Author Topic: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?  (Read 15676 times)

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Offline flyingvranch

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Why I don't know but I have a burning desire to set up a simple remote weather station nearby somewhere to collect data. I really enjoy the construction aspects and I am fairly good at designing solar panel systems and I have all of the ingredients to assemble a simple Davis vp2 etc.

The thing That has me stumped is I'm not really sure what it could be used for.  Once I have the data what's it good for? I have my own weather station at my home airstrip so I really don't need to duplicate that. What are some other uses? I have no problem the with logistics of setting it up somewhere remote across the county or what ever.  Who could this data be useful too? In my area we have a lot of managed forests and forestry is a big thing here. No commercial farming nearby. There is a university in town but I'm not sure that would be a good avenue either. What businesses would perhaps need this data?  Who could I propose to set up a remote weather station on their property and what would be a benefit for them by allowing me to do so? Any ideas would be much appreciated! Sorry for the long rambling thoughts, but perhaps I could learn from some others that have been wondering the same thing.

Offline Bushman

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Re: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2013, 10:18:05 AM »
There is a thread around the forum - sorry, I'm too lazy to search for it - about some guy building weather stations for remote parts of Africa.  Crops and all that.  That would be one good use I guess.  Personally I think it would be really neat to be able to deploy low cost remote wx stations at my favorite fishing hole, etc.  But my wife already thinks I'm nuts every time the UPS guy drops off another box and my daughter says she hates the Davis "garbage can" on the roof  (black rain drum)...  so I better leave this one to you.
Need low cost IP monitoring?  http://wirelesstag.net/wta.aspx?link=NisJxz6FhUa4V67/cwCRWA or PM me for 50% off Wirelesstags!!

Offline johnd

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Re: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2013, 05:38:36 AM »
Once I have the data what's it good for?

It's good for anyone who wants to know the current weather or maintain a continuous log of weather at a field site. This covers many different categories of user. It could be an outdoor activity club (sailing, windsurfing, microlights, model aircraft flying etc etc) where members may live at some considerable distance from the site and want to be able to look up on the web to see whether local conditions are suitable for the activity. Agriculture is a prime candidate - farmers often run fields maybe 10, 20, 30 miles away where local weather conditions may be (or have been, eg how much rain was there in the past few days) rather different from their home. It could be a field location that's used for research or educational use where the project under way requires a continuous weather record. It could be a commercial operation such as waste disposal or quarrying where there is a legal requirement to maintain environmental/weather records. And so on.

Whether it then classifies as a remote station depends on whether mains power or a fixed line data link might already be available in which case it will typically be better to use what's already available. But quite often in many locations away from habitation (which doesn't necessarily have to be in remote areas) neither will be easily available. And sometimes it may just be simpler and more reliable to use an autonomous remote station rather than relying on Joe at the distant site to remember his training day and to upload weather data at regular intervals, check the instrumentation batteries regularly etc.

« Last Edit: July 07, 2013, 05:41:33 AM by johnd »
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Offline flyingvranch

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Re: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?
« Reply #3 on: July 07, 2013, 02:28:06 PM »
Good suggestions and food for thought. Thanks!

We do have a lot of hay production in my area with commercial hay growing operations using irrigation etc. not sure if I could integrate that somehow. Sill thinking. Lets keep this dialog going and maybe a light bulb will switch on for me.

It just seems like I am stumped as far as the real world usefulness of the data. As far as getting the data and the mechanics of it all, I have that covered pretty well I think. I wonder if there is a way to build a stream height gauge that would somehow integrate with the Davis products. I would definitely have a use for that personally. Any ideas?

Thanks again folks!

Offline ctrlfreek430

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Re: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2013, 12:41:56 PM »
For the commercial hay growing operations using irrigation, you could set up a weather monitoring station to collect rain data and integrate it with an automated water system. So it could automatically water based on the history of precipitation... so if it's rained a certain amount within the last couple of days, the irrigation system wouldn't turn on until it has stopped raining for a certain amount of time. Would something like that be useful?

As far as integrating a stream height gauge ... would you just use an analog signal like a potentiometer or something?

Offline SODAQ

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Re: A simple as possible remote station. What would be a good use?
« Reply #5 on: October 23, 2013, 03:16:42 AM »
Please see my post here:

http://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=20548.0

With a SODAQ board and GPRSbee you can build a remote solar powered weather station running on a 1W solar panel and sending your weather updates through the mobile phone network (GSM)!

 

anything