About Personal Weather Stations

In 2007 I was given some money so I could shop for and buy a nice GPS for use in my car as I regularly travel around the state. When the automobile GPS's first came out I bought one and was frustrated by the small screen and illogical directions. I've traveled many of those routes for years and a GPS will to often send me off on a longer route that I would usually take, so I took them back both times I've tried. With money burning a hole in my pocket I ran across something that showed me an online "Personal Weather Station" PWS and I was hooked on it.

You can get into a station for under $300.00 but, nicely built units like a Solar-Powered Rainwise MK III cost just under $1,000.00. You'll need to decide how your going to mount the wind speed, direction mast and temperature /humidity sensors, so $100.00 or so for that plus the software cost a little extra too around $100.00

Our PWS is part of the Weather Underground at www.wunderground.com network. The weather station on my property near Orlando's Dubsdread Golf Course neighborhood. The sensors link back to a radio receiver that has a USB connector that plugs into an old computer I converted to this use only. We use a popular Weather Station (WX) software called Virtual Weather Station to generate the graphics along with collecting the data from the sensors, and NOAA information. It then post them continuously up to the web site every 3 minutes 24/7/365. Sometimes you'll be missing a graphic or two, and sometimes the whole site when the files are being updated, and not accessible to download for a few seconds. The information is also posted on the Weather Underground's PWS web site assigned KFLORLAN52 and seen on the Wondermap of central Florida stations.

We also have a camera mounted in the peak of the garage looking at the unobstructed northern sky right over the golf course. To capture the video and also make time lapse videos of the day's clouds we use Image Salsa and Movie Salsa software . I make the videos every hour and watch the day go by in 60 seconds, BUT I haven't had the time to link them up yet.

We enjoy knowing what the weather was really like at our home. We hope you do too!