Weather Station Hardware > What Weather Station Should I Buy?

Wx Station for me?

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Shawn:
Soon: I want to make a site devoted to providing weather forecast and radar data and imagery for Southern Illinois. What station and software would be best for me?

Thanks in advance :)

SLOweather:

--- Quote from: "kruzzen" ---Soon: I want to make a site devoted to providing weather forecast and radar data and imagery for Southern Illinois. What station and software would be best for me?

Thanks in advance :)
--- End quote ---


How deep are your pockets?

Davis Vantage Pro 2 stations are the best of the consumer grade weather stations, and seem to have the best support. Wired is more reliable and less expensive than wireless. If you want solar and UV sensors, order the system with them (Vantage Pro 2 Plus). They are a lot more expensive to add later.

You'll also need the WeatherLink data logger to interface to the computer. Don't get USB. It has problems. Get serial, even if you need to add an adapter to your computer. Don't get USB. You've been warned. :)

As far as software, VWS and WeatherDisplay are the 2 main choices for a Windows system. IMO, VWS has better looking graphics, WD has more capabilities.

If you want to make your own forecasts, then get WD and add Wxsim.

If you want the best of all worlds, get VirtualVP to share the VP output with up to 8 programs, including VWS and WD.

Then, being in Illinois, you'll want to add a Boltek StormTracker lightning detector card, and NexStorm software, and join StrikeStar so your lightning data gets triangulated with other StrikStar stations.

For radar, add GRlevel3 and an AllisonHouse data subscription. (I don't have that, so mebbe I have the details wrong...)

As far as web hosting, don't try to do this on a free account. Get your own domain name, and a decent host. Get PHP with your hosting (usually Linux) if you want to run all the cool scripts that are available, like the sig banner on this post, and many, many more.

Hey, you said "best"...

Shawn:
Okay, I have ask this on many forums associated with weather and you sir have given me the BEST response yet!

Thanks! 8)

SLOweather:
You're entirely welcome. That's the distillation of about 10 years of experience.

I did forget one other item. To make it as stable as possible, run all that on a dedicated computer, preferably XP-based. Ideally, it would be a fast one with a gig of memory. That will give you plenty of capacity to run all the weather stuff, and yet to add other programs later.

If you have a mainstream off-the-shelf computer it probably came pre-loaded with a bunch of cr@p. Before you get started, reformat the disk and reload the OS w/out the cr@p.

BobH:
I'd say avoid the La Crosse Technology units.  I got a WS-3610 (http://www.lacrossetechnology.com/3610/index.php) as a gift.  Wind direction, barometer and temp seem to be OK.  The anemometer doesn't work, the rain gauge actuator sticks, and they don't respond to e-mails for tech support.  There's no toll-free number.

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