Didsbury Alberta Unoffical Weather Station

The new PurpleAir air quality sensor has been live since December.  The sensor has been working very well so far.

check it out here:

Click on the number circle on the map of Didsbury to bring up the data from my sensor. Ignore the legend table on the left side.

The air quality has been very good for the most part but have seen some spikes.  So far the poor air quality days have been due to wood stove smoke or local farm burning cut brushes.  Seen a few days when the southeast winds are blowing that the air quality becomes poor.  Not sure what pollutant is causing this spike.

If heading outside to exercise, it is worth while to check the air quality and then plan according.

Air quality is something we offen take for granted in Canada but our world is becoming more and more polluted. To help monitor air quality I’m added a air quality monitor to my weather station. I live in a valley on the prairies which often has air settling in and getting locked in as winds blow over and trap the air. So I’m curious what the air quality is like. What here for more details. Check out the crowd sourced project at https://www.purpleair.com
Talking about air quality, indoor air quality is also something to be concerned about. Radeon gases trapped in houses is a something that needs more attention. At my place in Didsbury I’ve seen numbers as high of 385Bq/m3 in my living area, basement would be even higher. World Health Organization recommends that levels should be max 100Bq/m3. Canada Health Organization max is 200Bq/m3. Air quality is something we need to look at more to improve the health of our communities.

At about 22:00 July 1,2016 the anemometer was struck by a dime to quarter sized hail (estimate) that broke on of the wind cups right off the unit. Luckily it landed in the yard and I was able to glue it back on. Wind reading are back as of 15:45 July 2, 2016.

So you may have noticed that today’s weather was reporting a much more pleasant temperature of +21 celcius.  Was a nice day, as long as you stayed indoors.

The weather station was having transmission errors and were causing me grief as it was reporting “Low Battery on Station 1”, but a new battery was in and the station was reporting data packets were being received without error, but no outside temperature, outside humidity and rainfall data was being received.

After 8+ hours, the diagnostic screen showed lots of good packets and very few bad packets, but no data was recorded.

The view from WeatherLink Graph showed a lack of data recorded during this time.

I then proceed to verify that the solar panel was charging the super capacitor, which it was (This is what powers the sensor most of the time).  The CR123 backup battery was new (powers the sensor if the super capacitor runs out of power after a long night or cloudy day).  I then checked the main console’s backup battery and found that one of them had corroded, so I replaced the 3 C batteries.  The main console runs on AC power so the batteries are just for power outages.  My previous Oregon Scientific weather station would have transmission errors when the main console batteries were exhausted.  But even with new batteries in the Davis, the problem still existed.

So after some reading online, but still with no really solution, the last thing to try before calling Davis for support was change the transmission channels.  So I changed it to a new channel and things started working correctly again.  The interesting thing is the main console started reporting Channel 1 as possible data after the sensor was changed to the new channel. So I left the console to gather data from Channel 1, but no good or bad packets were received even through it thought something was there.  So the problem now appears to be frequency channel confusion and not a bad battery.  Time will tell.  So as of late this evening, I’ve put the station back outside. Once I’ve verified no more blank data, I’ll then re-enable uploading to Weather Underground.

I sure noticed that I missed the local data today!  Wasn’t sure what to wear outside on my walk.  The Weather Network data was so 1 hour ago and it had cooled off since that report.

Happy weather watching!

Replaced main sensor unit battery again.  Noticed today that the console was reporting a Low Battery on Station 1. Look into the log files, I had 3 outages over the last week from that sensor unit.

This battery was just replaced August 1, 2015.  Luckily I had an extra battery, so I ran out in the -21 Celsius evening and replaced the battery.  The backup battery should last for 8 months without any solar panel assistance, so the batteries I purchased to replace must have been bad batteries.  Hopefully this fixes the issue.

Also noticed that the new batteries for the 24 hour Fan-Aspirated Shield don’t appear to be working that well.  The fan was not running the other day when I checked on the unit, but today 4 hours after dark, the fan was still spinning.  I’ll have to look into this.

Cleaned the anemometer and replaced the backup battery today.  Sensor appears to be in good shape.

Been 3 years since I installed the new weather station and I haven’t done any maintenance on it. So it was long over due.

The 11:30am to 1pm data for outside temp and humidity today will be missing as the sensors were offline.

New batteries for the 24 hour Fan-Aspirated Shield. This should hopefully correct temperature readings as the old batteries were not keeping the fan running 24/7 anymore.

New backup battery for the temperature/humidity/rain collector.

Full cleaning and wipe down for the Intergrated Sensor Suite.

In check the console’s battery and signal reception of the station, I somehow reset the console, so today’s historic data was reset.

Was puzzled why the wind speed was reporting nothing but the plants in the yard where swaying. Looking up at anemometer I found it twisted 45 degrees and all muddy.

Below was a nice mess to clean up

This happen sometime overnight and was corrected by 10:45am.

This has been a first for my weather equipment in the last 9 years.

Enjoy the warm weather!

The new weather station is now broadcasting current weather information to the Internet.

Upload your bookmarks to: http://weather.bluevistaventures.ca/

Currently I’m going to use the Davis WeatherLink website to make the information available.  In the coming days, I’ll start uploading to WUnderground Weather site to provide access to historic data and graphing.  Also WUnderground now has a very nice iPhone and Android app that can display my weather station with forecasts and radar images.  I’ll provide information on setup once this is ready.  I’ve also enabled the skycam image.  This image is uploaded every 5 minutes and is point West NorthWest.
Current Image:

I have plans for additional content and formating of the data which I’ll continue to work on when I have time.

Enjoy – Jeff

There will be some massive disruptions to the live weather conditions over the next few weeks.  The new weather station has arrived and I’m in the process of getting it setup and configured.  This is just in time as the old one which has been in operations since February 2005 has become very brittle.  I was gently cleaning a spider web off the anemometer just last week and ended up breaking one of the wind cups.  Lucky some Crazy Glue fixed it.

After a fair bit of research and consideration about mounting options, I’ve mounted the new anemometer 6+ feet above the roof line with a full 360 degree reading.  Old one was mounted on the fence which had poor reading from the south.

I’ve gone with a satellite mounting bracket with a PVC extension tube with a wood insert.  Didn’t want to put holes in the roof and didn’t want to create a lightning rod. I’m monitoring the setup as there is a little bit of sway in winds over 20km/h.  The base is very stable up till about 3-4 feet in height.  Currently the new wind reading have had better accuracy.

I’m still working on placement of the rain bucket and temperature module.   I’m also testing a new “skycam” setup and will hopefully have a eye to the sky with the new site.

The current Live Weather Conditions site is still displaying the data from the old station.

Stay tuned, Cheers Jeff