Weather in Cambridge UK - graphs and data from weather station at CB4 1AA Mitcham's Corner

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03:59 BST: Temperature: 11.9'C, Wind: NW, 4 mph (ave), 8 mph (gust), Humidity: 91%, Rain (hourly) 0.0 mm, Pressure: 1016 hPa, falling slowly

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Hardware / Software

Weather station is a Maplin USB Touchscreen Wireless Weather Forecaster which was £69.99 when purchased in July 2009. This is made by Fine Offset Electronics Co.,LTD. in China, and is also known as WH1080, WH-1080PC, W-8681, WH1081 and various other names, but those should be the most common. Jim Easterbrook's rain sensor repair page is good at explaining how the rain sensor works.

Host machine is a Soekris net5501-70 running Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx LTS Server connected via USB to the station display.

Software is pywws by Jim Easterbrook (small world - another BBC KW person)

Notes on data updates / resolution / quantization

The wireless transmitter transmits a set of data every 48 seconds, the data stored by the receiver unit consists of temperature and humidity to a 0.1'C and 1% RH resolution, wind and gust speed stored at a 0.1m/s resolution, but analysis of the discrete values stored suggests that the data is quantized in intervals of 0.34m/s before being rounded to the nearest 0.1m/s and stored, and direction - which has values for 16 compass points, although the usual 8 compass points are far more often stored as while the transmitter has support for 16 compass points, the reed switch / magnet sensing zones in the wind vane was designed for an 8 point setup, and rainfall with a 0.3mm resolution. The pressure is stored with a 0.1 millibar resolution, and appears to be measured off of the receiver / display unit, rather than the external weather station - 0.1 millibar change will be measured in a height change of 3 feet, so best to keep the receiver in one place.

Weather station location

Latitude / Longitude: 52°12'52.38" N, 00°07'33.16" E

Altitude: 25 metres / 80 feet above mean sea level.

Address: Chesterton Road, Cambridge, England, UK / United Kingdom.

Photos of the installation

Todo list

Todo - figure out if the gust max from a stored 5 min interval is actually the highest gust sent to the receiver out of the 48 secondly updates, or if it's simply the last one

Todo - figure out the best way of logging all the 48 secondly updates and timestamping them as accurately as possible - code from programs on this page might be useful

Todo - feed data to weather undergound, figure out if rapid fire updates or normal rate updates are a better idea

Todo - find accurate nearby stations with 0.1 millibar pressure resolution and verify mine is as consistent as possible with them

Todo - max %RH measured so far has been 94%, find out if this is underreading and what kind of correction factors might be useful

Todo - store data in RRD files and make data easily exportable for people to download

Other weather stations in and around Cambridge

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, on Madingley road, to the West of the City.

Near Histon and Roseford Road, to the North of the City, another Maplin Wireless Weather Station.

Weather Underground, lists several weather stations in the Cambridge area, the closest of which are also below.

Weather Underground - Kings Hedges, Hawkins Road - between Campkin / Milton / Arbury Road. Stations own site.

Weather Underground - Histon, to the North of the City. Another Maplin Wireless Weather Station.

Weather Underground - Great Shelford, to the South of the City. Stations own site - warning, flash.

Cambridge Airport EGSC to the East of the City METAR history from pme.gov.sa.