Topic: Save money / No PC?

[W9MDO]

Hi all,

I'm interested in turning off the PC that has interfaced my LaCrosse 3600 to Weather Underground and CWOP/APRS for several years. My question: Is there a inexpensive weather system that directly uploads data for these services, or alternatively has anyone successfully used software to run on any of the new crop of simple single board pc's like Beagleboard or Raspberry PI to interface a LaCrosse 3600 to these services? I know the little SBC's use less than 5W or so of power, so my savings just on electrical power would be substantial.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Chuck
Halifax, Nova Scotia

[astrodanco]

Sure, you can buy an iConnect box and run the turnkey MeteoHub software set up on it.

I'm not certain if it supports the 3600 though.  It works a treat with the Davis VP2.

Personally I'm thinking of going in the opposite direction by moving my Meteohub set up over to a VMware ESXi based virtual machine.

[Weather Display]

low spec netbook pc's use very little power

[DaculaWeather]

Or build a mini-ITX size computer, you can even go solid state hard drive with passive cooling so you'll have no moving parts and extremely low power consumption.

[Bushman]

I've been using a Netbook (Asus 4G Surf w/SS disk drive) for years.  Very low power.  Nice to be able to remote into it via Teamviewer.

[CNYWeather]

Or build a mini-ITX size computer, you can even go solid state hard drive with passive cooling so you'll have no moving parts and extremely low power consumption.

 Took a while but finally the SSD prices are starting to fall like a rock. I know my next will have one.

[ArmySlowRdr]

My latest hex-core I-7 build has a SSD. The things are freaking fantastic; the boot up time is incredibly zippy.  Best upgrade I've made since I started building.

The SSD is in that drive bay somewhere !