How it works.

The adapted Fine Offset' Maplin model N96GY. consists of a wind speed anemometer and wind direction vane mounted on a 12ft mast. A rain gauge measures the rainfall collected 6 inches above the ground. Signals from these devices are fed into a sensor block which adds temperature and humidity readings. The sensor block is housed in a home-made screen. Every 48 seconds the data is transmitted to an indoor console by radio signal(433.092 MHz). The console records the data on its memory along with the air pressure. Every minute a Raspberry Pi computer reads the data from the console, and creates a file of data. At the end of each day it creates a file of weather data for each day. Summaries are also made for each month and year, as well as lists of highs and lows, and all time records.

Every minute the Pi creates web pages using the Sandaysoft 'Cumulus MX' software, and uploads them to the internet. At the end of the day, the daily summaries, records etc are uploaded to the internet. The Raspberry Pi is powered a solar power and battery system, and idependent of mains power. Being a very rural area, we have very slow internet connections, and limited useage.

Faults.

This being an automatic system, it doesn't normally require any human intervention. However, if faults occur, then they first have to be noticed, and then fixed. Sometimes these fault can be quickly fixed, at other times it may take days or weeks. Back up systems are designed to make sure that most times data is not actually lost, and that summary archive data can be corrected. It can take time to correct these as the Cumulus software generates them from data and logs which both need to be manually corrected, and reset.

Current Status

The weather station is working normally
On 6th August 2018The battery back up system powered by a mains 12v adapter was replaced by a solar power system.
On 9th January 2018 the console started to experience data loss due to the console switching to another, weaker, unit somewhere in the area. On the next day, the console was force to link with my own sensor block, correcting the problem.
On 22nd November 2017 a fault occured in the console giving a wrong pressure reading. An offset to the pressure reading was introduced in the software to correct the console reading.
On 22nd September 2017 the refresh rate of the data was increased from 3mins to every minute. The console was moved much nearer the sensors.
Interference to the radio signal from 18th - 20th June 2017 resulted in data being frozen on the screen, and flatlining of the graphs. Daily summary files were written with erronous data, and various false records were created. Most of these have now been corrected.

index Cumulus