Ultimeter update rate

[jbrooks987]

I've been wanting to play with the Ultimeter Pro rain gauge, but it's a tad steep, and I have some questions about how it would fare during the "dry and dusty" season in this part of the country.  The dust bowl has never completely left.

[skyewright]

I've been wanting to play with the Ultimeter Pro rain gauge, but it's a tad steep, and I have some questions about how it would fare during the "dry and dusty" season in this part of the country.

At the bottom of this page there are links to 2 doc files.
In part of the one about testing it says "direct the water stream down the side of the funnel, not onto the screen" (my emphasis). So that sounds like there's a screen/filter of some sort?
I guess we could really do with hearing from someone who's tried one for real...

[weatherbee]

I have a heated one.  It works great.  There are a couple of screens in it.  You have to remove the bottom screen in the winter.  I've never had a problem with bugs.  If it did get dirty it is very easy to clean.

[PHB]

I really appreciate the input.

Ultimeter is cabled; a drawback at a distance, but around the house and when you need to heat your rain gauge and anemometer it is a plus. Another advantage with cable is that the neighbor’s micro is out of the equation, as well as their wireless phones and all the rest. 

Ultimeter seems to have been a bit overlooked. The reports from people who have Ultimeter gear are encouraging.

Even if I live in Scandinavia I like their attitude: “We are NOT a company who simply imports goods and resells them.  We are a manufacturer! We will NOT be found on the shelves of Wal-Mart.  Ever.”

[rnammenh]

Another very happy Ultimeter 2100 owner here.  I have the Peer Bros. heated pro rain gauge and the heated anemometer and a few configuration extras that put me a little over $1100 US.  It has been working fantastic for a little over a year.  I have it set up in data logger mode which pushes out a little more that two records a second.  I did have an incident where a cup broke off the anemometer during a wind storm (apparently from flying debris? - not sure).  But they replaced the whole anemometer with no questions asked.  I was back up and running in two days.  Their customer support is phenomenal.

[PHB]

The Peer Bros. Ultimeter 2100 is looking increasingly tempting.

two records a second

That is impressive!

[rnammenh]

My reference to > 2 records/second is based on the "Data Received" counter in WD (I assume it increases by 1 for each record received?).  If that is the case, my real count is 2.88 records/second.  This is based on the data counter currently reading 2008516 and calculating 697328 seconds expiring since my last reboot (8 days, 1 hour, 42 minutes, 8 seconds ago).  To answer your original question if WD can consume this amount of data, I really don't know, maybe Brian limits it internally or something but I can tell you I've never had it freeze up yet....and I'm only using an old P3 dual proc 1GHz machine with only 1GB Ram and Server 2003 R2 w/SP2.

BTW, I fat fingered the r, I actually meant Peet Bros.

[weatherbee]

Peet has great customer service.  The only problem I had was with their heated anemometer.  The first one lasted 11 months and the second lasted 12 months.  On Peets advice I got a unheated anemometer which has never been frozen and is on 3 years of service.  All their other equipment has been perfect for 5 years. 

[PHB]

What went wrong with the heated anemometer?

The vane or anemometer I have now freezes up almost every time there is rain or snow and the temperature is falling to below 0 C.

I plan to place mine on top of an antenna on the roof. Heights are not my strong point, so I kind of would like to go there as seldom as possible.

5 years is an impressive period.

***

Originally I just wanted some really local weather for the gardening. Then I got hooked.

I guess it is kind of good “training” getting a relatively cheap station to start with. When you get the stuff there is a whole host of issues of placement, installation, software and so on. A lot of those issues just can’t be predicted without experience (like how delicious cables seem to be to dogs, cats, mice, magpies and neighbors or the remarkable problems you can have with wireless).

But when you get that experience you also begin to see the limitation of the cheaper stations and want to go for something more solid.

[weatherbee]

What went wrong with the heated anemometer?/quote]
My guess is the heat was hurting the reed switch.  I'm not sure but I went through 2 in 2 years and even Peet's customer service said to try an unheated one.  I've had no freeze ups (which I did with my Oregon Scientific weather station) but I wouldn't guarantee it.
My anemometer is on a 10 foot mast which I reach off my 36 foot ladder.  I'm not fond of heights and I haven't had to get on the ladder for 3 years, so I'm happy.

[rnammenh]

Yeah, I always had concern about keeping the heating element on for extended cold periods and the forgetting to unplug it.  My solution was to configure my Home Automation system to watch WD's temp and turn on the heater whenever the temp gets below 38 degrees F.  So far so good.