Topic: Best weather station for sailing club

[mnolan]

Been a member of this forum (lurking) for years, but could now use some help. 

I am very weather knowledgeable, but do not have a personal weather station.  I am a member of a local sailing club in Indiana (Lafayette Sailing Club; Lake Freeman), and all the members could really use a way to determine the air temperature, wind speed and wind direction before we decide to drive to the lake to sail.  We currently have a website (lafayettesailing.com) where I would like to post the above information in more or less real time.  Those are really the only weather parameters we need.  Any additional sensors (such as rain gauge, humidity, etc...) are not really that important.

We have a member living on the lake with lakefront access and wifi.  I'd like to set up a remote sensor that would preferably be either solar or long-term battery powered that could connect to his wifi.  Then I'd like to port that information to either our website (preferred), or if needed some personal weatherstation network like those that wunderground hosts. I'd like the weather station to be more or less maintenance free.  It would likely only be powered up from April to October as we pretty much abandon the lake at that point, and the cabin owner shuts down his power.   It would be nice if it did not have to connect to a PC, but that is an option if we need to do so.

As a non-profit group, I have to watch our money and don't want to over buy.  But I want something reliable, fairly easy to set up, and has the capability to send the appropriate information to the web.  We don't really care about the internal display as he'll never look at it, as we will be sailing on the lake!

Thanks

Mike

[CW2274]

Your budget will determine what you end up with. PWS's and their components vary greatly in cost, reliability, accuracy, ect. Being a sailing club, the only thing I suggest is that when you get an anemometer, that you put it up where it's unobstructed and upwards of the "official" height of 10 meters. Do you have to have it that high, no, but for a sailing club I'd want my wind data to be as "bonafide" as possible.

[mnolan]

We probably won't/can't get it that high.......but we are more interested in the wind about 10-15' above the ground.  We sail smaller boats (Sunfish, Laser and the sorts), whose masts only go up 10-15 feet above the water.

Mike

[CW2274]

IF you can site it unobstructed from tress ect., you'll probably be fine, if not...

[ocala]

Siting is the biggest problem in a residential set up.
If you feel safe doing it, I'm sure your member who has lakefront access has some kind of dock.
Put up a 10 to 15 ft pole on his dock as close to the water as possible. Secure it the best you can and be done with it.

[ValentineWeather]

I take it you are looking for website access so you can access from home. I would get a Davis Station VP2 with one of the software's that broadcasts to Weather Underground and just link it off your home index page. Scaled Instruments has decent prices.

If you don't need realtime the Davis weather link software can upload data every few minutes if realtime is something you want it gets more complicated using 3rd party. I use Cumulus which uploads bits of data every 4 seconds to weather underground and my personal website. This requires a running PC but there are other solutions I'm less familiar with.

This is the dashboard for Weather Underground:  https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KNEVALEN4

You can add a widget also to the website here: https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KNEVALEN4/widgets

Widgets in realtime are no longer supported.

Personal website here: https://www.valentinenebraska.net/

[galfert]

You can get real-time to WU with a VP2 and no computer several ways.

VP2 ISS - - > WeatherLink Live - - > Meteobridge - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > Meteobridge NANO - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > WeatherLink USB - - > Meteobridge - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > WiFiLogger - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > WeatherLink Live - - > Raspberry Pi (Weather-Display or Cumulus MX or WeeWx) - - > WU

About that last option.... I threw it in as a Raspberry Pi is not often considered a traditional computer because of miniscule size, cost is less than $50, and minimal power draw.

* Meteobridges are sold by Ambient Weather and they call them WeatherBridge.

[johnd]

It does depend on what you take 'real-time' to mean. Some people would say that updates every minute (or 5 or 10 minutes ) is real/current enough.

Others might say you need to see every single wind gust on a site for it to qualify for genuine real-time, which means updates every 2-3 seconds. Beyond the geek factor, I'm not sure what practical benefit genuine real-time brings. Certainly I don't see the befit in updates every 10-15 secs for instance - it's neither one thing not the other. 

Also: Do you want the live data embedded in your own website or would a link to eg WU be sufficient. And if you want it on your own website then is a text presentation sufficient or is a fancy graphical presentation a priority?

A VP2 fitted with a WiFi logger uploading to weatherlink.com would give you a text presentation updated every minute on your own website and be a pretty cost-effective solution. But a more demanding requirement would mean a different and more costly configuration.

[mcrossley]

Slight addition...

VP2 ISS - - > WeatherLink Live - - > Meteobridge - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > Meteobridge NANO - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > WeatherLink USB - - > Meteobridge - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > WeatherLink USB - - > Raspberry Pi (Weather-Display or Cumulus MX or WeeWx) - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > VP2 display console - - > WiFiLogger - - > WU
VP2 ISS - - > WeatherLink Live - - > Raspberry Pi (Weather-Display or Cumulus MX or WeeWx) - - > WU

Personally, for a sailing club I think having a console you can put somewhere visible would be "a nice to have" addition.

[galfert]

One thing to consider is having remote access to logging/upload device because the station will be in someone else's home that you intend to manage remotely. Therefore the Meteobridge offers the simplest secure HTTPS remote access and simple setup (it just a check box you turn on and done, no other configuration required).

The Raspberry Pi can also be configured for remote access but that will require setting up VNC server service or remote SSH or VPN (just 3 possible solutions) and opening firewall ports and setting up Dynamic DNS service. Sounds complicated but there is plenty of help for novice to be walked step by step.

Another solution instead of or in addition to remote access is a smart power plug adapter. This way you can remotely power cycle the equipment.

[galfert]

Personally, for a sailing club I think having a console you can put somewhere visible would be "a nice to have" addition.

It is not going to be at the club. It will be at a private residence on the lake.

Thanks for the slight addition of USB to Pi.

[mnolan]

It does depend on what you take 'real-time' to mean. Some people would say that updates every minute (or 5 or 10 minutes ) is real/current enough.

Others might say you need to see every single wind gust on a site for it to qualify for genuine real-time, which means updates every 2-3 seconds. Beyond the geek factor, I'm not sure what practical benefit genuine real-time brings. Certainly I don't see the befit in updates every 10-15 secs for instance - it's neither one thing not the other. 

Also: Do you want the live data embedded in your own website or would a link to eg WU be sufficient. And if you want it on your own website then is a text presentation sufficient or is a fancy graphical presentation a priority?

A VP2 fitted with a WiFi logger uploading to weatherlink.com would give you a text presentation updated every minute on your own website and be a pretty cost-effective solution. But a more demanding requirement would mean a different and more costly configuration.

Real time is pretty loose by our standards.  5-10 minutes old would be OK.  I would prefer the wind on our own website (which is a pretty basic one), but wouldn't object to a WU link.  Text is fine....no need for graphic stuff.

Thanks

Mike