Hey guys,
I have looked and never found anything quite like this…
I want to replace my cheap weather station with a new “weather display” that gets it’s data from the nearest professional source. Like an airport. Or even a wUnderground.com connected neighbor. Does that exist?
I love the dedicated display by my front door. But I don’t have a good enough mounting location outdoors to get accurate wind speed and direction. And I don’t trust the calibration of the humidity sensor at all. So I would like some wifi alternative that eliminates the outdoor part by using internet data instead.
Someone will probably recommend a smartphone app. I have that. It’s not as convenient, and they all have annoying alerts and delays starting up (because of downloading new ads).
The tablet idea crossed my mind, but it’s too bright at night. The magic mirror is cool. I don’t screw with that much work unless it’s marketable though.
Old phone with WiFi, all not needed uninstalled / returned to factory default auto updating disabled
Just the app, should give long runtimes. I use an old budget phone with 5” screen for weather, music while working via headphone and little browsing and I use it for two to three days wotgpit a problem.
No simcard and no synchronization and getting rid of as much apps I don’t use did make the runtime double.
All I do is say “OK Google: what is the weather?” to my Android phone and the computerized female voice tells me the weather.
It’ll come back with something like: “It’s 45 degrees with light rain in Hillsboro” and then the weather card comes up in Google Now so I can check the forecast for the week if I want to.
You can also say “OK Google”
“Do I need an umbrella?”
“Do I need a jacket?”
“What is the temperature?”
If the tablet has a light sensor (some cheap ones don’t) you could set it to dim the display very low at night / when the ambient light is low. Alternatively you could set it to dim based on time of day.
Place the Weather Rock on your window sill. If the Weather Rock is wet, it’s raining. If you can’t see the Weather Rock, it’s foggy. If the Weather Rock is white, you’ve got snow! (My Weather Rock is quite yellow. We’re in the throes of Pollen Season here!)
I like to see the rain approaching via the Weather RADAR on these pages. If you put your browser in Full Screen & turn off your Screen Saver, these will give you a nice look at the current/latest RADAR.:
This one is “experimental”, but once you get it configured it’s pretty awesome. Ridge2 RADAR
(Scroll the wheel to zoom. Once you get the view you want, click the [ Permalink ] button to set a Bookmark. Permalink saves some of your settings.)
My droid has a widget (or is it a dingus?) that puts the Time & Weather on your Home Page & updates whenever it can, and if you click on it, it takes you to a detailed forecast, but I can’t show you that here. Maybe clicking on this pic (from your droid) will work?
Weatherunderground has networked local personal weather stations displayed, all you need is internet access and it’s free. There are other sites doing this too but I don’t have those links anymore (HD crash). Airnav.com lists WX-ASOS VHF voice frequencies you can receive on an air-band radio if you’re close enough, just look up the airport you want to hear. Many airports have their own website with that current WX info displayed visually. Ham Radio APRS also has personal WX stations in the system but it takes some doing to receive and process those signals. Many TV stations offer free sites and apps for this now, but those are usually very ad-intensive. And everyone in the US needs a SAME-enabled WX radio in their house.
You can get decent home WX stations for around $150 but read the reviews first as many are not accurate or have durability issues. Or you can go all-out and buy a Davis or Peet Bros. WX station; those two brands are the only non-profesasional ones certified accurate enough for hurricane wind speed reports. Being a budget forum here don’t look at their prices- those make CPF look like cheapskates. Real accuracy doesn’t come cheap, however most of the decent home WX stations are close enough for most purposes except reading very high wind speeds. The most important part of a home WX station is setting the sensors up properly; there are very specific parameters for doing that and any unit will be inaccurate if you fail here.
I do severe WX work only, otherwise I check my local TV WX webpage as I need to since I know which one is most accurate. I also have access to some resources from the NWS you can’t get to. For a good severe WX radar and warning setup, go with Weathertap; free trial and a reasonably cheap subscription afterward including SMS text warnings for 4 areas you select sent to 2 phone numbers. You’ll get the warnings several seconds before they are issued publicly with these folks- nobody else is faster.
Ha, I’ve never heard of weather rocks! South Dakota can get pretty windy, so we use log chains for wind socks.
Wind direction and speed is very important to me. Few apps give more than “NW”. I want degrees or a arrow that uses degrees. I have a small wind turbine on my deck that I kind of like not having a tail on. I just aim it parallel or perpendicular to the wind depending on how much power I want.
Ground wind direction and ground wind speed are very local. What is happening just a mile away can be very different than where you are. It will be closer in flat lands but never exactly the same. The more variable the topography the more variance the different reports will have, especially in urban and patchy-forested areas. The airport WX ASOS broadcasts give wind direction in degrees. If you need that much directional accuracy then you need to fend for yourself at the place where you need that.
The small wind turbines I’m familiar with use an offset and/or folding tail to prevent overspeed- a simple and foolproof solution that does not require any knowledge of conditions or any adjustments to be made to compensate for them. That’s how I would approach this- YMMV.
Yea I know it can be local. But I’ve learned that the online airport data is more reliable for the top of my pole than the weather station I have on the roof peak. Of course the roofline can really mess with the data from certain directions. luckily most wind around here comes from the NW so I positioned it to work best on those days.
I just installed some weather apps on an old Android phone. There are… issues…
The longest I can set the screen to stay on is 10 minutes.
Waking it up requires squeezing the power button, then swiping the screen.
It takes forever to download new ads and refresh the weather data.
The wind is just from the ‘NW’ on all 3 apps.
It seems I am spoiled with a weather station. Maybe I just need a huge ugly pole on my roof.
