North Staffs Weather - Audley

About North Staffordshire Weather Station - Audley

Hardware

Conditions at Audley are recorded by a personal weather station bought from Maplin, the WH1081 is manufactured by Fine Offset Electronics but has many other incarnations around the world. Sensors positioned 5 metres from the house measure temperature; outside humidity and rainfall; the wind speed and direction sensors are attached to my TV aerial and all data is transmitted wirelessly every 48 seconds to an indoor base station. The base station also records barometric pressure; indoor temperature and humidity. The webcam in use is a Microsoft LifeCam Studio.

Software

The weather station and website is powered by Cumulus software, writen by Steve Loft. This uses a mathematical formula called an algorithm, which was developed by barometer makers and is thought to be around 90 per cent accurate, especially when read at 9 am.

Cumulus is more sophisticated and elegant than the program provided with the station and in addition to the measurements taken by the station, it calculates the average temperature; wind chill, heat index; dewpoint; temperature trend; cloud base; rainfall rate; 10-minute average wind speed; 10-minute average wind direction; wind run and pressure trend.

The webcam is powered by YAWCAM

Site Information

Audley weather station has been recording data since 25th December 2008. During that time I have made a few modifications and general improvements to the positioning of the various sensors.
The anemometer and wind direction indicator are attached to my TV aerial.

The rain gauge is about 2 meters above ground level, and the temperature / humidity sensor is housed in a Stevenson Screen at 1.3 meters.
The webcam looks directly East.