Safe Speed Forums

I have just got an oregon one but it appears to be mental. It isn't connected to the temperature sensor I have properly and doesn't give a outside temp display (I know this as I took the battery out and it said it was still connected and still no temp reading) I have tried all 3 channels on the sensor. Tried it both inside and outside. Reset everything a gazillion times. The most it has managed was to correctly read the temp for a few hours yesterday. During the evening it lost the reading and apart from briefly telling me it was 23.9 in a 21c room it has lost it again.

How do I know the base station isn't merrily trying to talk to another 433 Mhz wireless device?! Is there some magic diagnostic mode I can put the base station into that might tell me more about what is up with it? Is the way it is behaving a sign that something else is interfering (could just give my parents as they live near unsophisticated old people that don't have wireless routers etc) The place I bought it from tend to charge and return you the thing if it isn't actually faulty so I want to make sure I have tried everything to make it work.

I'm probably going to send it back as Maplin are doing one for similar money with more features and with an outdoor sensor that is actually weatherproof....

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/satpics/latest_uk_ir.html
There are links for forecasts and weather records down the side, but ignore the climate change links!!

All for free and from the comfort of your leather office chair!

I actually got mine from Lidl for less than £15 - although I think the last time they had them in they had gone up in price.
Works OK except the outdoor sensor is in a sheltered corner and I have not bee and moved it yet despite my every intention!

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Metoffice forecasts are quite often completely wrong, which is why I bought the weather station!

Any of the stations on http://weather.Atomwide.com near you?

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Nope. None at all unfortunately.

The link I showed has the infra red satellite pictures for 24 hours, and the other links for barometric pressure and temperature and can give enough figures to do your own forecasts if you know how to interpret them.

I guess it depends on where you are if the information is pertinent - Windermere and Staveley are only 4.5 miles apart, yet have completely different weather.
The met office figures work for Windermere - not for Staveley - I guess it has a microclimate caused by the physical topography.

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

I think the BBC weather for my postcode gets its information from Leek. High up in the Moorlands and near to the wettest place in the Midlands! I'm sure there used to be a weather point much closer but it seems to have disappeared. It's the other side of a load of hills so it can't be right for here.

Being lazy I just want a thing that tells me whether it's going to rain today or not really

SO did it rain then ? Was it worth the equipment for the day ?

I find that the local Port Authority (Invergordon) :http://www.invergordonweather.co.uk/ has a very good immediate real time weather station that is pretty accurate - but it doesn't predict or show what is coming - I tend to use the bbc and metoffice. I also like the isobars off the bbc that help to tell me what is going to happen ...

I hope to get a weather station - particularly the wind speed device. The last one Paul did was ripped off the garage roof a few years ago ! I forget what the speed reading was before it was thrown half way down the field but it was high!
Invergordon often sees 139mph !

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

This new one has been showing lightly cloudy and in that time it has been cloudy, clearish over night and was wet and rubbish this morning. The display has been showing clear symbol since last night. The sky is starting to go a bit blue in places so it is clearing up now. It has mainly been showing light cloud but it has been heavy cloud with rain for most of that time.

If it is showing a symbol for what it thinks the weather will be in exactly 12 hours time then I'll have to start taking notes of when it changes. It would be easier if it had a now and next developed from predictions so it remembers what it said for the next 12 hours and showed that at the time of when the prediction referred!

You can at least adjust for altitude with this one (only 170M above sea level here. Thought it was higher!) and it has an option when you first get it going to set current weather symbol which is better than the other one which didn't.

It lost the sensor too randomly last night just like the other one did. It got it back though. No idea what caused it to go away.

Maplin are doing a full weather station with windy thing on a pole quite cheaply at the moment. It doesn't wind direction though. I think I found an oregon one with that for £80 but if it is as unreliable as the oregon one I'm sending back you don't want it. I think a pro one is the best answer as they'll be designed to take a battering more than domestic ones. They're about £300 though for the ones with full on software etc.

I wonder if you could build your own wind speed monitor?? A few sturdy plastic cups on a cross shape, stuck on a pole maybe with a IR device that would measure how fast the beam was broken and calculate wind speed from that? Could run a really, really , really long cable all down the tower and downstairs and have an lcd display showing current windspeed

There's an app for that !

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Paul bought the basics and it allowed for your own programming. Paul had all sorts of features and it had it's own little monitor and you could read back over the last few days to see what it had been and so gage patterns and learn weather behaviours. We often found that the wind was stronger after sun-up unless there were known storms / fronts sweeping through. I still have all the bits - after an exceptionally strong wind removed it off the garage roof.
I wonder if there is any open source software for it nowadays ?
I'd love to get a new one and have it measure the weather and have a regular recording of it all - be fun and useful!

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

There is. Found something called weather underground network that reads off information from most decent makes of weather station so you can share it. Did also find another free pc software based one. And weather underground do an ethernet doodad so you just plug your console into your broadband router and it updates on t'internet! The proprietary software from Davies et al seems very expensive. The hardware solution from them is a similar price but it means you can set it and forget it as it's just a little linux based thing.

I did find and speak to some of professional weather stations - seem to come in about £600 or so but full PC link and records ... and link to other PC's etc.
I can't go through all the links now as I and the computer are busy but I have a list of all the links...
I did find some bits on ebay at cheaper prices, but not sure if those specific components, actually work together or not.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.