New up and coming weather station, 'Weather Flow'

Changing the power requirements must be much better than getting incorrect data for precipitation?

Hit the pre-order button out of curiosity and get:


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Isn’t just possible to add an power-plug to the thing what measure precip so those who need the heating just can add the power as some kind of option? The ability to get accurate precip-measurements every day of the year are a MUST.

One thing i don’t understand is (this applys to others too), why first build a station and then ask “what do you think about it?” instead of FIRST ask what the real users wants and THEN build the station based on that info? Here is the reason for why we still runs 10+ years old Davises as “best whats available for resonable price”…

I’m not sure, but this may be a function of crowd-funding requirements ???

I think many are missing the target audience for this station. The vast majority of consumers is not interested in the water equivalent of snow. What would be of more interest to the majority is an accurate way to measure snow depth.

Davis Pro owners are in a different class, they’ve already spend upwards of $1K on a system. In reality, what percentage of Davis Pro owners actually have heaters on their station?

Sorry if be rude but that answer sounds like from one what NOT gets snow 6+ months of the year (FL = Florida?).
If want measure accurate precip 24/7/365 are the heater a must north of say 55

@DougW: Not sure why you’re getting that warning - igg.me is Indiegogo’s URL-shortening service. Here’s the full URL it should expand to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/weatherflow-smart-weather-stations/x/11673815

@weatherrc: It’s certainly possible to create a heated snow collector, it’s just not part of what these initial home weather stations do. Hopefully we’ll add a device that measures snow in the future.

Thanks again for all the feedback - keep it coming!

David

You shouldn’t assume anything, you what they say about those that do :slight_smile: I lived in Michigan/Indiana for 60 years of my life, close to Lake Michigan putting up with the lake effect snows every winter. I never once wanted to know the water equivalent of the snow. Nor have I ever known anyone personally that has ever wondered. What I always wondered was how much new snow we got. A yardstick nailed to my fencepost told me that. Yes, I’ve had a weather station for 20 years, 15 of them in Michigan.

I dare say that they percentage of users that want to know is a very small fraction of the total consumer base. If the unit doesn’t fit your needs, use something else. Don’t berate those that don’t need it or don’t care.

I disagree with that conclusion. Almost all people that I know with a weather station want to measure precipitation all year. What’s the purpose of measuring precipitation only a few months a year? Statistics is an important part of my web site and without the possibility to measure precipitation half the year nobody would be interested in the statistics!

I’ll just answer that, at least in the US, very seldom is the water equivalent of snow ever reported on a weather report. Just look at all of the major weather reporting services, NOAA, WU, Weather, Accuweather, Intellicast, etc. None of them have a spot to show water equivalent unless you dig deep into the back pages.

IMHO what is much more important is accurate rain reporting, that is of interest to the vast majority of users. What will be interesting is how well Weather Flow’s hepatic rain gauge reports rainfall. We know that the Davis tipping bucket gauge can be inaccurate, mainly at higher rain rates. We can also get false tips with any vibration that is induced by the wind. It’s also not uncommon to have false tips in the mornings due to dew collecting in the funnel. Since Weather Flow has a testing site in FL they can hopefully get the programming right and can solve this problem.

While we can get high rates here in FL (this month has already had 5 days with periodic rain rates from 5" to 10" per hour) the worse rainfall I have ever seen is when I spent a winter in the deserts of Texas. A “gully washer” came through and dropped 5" of rain in 20 minutes! Some of the locals had kayaks out hitting the rapids that formed in the normally dry washes! Was too funny to see kayaks running rapids in the desert!

I agree! Measuring snow depth is important if you plan outdoor activities such as skiing or sledding. This is probably of more interest to the general public than the water equivalent, but it really shouldn’t be when snow removal is contemplated. Where I live we can have light fluffy snow when snowfalls occur at temperatures well below freezing, but wet heavy snows occur when the temperature is slightly above freezing at the start of the snowfall after which the temperature drops to below freezing. Often there is freezing rain that precedes the wet heavy snow making footing/driving treacherous. If 1’ of snow contains 2" or so of water equivalent you can bet that removing it is going to be very taxing on men and machines. On the other hand 1’ of snow that contains 0.2" of water equivalent is relatively easy to remove.

I consider an accurate record of annual precipitation to be very important. I’ve modified my version of Scott Webster’s Alternate Ajax-Dashboard to substitute ‘Precip’ for ‘Rain’ when freezing conditions are present just so people understand this point. I don’t think Scott incorporated this little modification into any of his releases.

(It seems strange to be discussing this when I’m experiencing near 100

Hobbytalk, Im glad you write: at least in the US,
In the nordic, snow measuring are always a part of weather reports…

Sorry, but that’s not correct. I checked some of them, and all I checked have precipitation data for all the year. I checked historical data for some of the sites for the place where I live, and they have precipitation data for every day of the year, also in the winter.

Yes, you may be able to find that info by digging deep into past stats but is that info on the main daily weather info page that the vast majority look at? We have to remember that this is $300 consumer system, it won’t meet everyone’s needs. For those that need to know this info they will have to fork out the $1000 (or more) for a Davis system (or better) with a heater.

What do you do with the rainpot if its useless for 6 months of the year? Nothing, nada.
Same with a windthing what freezes at every little sleet/snow-fall.

Just ask the Nordic met-offices and they have all some kind of heating in the “pots” as its needed to get the total precip-amount.

For those that need to know this info they will have to fork out the $1000 (or more) for a Davis system (or better) with a heater.

For a heater what costs less than $5 to construct?? C’mon. The Davis own heater are an extremely overpriced peace of toy.

And not just the heater! :frowning:

My point is that all those sites measure precipitation all year. Nobody are interested in a weather site without precipitation information!

Pressure sensor outside? thats new :slight_smile: I would like to know how much the wifi will degrade when putting the temp in a Stevenson Screen
or other shield, I am currently using a home built shield, its 2 pipes of differing size with insulation foam in between, i would think that this
and other screens will degrade the wifi signal somewhat?

With regards to the heating side of it, this could be done very easily and like someone above said, with very little cost, If some of you can remember
i had one in my OS anemometer and in my rain gauge on my previous setup, it was easy and cheap to do.

What i do find interesting is that all the sensors that i have now and would want if i was to go for this are in separate units, this would mean i would need to
buy all 3 units and the display, perhaps 2 or 3 displays, (i have four on my OS) it looks like its been put together this way so that you HAVE to buy more than one unit to have
a complete setup.

  • What are the dimensions of the “Air” please?
  • Would there be a full package price reduction?
  • Can you add multiple displays?
  • Will it have the UK legal WiFi
  • Will the prices for the UK be silly money like the Davis

I signed up for the Field test (1 preproduction unit followed by a final production model) but what I found interesting is, that the preproduction model should arrive in August and the final production model in October.

If the point of the field testing is to gather hands on input feedback, for the purposes of making final production changes, seems like you would need more than 1 month of feedback. I would think 6 months as a minimum. That would get most field testers through the late fall, providing for a broader range of weather.

If I remember correctly the Field Tester said something about helping them with the software not the hardware.