Author Topic: Which weather station for a farm?  (Read 2918 times)

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Offline TraderGary

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #25 on: February 19, 2021, 04:27:23 PM »
I've owned 3 weather stations since I started.
The first two were Ambient Weather all-in-one stations.
They each lasted about 1.5 years and each one, when a single component failed, had to be thrown out.

After the first two failures I decided on buying a station with separate components. The WXForum was instrumental in helping me make that decision! I would never, ever again, buy an all-in-one station. The Davis Vantage Vue was not an option for me  because of my all-in-one experience.

I enjoy weather stations and these forums enough that I decided to go with what you see in my signature below.
« Last Edit: February 19, 2021, 04:35:18 PM by TraderGary »
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Offline galfert

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2021, 05:53:47 PM »
... when a single component failed, had to be thrown out.

...well...not exactly. The current Ambient stations all have replaceable parts:

Array assembly base:
https://ambientweather.com/amwewsrearas.html

Thermo-hygrometer:
https://ambientweather.com/amws2902thermohyfroassembly.html

Wind assembly:
https://ambientweather.com/amws2902wcassembly.html

Rain gauge assembly:
https://ambientweather.com/amws2902rainassembly.html

...and all other parts, wind vane, rain funnel....etc...all are available. If you had an older generation model those too were available while they were still current models.
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Offline TraderGary

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #27 on: February 19, 2021, 08:34:03 PM »
The mistake I made was ordering them from Amazon.
I figured that at that price they were throw-away items like TV's of today are.

If I had been on the forum back then, it looks like it might have been a different story.

Anyway, that's water under the bridge.

I'm still quite happy with the system I have right now.
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Offline Sweep

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #28 on: February 20, 2021, 12:30:15 AM »
I've owned 3 weather stations since I started.
The first two were Ambient Weather all-in-one stations.
They each lasted about 1.5 years and each one, when a single component failed, had to be thrown out.

After the first two failures I decided on buying a station with separate components. The WXForum was instrumental in helping me make that decision! I would never, ever again, buy an all-in-one station. The Davis Vantage Vue was not an option for me  because of my all-in-one experience.

I enjoy weather stations and these forums enough that I decided to go with what you see in my signature below.

This is what I am also afraid of... with the Ecowitt stand alone sensors, vs the Davis, having to go to the 700+ dollar range... With an ecowitt I can replace any sensor involved, for less then 100 dollars...

Offline TraderGary

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #29 on: February 20, 2021, 02:11:36 AM »
Sweep,
galfert (George Alfert) is a global moderator on WXForum.
He is very active, well known, and highly respected on the forum.
You can absolutely trust his judgement.
You can see in his signature what he personally uses.
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Online johnd

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #30 on: February 20, 2021, 03:59:33 AM »
To be clear, it's the electronic components of the Vue that are all on a single wiring harness (at least since Rev E came out some years back IIRC). But the mechanical components (wind cups/vane, wind cartridges, tipping spoon mechanism etc) are all readily available as individual spares.

The other general issue is that all-in-one sensor assemblies, especially where the anemometer and rain gauge cannot be separated, are neat, easy to mount and cost-effective to produce. But all have the limitation that you cannot achieve optimal exposure for wind and rain simultaneously (you need to mount wind up high and rain gauge down low for maximum accuracy), at least for meteorological purposes. In my experience, farmers have somewhat different requirements being more interested in wind at spraying height (say 2m/6ft) than high in the air. So an all-in-one mounted at say 5-6ft might be acceptable here, though rainfall will typically be a little under-recorded and you have to take more care with finding a well-exposed mounting site - an anemometer at 6ft is much more likely to be influenced by nearby buildings, hedges etc than one higher in the air. It's also the case that not everyone feels the need to measure all parameters with equal accuracy. So some users are in practice much more interested in say wind speed than rain and so will mount an all-in-one higher, or vice versa for other users.
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Sorry, but I don't usually have time to help with individual issues by email unless you are a Prodata customer. Please post your issue in the relevant forum section here & I will comment there if I have anything useful to add.

Offline galfert

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #31 on: February 20, 2021, 12:17:07 PM »
You can see in his signature what he personally uses.

Thank you. But what you can't see in my signature is all the VP2 stations that I also happily manage that are not mine.
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Offline Jhalo45

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Re: Which weather station for a farm?
« Reply #32 on: March 02, 2021, 04:15:57 PM »
I am looking to add a weather station to a piece of land that I farm. I am lucky in that there is high speed internet at the location, that I have access to, so I do not need cellular.

I am mainly interested in accurate temperatures, rain fall, and wind speed/direction.  Since it is a couple hours from where I live, I would like close to real time updates on my phone/computer, with the ability to set notifications if it starts to rain, wind gets over a certain speed, etc.  Ability to add a soil moisture probe would be nice, but not necessary. 

Lastly, I want to be able to track GDD, preferably automatically.  I am more then willing to do create an excel spreadsheet to do this myself, but would prefer something that either updates automatically, or something that I can easily update manually.  I know a lot of stations track high and low temps, which is really all I need to track GDD, but I need to be able to then pull it in to my calculator. 

Ideally, I would like to stay under about 300.  I have been looking at the ambient weather ws2000 and ws2902.  A display screen at the site is nice, but it does not need to be anything fancy.  Temp, daily rain fall, and wind would be more then enough.  The priority is online access.  I also have looked at the Ecowitt view system, with a GW1000 station, ultrasonic wind speed, and rainfall sensor.  I do like the flexibility this gives me. 

I should also mention this will be in western iowa, so will be submitted to snow fall.  if I did something like the ecowitt view I could bring the rain fall sensor inside and just leave the wind sensor out during the winter.

Any recommendations as to other stations I should be looking at?  I appreciate the help

Edit:

I think maybe after some more research, I should modify the question a bit when it comes to hardware.  I am not going to purchase a Davis, since they are simply out of my price range.  So, it seems like my question should be based more upon which cheaper system I should go with:
1.) WS-2902.  Seems fairly well reviews, and appears that it will do anything I need.
2.) Eco witt view system, (GW1000, WS68 or 80 anemometer, WH40 rain fall).  Little cheaper since it doesn't have a local screen, but looks like it would still do everything needed.
3.) Anything else I'm missing in that range?

Once again, I would love a Davis, but I am not spending that kind of money right now.  Thanks for the answers

Unless you get it from an outside source, Ecowitt will not sell you the WS80 period. I tried and failed miserably. They cannot legally sell any of those units in the US thanks to Ambient Weather hustling them with their contract negotiations. Ambient Weather has the exclusive rights to the WS80 and renamed it the WS-5000. I do not like this because Ambient locked their firmware so extra sensors can only be purchased from them. I went to the Ecowitt website and placed an order for their WS80 unit. It went through and they did indeed charge me, but I received an email from them later in the day saying sorry but we cannot ship this model to the US (they can sell you any other model though). So the order was cancelled.

I let them know to put that on their product webpage (which they have since updated to reflect that). If you want the sonic wind sensor, go with Ambient I guess. Just know it will be locked to their sensors only. Davis has a sonic addition for their VP2 model, although it is very pricey.

Have you considered a used model from auction sites for the VP2? I got a decently used wireless model for $275 and upgraded the rain collector to the new aero one for $27. Just a thought. These people are right Davis is the best. Acurite will be coming out with an Atlas Elite model eventually (still in beta), so that is something to consider too.

JW
« Last Edit: March 02, 2021, 04:28:37 PM by Jhalo45 »

 

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