Maghull Weather

Automatic Weather Station


How I Started


Child Nerd


My interest started back in the days of the Home Service on the wireless, black and white television with just two channels and the 60's hope of peace and love. I was already a nerdy pre-teen kid when I got my first weather station at the age of 10. I had been interested in electronics for a couple of years (I started with the Philips Electronic Engineers kits when I was 6) and loved the Ladybird books of lights, bulbs, magnets, batteries etc so playing (experimenting) and exploring what was inside TVs and radios.

One Christmas I was browsing the toys in Hamleys in London and I spied the Triang weather station and I asked Santa if I could have one (actually I asked my dad as he had taken me there). It had a simple rain gauge, thermometer, wind speed and direction and a sling psychrometer for measuring dew point depression. It had charts for converting wet bulb depression to humidity and sample log sheets for recording the daily readings.

Triang Weather Station



The anenometer was a three cup style instrument which generated a pulse once evey rotation. There was a small battery operated flasher which when you pushed the button allowed the bulb to flash at each rotation of the cups. Using a watch with a sweep second hand you counted the flashes in one minute and then looked up in the manual what the wind speed was. This was fine for low speeds but high winds meant you had to count very quickly.

For measuring rainfall there was a pluviometer (rain gauge) with a small funnel to stand outside. Humidity was measured with a sling psychrometer. This comprised a plastic frame with a bulb thermometer which was cooled by a wick soaked in water and the thing was spun round. The evaporation of the water from the wick cooled the thermometer giving a reading of "wet bulb depression" and using the supplied table reading the humidity.

Electronic Stations



My first electronic weather station was a LaCrosse model with an LCD console. It had a USB connection to enable downloading the data to a PC and updating a simple weather web site. Construction of this station was low cost (cheap) and after a few years it was starting to become a litle bit unreliable plus I wanted to add some additional sensors for measuring solar radiation and thunderstorm activity.

The Weather Display software I was using allowed additional sensors to be added to the main station data. To do this it required the Dallas Semiconductor one wire sensors which were duly purchased from Hobby Boards in the US. Sadly Hobby Boards have now closed down duue to insufficient sales. I had a solar sensor and lightning detector and was going to expand the range of sensors but couldn't get them anymore.

Eventually the LaCross gave up altogether and I splashed out on an Oregeon Scientific WMR200. This is a much more substantial device and lasted a good few years until very strong winds in 2015 when it suffered irreprable damage. It also required me to leave a PC running all the time in order to upload the current conditions to the web site which is a bit of a waste of electricity and means tying up a computer all the time.

Recently the Raspberry Pi computer and the Arduino microcontrollers have become very popular with computer, electronics and ham radio enthusiasts. I decided that I would investigate using these to build a new weather station. I've had many hours playing with these devices both for weather and radio related projects.

Whilst browsing Amazon I happened upon the weather station I changed to. This does not have a console but feeds its data directly to the internet. I had decided to change from Weather Display software to WeeWX which is open source and runs on the Raspberry PI. It is designed to be extended so it can be adapted to new stations or sensors but proved to be too time consuming to learn the Raspberry PI and python language.


Current Station


The current weather station is all based on qq equipment purchased from Weather Spares in the UK back in July 2022. This PWS is a relative newcommer in the marketplace but has a very wide range of accessories. My station comprises the 7 in 1 sensor array plus some additional sensors.

Sensors



Currently the following sensors are monitored:-

  • Wind speed
  • Wind direction
  • Ultra Violet level/solar radiation
  • Humidity
  • Barometric pressure
  • Rainfall
  • Leaf wetness
  • Soil moisture
  • Lightning
  • Outdoor temperature
  • Indoor temperature

Other sensors available and on the wishlist:-

  • Outdoor air quality PM2.5
  • Soil moisture extended cable
  • Soil temperature
  • Water leak
  • Smart water timer for irrigation
  • External temperature and humidity for greenhouse
The data on this site is for information only as accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
It is not to be used where life or limb may be compromised.

Weather Warnings