decision, and then hopefully get it set up and running in my holiday in mid september,i will of course let all of you know what i will of ended up with in the very near future. looking forward to more post's soon.

thank you once again for all your replies
                                                             Kind regard's  tony (blackbird)