[Xastir] which weather station

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 03:39:12PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <w9drr.ham at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> What weather station should I consider?
> Money is an object. Are the newer lacrosse accurate enough?
> My last wx station was a wx200 (radio shack). It was very
> inaccurate due to solar heating of the temp sensor 

This is true of most weather stations.  Few of them come with good functional
radiation shields (the Davis is an exception, but that's the pricey option).
You'll almost always need to improve on the stock radiation shield in addition
to finding a good site for the unit.

There are lots of good designs for proper radiation shields.  I made a "pagoda"
style shield out of 8 plastic flower pots --- cut a hole in the bottom of
four of them to make an interior hollow where the temperature sensor fits,
then stack two unadulterated pots above and below the others.  Use threaded
rod with PVC spacers over them to keep the pots separated just enough to allow
airflow, and there you go.  My solar heating problems went away the day I 
replaced LaCrosse's cheesy plastic cover (that they call a "radiation shield")
with the pagoda.  Before that, the quality checker for CWOP routinely flagged
my temperature data as two-thumbs-down due to solar heating.  Now I get two
thumbs up.

Here's a good spot to start:

http://www.wxqa.com/shields.html



> and the
> anemometer just stop working one day. So I gave up
> just as I moved houses. Last 2 have not been conducive to
> having a wx station up. Current house now does so going to
> try and get something going.
> 
> Taking suggestions. I think davis/Ultimeter-2100 is going to be out of budget.

I have a LaCrosse 2317 (a "Sam's Club Special" version of the 2310).  Quality
is poor, longevity is questionable.  My first LaCrosse station lasted a year
or so before the rain gauge stopped working, then another couple of years later
the anemometer got flakey, and not long after that the main unit gave out.
I've replaced almost all the pieces one at a time by now, including all the 
cabling.  The only thing I haven't actually replaced yet is the display panel,
which has continued to function just fine.

If this ever gives up the ghost again, I'll probably go with an Argent Data 
Systems unit, because ADS makes good stuff and their support is terrific.  The 
problem with that one is that it's a wired unit, so you have to have a way to 
get the data cable from the temperature sensing unit into your station so your 
computer can read it.  The LaCrosse has a wireless link between the outdoor 
and indoor units.

I'm told that the Argent Data unit works well with Xastir, as it sends data
in a format compatible with one of the other serial units we support, and 
doesn't require convoluted database links like the Davis and LaCrosse units
do.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick