Introduction

This site has information about, and readings from, my automatic weather station based in the Myland area of Colchester, Essex, UK. For more information about it, see below. For the readings, click on the links.

Statistics

2009
January   February   March   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

2008
January   February   March   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

2007
January   February   March   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

2006
January   February   March   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

2005
January   February   March   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

2004
August   September   October   November   December   Year Summary

Current Conditions

Station Records

The Weather Station

The weather station is installed in Myland, Colchester: 51° 54' North, 0° 54' East, 40m above sea level. It is a LaCrosse WS 2500 and I have added a PC interface. The sensors are mainly solar powered and communicate to the base station by radio transmission. It was installed on 20/7/2004 with a barometric pressure sensor added 18/8/2004. The components of it are as follows:

The main display unit for the weather station receives the sensors wirelessly. I do not use this to connect to the PC, although it can do that.
The temperature and humidity sensor is the WS 2500-25. I have installed this in a home-made Stevenson screen.
I built the Stevenson screen from plant pot trays using a design adapted from one I found on the web, here. I have altered it slightly though by using 2 trays together at each layer to give better insulation from the sun's radiation. Additionally I had to make a small (north facing) opening from a clear tray to allow some light in to charge the solar cells. I have added a ground temperature sensor, the ELV S2001 IA. Both are seen here
The rain gauge is the WS 2500-16. This uses the "tipping bucket" method and again has wireless transmission and is solar powered.
I installed the wind and brightness sensors on the TV aerial so that they would be un-obstructed by buildings etc. The wind sensor is the WS 2500-16 and the brightness sensor is the WS 2500-19. The software I use takes the brightness value and uses time of day, date and latitude to determine sunshine time.
For barometric pressure, I use the ELV S2000 ID sensor. This also captures indoor temperature and humidity.
I use the ELV WS-2510 PC to receive all the data and store it. I then upload this to the PC periodically. Normally, I have the receiver set to record at 5 minute intervals and it will store about 3 days worth of data like this without needing to be uploaded.
For software, I use the excellent WsWin software. This produces a number of reports etc. and is highly customisable. It doesn't have an FTP routine to automatically upload data, so I wrote my own in Visual Basic.
I upload data to the Weather Underground data exchange and send data to the Climatological Observers Link.

If you have any comments, or want any information, please send me an  email at steve@tijou.co.uk.

This page was last updated 5 April 2007.

Click to see my home page.