Weather Station Data

That's impressive weather data collection, Mike.   How often does the widget update?  And how does your equipment measure cloud cover?

Thanks Tej. The data should update every few minutes.

I'm not measuring cloud cover with my weather station... just temperature, wind and rain. The other data comes from OpenWeatherMap.

I've had an offline request for more information about the weather station setup. OK, so here goes...

I'm using the Netatmo Weather Station, with the additional rain and wind gauges. It's a completely wireless set-up, with the indoor module connected to my router via wi-fi. Very easy to set-up and maintain. The outdoor modules are battery powered, but the batteries last for ages (1 year +)... and you get a warning when they need to be replaced.

A picture of the modules that I'm using is shown below:

So, top left is the indoor module - this measures indoor temperature, humidity, pressure, CO2 and sound levels. Top right is the outdoor module, measuring temperature and humidity.

Bottom left is the rain gauge, measuring rainfall (including the total rainfall in a day).

Bottom right is the wind gauge, measuring wind direction, wind speed and gust speed. This is slightly different to traditional wind gauges as it doesn't have any moving parts - instead using 4 ultrasonic transducers. I've mounted this on a painters pole at the back of the garden, but it needs to be mounted higher really.

Netatmo certainly isn't a cheap option, though it does favourably compare to more expensive weather stations. Total cost of the indoor/outdoor module, plus rain and wind gauges is £169 + £69 + £90 = £328.

So why am I using Netatmo rather than a more "traditional" system? Mostly because of it's integration with SmartPhones, and the fact that the data is presented in a really nice format on the Netatmo webpage and apps. In addition, it integrates with the weather software app that I normally use (WeatherPro).

Finally (and I think this is a really nice feature), your data contributes to the Netatmo Weather Map, which is a collection of all of the (global) Netatmo weather stations... a sort of "crowd-sourcing" weather page.

Globally, this looks like this:

... but to give you an idea of what this looks like in London, see this image:

As you can see... there are plenty of weather geeks out there 🙂 . All of the numbers are current recorded temperatures... you can also switch to a rainfall display.

Anyway, a guy called Pierre Lannoy has built a Wordpress plugin, which takes the data from your Netatmo weather station and publishes it on your Wordpress site... hence the fact that I've integrated it here. It's nice to have local details about the weather, rather than relying on weather station data from further afield.

Data which isn't collected by the weather station (e.g. cloudiness, etc) is taken from the OpenWeatherMap service.

Hopefully that's a comprehensive enough explanation! If anyone has any questions about the set-up, or wants some assistance in setting up their own station, let me know.

Hi Mike, just noticed your post on the forum. Good work. Its a shame we couldn't convince the ROG to setup something similar, or are they somewhere on the map? I was trying to see whether there was a contributor up here on the hill but it appears not.  It would interesting to know how/if the climate up here is that much different from what it is down there.

I was trying to see whether there was a contributor up here on the hill but it appears not.  It would interesting to know how/if the climate up here is that much different from what it is down there.

Yes, it is a shame that there is nothing in your vicinity. The nearest is Welling or on the other side of the hill, but nothing "up top".

Its a shame we couldn’t convince the ROG to setup something similar, or are they somewhere on the map?

No, they don't have a system... and I agree, it would be good if they did. It's really easy to set up, though I understand that the wi-fi at the ROG can be a bit flaky, so there might be some issues there.