Sandaysoft

Hi there,
I am looking to buy a weather station for my Father in law and wondered if anyone could give me some info on a couple of models.
Maplin have a N96GY on offer at the moment, which after looking through some posts seems to be a Fine Offset WH1080, and seems to be a popular unit.
Could anyone tell me if you can set the data collection to 12 or 24 hours? The reason for this is my Father in law is out of the country for up to 3 months at a time and needs mainly min max temp, rain fall etc during this time.
Is there any way to set the unit to collect 3 months of data before download to a PC?
If not what is the maximum number of days data that could be collected.
I have also looked at the Nexus weather station which can be set to collect data on a 12/24 hr basis, but at around three times the cost of the Maplin unit is it worth the extra money?
I have downloaded both manuals but neither seem to show how to set up the time intervals. Any help would be appreciated.
Sorry for the barrage of questions but this is all new to me
Thanks for your time and any other comments on either of the two units would be greatfully recieved.

Hi,
I am also a newbie at this. I have just purchased the WH1080 model on offer from Clas Ohlson for £49.99. If you spend over £50.00 you get £10 off, so I bought some batteries, and the whole lot came to £43.98. I cannot really help you with your other questions, as I have not set up my station yet.
Martin

Hi,

I believe the Maplin kit is (still) the 1081 which does NOT have the automatic-setting Radio-Controlled Clock and uses the 434 MHz transmitter band. The kit from Clas Ohlson is the 1080 which has a RCC and uses 868 MHz, but IMHO neither feature is sufficiently important to make the other a complete deal-breaker.

Both have a memory of about 4,000 time-records so with the default 30 minutes logging interval it should record for at least 2 months (but not quite 3). I can't find a reference in the User Manual but the logging interval can be set as low as 5 minutes (which I use for mine) and it seems to be possible to set it to 60 minutes via the Easyweather software. The specification for the similar 3080 (which additionally records solar data) says "The basestation can store upto 4080 record sets. Each record holding readings for all the sensors. Variable sample rate in minutes from 5 to 240" (which could well be the case for the 1080/1), however this is definitely WRONG for the 3080 because it stores more data items (using the the same size memory) so only holds around 3,000 records.

So, you can probably set the 1080/1 to record for at least 3 months (e.g. using a 60 mins logging interval) BUT note that Cumulus is not intended/supported to use a logging interval of an hour or more. So if you want to use Cumulus (and it's certainly better than the Easyweather software) you may be limited to 30 mins logging and a maximum log of just under 3 months between downloads.

Cheers, Alan.

Hi Alan,
thanks very much for your very detailed answer, I'm so glad I found this forum.
It looks like the Maplin unit will do the trick, I'm quite tempted to get one for myself.
You say that cumulus does not accept data collection if the time interval is more than one hour, does that mean that if you set the main unit to collect data say every 40 mins, cumulus would accept it?
Also is there any benefit of 868 over 434 Mhz?
I should say that the majority of the time he would have it set to 5 mins as you do, but change it to a higher value when he is away from home.
Thanks once again for all your help.
PS
Thanks for your post Martin, good luck with your new station and I hope Martins post was as helpful to you as it was to me.

Cumulus doesn't prevent you setting the station logger interval to any value you want, and while Cumulus is actually running, the station logger interval isn't relevant anyway. The problem comes when it starts up and is downloading the logger data (to catch up with the data it's missed) and it has to work out when a new day has started. If you set the interval to more than an hour, it may have difficulty doing this.

I'd also question the value of data logged at long time intervals; the logger entries are snapshots of the data at the time the entry is written - the longer the interval, the more likely you are to miss the highs and lows. But of course, some data is better than none at all, if you need to leave the station for that long.

_________________
Steve
Sanday Weather
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Hi,

Cumulus (currently) supports logging intervals of only 1 (for Davis stations I believe), 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 minutes, and I think the Fine Offset hardware perhaps 5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 120 and 240 (I can't find a list at the moment, the software has a parameter box to enter digits so one has to see what's accepted). There may be some more info about how Cumulus behaves with "incorrect" logger intervals in the Wiki, FAQ or the Forum itself (and now I see Steve has given an answer).

A number of different types of device now use 434 MHz transmissions so there is some risk of interference, but they all should transmit for quite short periods (FO use about 50ms every 48 seconds or 0.1% duty cycle) so it shouldn't normally be a problem. 868 MHz is probably not as "congested" (yet) but the higher frequency is more likely to be absorbed in walls, etc. so communications might not be much better (in practice it seems to be mainly FO's limited Quality Control that determines the maximum range).

Cheers, Alan.

Hi Allan,
I will check out the wiki as you advised.
As you say setting a longer interval for the logger is not ideal. I'm sure while he is home it will be set to 5 mins, but at least he has the option to set around 30 mins if he has to go away for an extended period.
Thanks once again for all your help, the weather Station will be a Xmas gift so once it's up and running I'll let you all know how we're getting on. Until then I'll probably be lurking around here to pick up a few more tips!
No more questions for now
Cheers Dave

Hi guys.

Watrs and Stanton have the FOSH 8681 here ...

http://www.wsplc.com/acatalog/W-8681_Wi ... ation.html

Its £80 and worth every penny.

have had this unit running for3 years now .. http://www.philcdav.webspace.virginmedi ... ather.html
and almost fault free. You will have problems with lost contact, spiders, and loose cables but thats aout it.

The kit is Chinese and sadly, sometimes comes with PCB faults but they usually show within the guarantee period.

But, i reccomend it at this price and am sure pop will have hours of fun, abeit frrustrating when learning how it all works and what to do with the data.

Good luck

_________________
Phil - G0DOR

Hi Phil,
thanks for your reply, sorry it's been so long but have been away for a while.
We have already purchached the unit from Maplins, but if we have any problems with it I will check out the FOSH 8681.
It's nice to find a friendly and helpful forum for a change!
Thanks once again and will let you all know how we get on.
Cheers
Dave

Hi,
i am about to start setting up my WH1080 weather station. I am planning to mount it on the garden shed. It will be about 10ft above the shed, and I was planning to site the transmitter unit under some shade, I have made a stevenson screen which I may use. Does anyone have any tips on the setting up of the WH1080? I am a complete newbie at weather stations. Thanks
Martin

Hi,
I have finally set up my weather station. Every thing appears to be okay, apart from the wind speed, wind direction and rain gauge. At the moment outside in my location there is very little wind, wind speed indicator is moving, but is not registering any speed on the display. Wind direction is not showing anything, and the rain gauge is showing rain, but we have not had any rain for a while. Weather station is a fine offset wh1080. Thanks
Martin

Hi Martin,

If it's continually registering lots of rain(fall) then you may have the two cable/plugs interchanged into the transmitter unit.

Otherwise, the plug connections (or sometimes the quality of soldering of the sockets) can be problematic. Not easy to test, but try rocking the plugs in the sockets and see if any rain or wind is reported on the console or by Cumulus.

Cheers, Alan.

Thanks Alan, I will check that.
Martin

Hi,
Problem solved, I had wind and rain plugs connected the wrong way round!! Thanks again Alan for your help.
Martin

Hi,
Weather station is now up and running okay. One problem is the DCF time, as the time signal is in Germany, time is always set at +1 ahead of gmt. I keep setting it manually, but the time signal keeps correcting the time. Would I have to set time zone as European time? (one hour ahead of gmt) Thanks
Martin