www.bom.gov.au/lam/glossary/beaufort.shtml

I bought one of these for $119 off the 'bay: wireless weather station
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Wireless-touch-screen-Weather-Station-w-PC-software-NEW_W0QQitemZ320513021304QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_Gadgets?hash=item4aa0109578

With free or donationware software I've set up this site: crafers weather
members.ozemail.com.au/~storerfamily/weather/

You can see a picture of the setup on my roof under the "sensors" menu item at the bottom.

It's possible to make one from a bike speedo, last time I did it cost me $20 from Dick Smith. But the one I made was a bit clunky, too big to hand hold, (it had 4 soup ladles for the impeller) but fine on the roof.

OceanBlue64 said...

I got a cheap handheld one off ebay - $25 and its fine for what I need. Now I dont have to ask Red what size sail to rig Even has temp as well so I can justify bitching about how cold it is. Not sure how long it will last but at that price, if it lasts more than a season I will be wrapped

been that long since i sailed with you I've forgotten what sails you've got anyway!

Mobydisc said...
So all this weather station equipment for about $120? Thats excellent. What sort of software do you use to update the webpage and is it difficult to set up?

Well yes, although I noticed that the ebay one I linked only went for $91.00 including delivery.

That's all you need to spend for the basic set up, but I then added a roof mounted webcam so I can replay the last 24 hours. That cost extra for the webcam, housing and slideshow software to replay old images.

The software is Cumulus: http://sandaysoft.com/products/cumulus which you can download and use for free. I have since made a donation, but that's up to you.

The guy who wrote it, Steve, has a forum to support it: sandaysoft.com/forum/ where the vast majority of people use this type of weather station ("fine offset" is the brand name).

So long as you have web space that you can ftp to, its trivially easy to set up just by following the instructions on his website. My ISP provides 1Gb website space as a part of the deal which is more than enough. Since then I have started making my own modifications to the pages using XML and HTML and help from that forum, none of which I knew about before starting this.

(you also get this automatically updating banner that you can add to your sig )
members.ozemail.com.au/~storerfamily/weather/banner.php

Got one from O/S on ebay a couple of years ago for $39, now still advertised a lot cheaper, and it does the job fine.

Durks said...

I love toys

Anyone know anything about anemometers, which ones are good, what I should pay etc. I've decided I'm pretty cr%p at guesstimating

You mean gustimating don't you?

Seriously though, I use my nose and my ears. I turn my head from side to side narrowing down until I get equal wind noise in each ear. This then determines that the wind is coming from the direction my nose is pointing.

The volume of the wind noise in each ear tells me if it is worth getting the land yacht out of the boot of the car. That only comes with practice.