So, I am lucky to work for a diverse set of customers. One client is Primex, a wireless device and auto-synchronizing clock and weather station device company. The division that is the leading seller of weather products and related devices is called Accurite
As a father, educator, hobbyist and part-time geek, this was my best hooliday gift. It started with the Acurite 5-in-1 weather station and an internet bridge. The weather station is a compact device with 5 different measuring sensors in it and is the size of a shoebox. I took the device out of the box and bolted it down to my deck railing at the farthest point from the house and 15 feet off the ground. I put the batteries in the display and I was off to the races collecting and displaying the most recent, by the second, wind speed, direction, barometric pressure, rainfall data along with calculated wind-chill, dew point and 4 hour to 5 day forecast. Now we dont leave the house without checking the weather display.
The second and very fun part of the system is an internet bridge that send the data directly to an iPad App and custom web-page (http://mybackyardweather.com) that displays a current dashboard of the data from my weather station. Furthermore, I connected my weather system, through the internet bridge to the Weather Underground, a website that provides weather data from over 22,000 personal weather systems along with the National Weather Service and airport weather reporting systems. When you go to weather underground you see: David's Weather Center in Warren, NJ.
Oh yes.. and Acurite and Weather Underground both have iPad and Android apps to monitor the weather from those devices in addition to your own personalized web pages.
So Why have My Own Weather Station???
If you know New Jersey, it is full of hills, valleys, beaches (at sea level) and mountains 1,000 ft. +. The reality is that the weather in Green Brook, down 850+ ft from our town has different weather than our home less than 5 miles away. And in many cases, our weather patterns remind me of when I lived in Boston where the mantra was "if you don't like the weather.... wait a minute."
What I am finding is that there are more reasons than just fun to have your own weather station... namely:
- Seeing the temperature related to our house and town which can vary from the weather reported in Newark, Plainfield or other National Weather service sites...
- Knowing how windy it is can be helpful. Launching rockets on a windy day is tough or flying a kite with no wind?
- Is it raining and do I need umbrella? (I guess I could look outside... but I can know exactly how much rain has fallen today or in a specific period).
- What is the dew point? Ok, so I am an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer... knowing the dew point is helpful to know if humidity will freeze up on my telescope or camera
- Getting the right gear for flyfishing..
- Knowing what the road conditions are like in my neighborhood (Icy or not).
- Being the only one in Warren, NJ with a personal weather station :-).
I intend to add more devices such as the temperature in our second refrigerator to know if the motor is failing or not. We will also put one of these at our beach house to keep an eye out for conditions there.
So look for my weather station on wunderground.com and let me know what you think.
Here is the current information from my weather station.
