Author Topic: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup  (Read 808 times)

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Offline scottm91

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Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« on: October 12, 2018, 11:58:10 AM »
I'm getting my WS2902A today and will be setting it up this weekend.  I have an old ranch style house that is very heavily covered in trees in the back and sides, but the front is kind of open (I use DISH satellite TV, so there's enough of a clearing for that - but barely!). 

I plan to mount it on a pole from Lowe's/Home Depot on my back deck and have the top of the WS extend just above the ridgeline of my roof so it will get the wind from the most directions possible (the back and sides are HEAVILY wooded, so not likely to get great wind readings there).  I was going to attach the pole to my deck.   Any tips on doing this, or better suggestions?  My wife doesn't want the WS to be visible much, if at all, from the road, so we dont' want it too high - and can't go too high anyway due to trees.  We do have a chimney, but use it fairly often in the winter and I know mounting it to that would skew the temp readings when it's in use.

We live in SC, so I've missed all the fun of measuring the weather from Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which just scraped by us.  An aside, looks like these don't do well in hurricanes from what I've seen online - go figure!  :shock:

I'm a newbie at this so any tips - focusing on being inexpensive and easy - are appreciated.  Just doing this for fun, primarily, but hope to have a rental house or two in the mountains in the not-too-distant future and would have a WS at those, too, for renters to reference when planning a trip.  TIA!

Offline davefr

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2018, 01:45:58 PM »
All I can say is to do a dry run before committing to a permanent mount/location.  Make sure you get good signals from sensor to console and console to router and make sure it's reliable over several days.

RF can act very strange.  Small changes in the location/orientation can make a big difference in signal reliability.



 

Offline galfert

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2018, 02:26:16 PM »
An aside, looks like these don't do well in hurricanes from what I've seen online - go figure!  :shock:

How do these not fair well in hurricanes? Because the wind doesn't measure above 100 mph? What else have you read?

My setup tip is to configure the console but skip the connection to the online services as you can do that later. Just connect to the Internet for time sync at first. Then calibrate your barometer to nearby airport. With Ambient stations you have two pressures to deal with. Figure out your elevation. Then figure out the pressure offset for your elevation. Then you can enter in the offset between absolute and relative pressure. Then dial down or up the absolute to calibrate the relative. Test everything including the rain tipper by pushing down by hand and seeing if tips register. Move the wind vane and anemometer too.  Once everything appears to be working on the console you erase the console history to delete all the testing data....but don't fully reset or you'll wipe your calibration. Now that everything is working you can connect the station to the online services. I recommend setting up the Weather Underground station ID on a computer first, then have the station connect to your station ID. The reason for doing this calibration first before going online is because you can't delete bad testing data and precalibration data once it is online.
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Offline scottm91

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2018, 02:46:02 PM »
An aside, looks like these don't do well in hurricanes from what I've seen online - go figure!  :shock:

How do these not fair well in hurricanes? Because the wind doesn't measure above 100 mph? What else have you read?


Thanks for all the info.  I'll give that a shot.

Regarding the hurricanes, I haven't read anything, necessarily, but as we were in the path of the storm, and I have several friends and some family in Tallahassee and the gulf coast, I was watching it come in on Weather Underground and monitoring some of the private weather stations.  All of them stopped reading as the eye of the storm approached.  I only saw one that read up to 100mph and that was one owned by FSU.  All of the personal stations seemed to stop at 50-60mph, but that was just from my limited observations.  Between the stability of the pole and the fragility of the weather stations, I doubt many of them survived Michael.  I used to windsurf at Shell Point beach and tried to pull up their weather station and it, too, was down.  So, haven't formally read anything about it, but just have not seen many that seemed to survive.

Although, and this just occurred to me, it could just be that they stopped transmitting when the power when out, which it did pretty much everywhere there.  So, no way to tell, I guess, at this point.

Offline galfert

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2018, 04:58:12 PM »
Yeah I think it was more to do with power/Internet outage than hardware failure. Realize too that most all in one type stations don't get mounted anywhere near 30 feet up so they aren't likely to register higher winds regardless. Ideal mounting height for an all in one is 8 to 15 feet, as that is the best compromise between wind, rain, temperature and humidity.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2018, 06:16:14 AM by galfert »
Ecowitt GW1000 | Meteobridge on Raspberry Pi
WU: KFLWINTE111  |  PWSweather: KFLWINTE111
CWOP: FW3708  |  AWEKAS: 14814
Windy: pws-f075acbe
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Offline cjtamu

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2018, 08:30:59 AM »
Galfert, new to this and want to make sure I’m reading barometer calibration correctly. I’m at 57’ and reading 29.78. Airport is at 46’ and reading 29.85. Last airport update was half hour ago. Do I enter the 29.85 as the value for my relative pressure and the instrument automatically calculates the offset? Or is there a sub menus where I enter an offset of 0.07? Thanks.

Offline galfert

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Re: Getting my WS 2902A today - looking for tips on setup
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2018, 11:25:11 AM »
I created a new post showing the steps how I recommend calibrating an Ambient console for the WS-2902A or WS-2000

https://www.wxforum.net/index.php?topic=35272.0
Ecowitt GW1000 | Meteobridge on Raspberry Pi
WU: KFLWINTE111  |  PWSweather: KFLWINTE111
CWOP: FW3708  |  AWEKAS: 14814
Windy: pws-f075acbe
Weather Underground Issue Tracking
Tele-Pole

 

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