I notice a lot of these commercially available weather stations lack the ability to mitigate pressure errors induced by wind. Since most commonly (from what I understand) the little transducer is located within the console. Shouldn't there be more care taken into consideration for the affects of dynamic pressure from buildings? (Since most often the consoles are found within them.) Is it a convenience thing? Do people simply not care? Do the transducers require a significant amount of power requiring them to be put within something that has wall power versus say a Davis ISS with a super capacitor? Or maybe it's a price/performance thing?
Continuing with the Davis example, since they already supply a variety of parts and addons for their stations, would it be hard to introduce the ability to further improve pressure accuracy? I of course don't work for the company and don't know how difficult it would be to alter something of that magnitude within the station. Seems like a long neglected part of remote sensing - or perhaps misunderstood. Would be interesting to see though.
Just food for thought, let me know what you think.
Cheers
Lots of very interesting questions.
The earth's atmosphere has weight to it and that is what a barometric sensor measures. When the atmosphere moves around a lot (think hurricane winds), you can certainly feel it. I have observed that a sensitive barometer can measure these fluctuations due to wind – as it should.
If pressure fluctuates from wind, a hurricane or a volcanic explosion – I want to see it. If I am calibrating though - I don't want to see it!
A you know, when airplanes are flying the rush of wind would definitely make pressure readings difficult so the flying barometer (altimeter) mitigates the effects of wind using a static port. Land based barometers located inside an equipment rack inside an aerodrome also uses a static port to the outside of the building to mitigate the effects of air conditioning, fresh air exchangers, doors opening and closing, etc.
I am not a big fan of having sensors enclosed in a console – although for different reasons. If a temperature, humidity or barometric sensor fails, how are you going to fix it? If the sensors become deprecated as technology improves how are you going to upgrade it? The answer is – with great difficulty.
Getting back to you barometric pressure question....yes, homes are susceptible to the same issues as an aerodrome but to a far lesser degree. Some consumer grade sensors can automatically dampen the pressure fluctuation of a door slam. Also, our consumer grade sensors aren’t going to measure a 0.05 hPa blip. They are just too slow, noisy to resolve to that level.
Inside vs outside barometric sensors? Here in Canada, airport baros are usually inside although for remote weather stations and buoys all sensors are obviously outside. For consumer grade personal weather stations it could be a price/performance issue as an outside barometric sensor would have to include a precision temperature compensating circuit. I am not an electronics engineer but my understanding is that this compensating circuit keeps readings accurate as outside temperature changes. Depending on the design, some sensors can’t tolerate much dust or moisture so mitigating these effects would drive up costs for an outside barometric sensor.
The best way to improve the accuracy of our barometers is to upgrade them every few years as sensor accuracy/precision is growing by leaps and bounds. That’s an expensive proposition if the sensor(s) are soldered onto a PCB inside a console. So you are correct – remote sensing is the clear answer but an inside barometric sensor (like the airport) is more than good enough. Or you can spring for a commercial-grade Vaisala with a static port. I think Dale might have experience with Vaisala weather stations and/or sensors..