MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I believe an anemometer is what I need - it'll be fixed at home.
Does anyone have one? I'd Google further but I would just end up on the STW equivalent of some weather forum, keep wanting moar functionality, totally losing focus on the aim and end up renting a geostationary satellite.
Print out the Beaufort scale. Look out the window. Boom! accurate to gusting speeds.
Budget?
Netatmo system looks nice but relatively pricey.
We use them at one of the facilities I work at *s****s*, I'll have a look see if there are any which need 'repair' next week.
Small budget, just out of curiosity as it gets chuffing windy up here and wondered how it compared to forecasts for the area.
Cheers Lee 🙂
This for £40 from Maplin should do. http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/wireless-weather-station-n25fr
Or £60 for one that can connect to your PC. http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/black-usb-wireless-touchscreen-weather-centre-n96gy
print off the Beaufort scale, look outside and guess how windy it is. It'll be more accurate than buying anything from maplin.
Jam bo thats hard to do if no trees etc, much easier at sea
OP your most accurate bet would be to buy something meant for a boat perhaps second hand, need 12v power supply
That or just look at xc weather live for somthing nearby
Buy a tree.
Winner 😀
Anything you bolt to the house is going to have a fair degree of inaccuracy built in. Anemometer's want to be in steady air flow and your house will be causing all sort of air disturbances.
A case in point is my old University. It was the tallest buildiing in the surrounding area; a tower block on top of a hill. The uni had several wind turbines installed on the roof - none worked as the air flow was too disturbed to be steady enough to be useful.
Relistically, the Beaufort scale aluded to above is going too be more accurate unless you put a anemometer on top of a large (4x height of house from memory) mast on your house...
Or take up sailing - That teaches you to be able to guage the wind speed by feel after a few years.
If it's gusts you're interested in, the equipment will be quite expensive. The low end weather stations from Oregon Scientific, Lexibook etc. transmit wind readings every 60-80s which will not catch a gust. For gust monitoring you'll need wind speed to be measured and transmitted every 2-3s. This kind of equipment costs £300+.
Cheers Derek, that's good info and in that case, I'm out 🙂
next door neighbour has one attached to a tv ariel on the shed, he likes washing his vauxhall isignificant frequently too
http://www.instructables.com/howto/anemometer/ There are a number of projects on here for varying budgets depending on accuracy and recording
I've got an app for that. It's called Wind Meter, it uses the phone microphone to gauge the speed, and it seems to be as accurate as anything else other than one of those whizzy little hobbies with the vane on the top that the wind blows around.
I think it was free.
Actually, there's a bunch of anemometer apps, Wind Meter is by GoingApps LLC, and there's Wind & Weather Meter by WeatherFlow.
They cost nothing, what's to lose?
I've got a Maplins USB Pro weather station plugged into a Raspberry Pi so you the whole world can see the wind speed (and temps and rainfall) in my garden. Total cost was £100.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ISTIRLIN11
(Instructions for anyone wanting to do this: http://www.weather.dragontail.co.uk/index.php?page=station_setup )
A couple of thoughts:
- I live in a built up area and need a longer pole than my current 10m one, one that goes above the roof line.
- As Starship says, measuring gusts is very difficult. However, a cheap weather station is a start.
And this is the coolest windmap ever:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-21.94,45.17,413
You should definitely plug your satellite into this 🙂