Weather Station and Wind

[Grady Boyce]

Hello all,

We have a Boltwood II system and it isn't very reliable, especially in terms of wind. What do you all use for winds and weather? We need a robust solution and can't find it.

Thanks, Grady

[Bob Denny]

Did SRO install their new Boltwood III (Alpaca)?

[Grady Boyce]

I don't know.

[Bob Denny]

OK, I a m hoping some people who actually have sensors like AAG, Boltwood III, etc. will pipe up here.

[Neil Chase]

I use the AAG to cover emergencies just in case of bad weather rolling in, but I mainly pick clear nights for imaging.

I say this just to clarify I don't rely on it for remote observatory observation mine is at the bottom of the garden.

I've added a photo from the storms we have this evening and you can see the cloud and rain detection coincide.

You can select overcast and cloudy as unsafe conditions and any of the rain levels as unsafe.
I've not checked how quick the detection times are just that it detects the cloud and shows rain when raining.

The cloud detection uses an IR sensor so reads the sky temperature. This varies during the year so in summer clear may be a reading of -18 deg whereas now in winter -18 would be high light cloud and -24 would be clear.
This is the same for cloud, can be 4 deg or 7 depending on the conditions.
These values don't tend to change from night to night I can usually go a few weeks with out adjusting them - sometimes i miss some high cloud and have to throw the subs.

This means you have to adjust the limits during the year to coincide with the best seeing conditions. The high.cloud kind of shows up as the line isn't quite straight and fluctuates slightly so can be detected as clear.
I don't have a wind sensor as I don't use the observatory if there is a chance of high wind and here you can tell from the weather reports.

So it is a good cheap solution with a few issues.
It has never failed in the years, i forget how many, ive had it.
It's the first version but the only difference is they changed the rain sensor for i presume, I don't know if it's better, a better one or more current.

Just another bit of info, I don't get snow here, it's -3 at the very worst and rain and wind off the Atlantic (northern Spain west coast)
So I can't tell you how it is in the snow...the rain sensor does have a heater though (it's part of how it works)
In summer the AAG gets to 50deg during the day and can be 20s at night. Winter is 8-20 during the day (20 is a good day with wind from the south) and at night -3 to 2 when clear (these are air temps not sky temps - sorry for the confusion)

It won't cover all your doubts but will give you an idea as to how the AAG is..... I'll now probably buy the ****** wind monitor�� I don't need it but I'm a bit of a geek (goes to look up price)

CURRENT VERSION IMPROVEMENTS ( on my original, just checked the website)

1. Better capacitive sensor that is valid for any meteorological condition
2. you can choose a hydreon bucket tipping sensor instead as the rain sensor but ut has the negative of not working with snow.
3. Pressure and humidity are now included as an option in the device.

I can't comment on if there is any improvement to the cloud detection algorithm sorry.

[Neil Chase]

To save you looking it up:

The AAG anomometer has an accuracy of 1km/h from 3-15km/h. and 3% up to a maximum range of 180.

As.with all these sensors it needs to be positioned correctly, best not to put it in the garage out of the rain😜

[Neil Chase]

To save you looking it up:

The AAG anomometer has an accuracy of 1km/h from 3-15km/h. and 3% up to a maximum range of 180.

As.with all these sensors it needs to be positioned correctly, best not to put it in the garage out of the rain😜

Just bought the anemometer... I'm very weak willed.

[Grady Boyce]

Thank you for all of this.

[Niklas Storck]

I have had AAG Clodwatcher for four years now. It works perfectly in northen Sweden, close (80 meters) to the Baltic sea. We have temperatures ranging frrom -20 to +35 (Celsius) and a lot of snow and some salt water blowing in from the sea (It has a salinity of about 0.5 %). It have worked well until it was burned in a thunder storm. I had to buy a new one. The anemometer works fine.

[Dick Berg]

Hi Grady,

Here's another approach. There's a university group my son is working for who are observing remotely from Dark Sky New Mexico. They use Try the Best Weather API for Free (tomorrow.io) [that's a link to their website] to manage their weather data and predictions. I have not personally looked at this site more than just to browse around it. You can try it for free, and there is a free version with limited "calls," but this is not free in the long run if you want a lot of data. It's an alternative.

Here's the first sentence of their "documentation:" "The Tomorrow.io REST Weather API is organized in a RESTful, stable endpoint structure, administered over HTTPS response codes and authentication. The weather API has predictable URLs, request query and body parameters, and JSON-encoded responses.

If you're satisfied with one call every three minutes (20 per hour, 260 per 13 hour night), this could work.