Wildland wrote:Hi Dal,
Welcome to the forum.
Many thanks to you and also the others who have welcomed me
There's some sound advice in the previous postings, but your initial post in this thread suggests that you just want to get the little monster going and see what happens. You've obviously decided what to do with the anemometer and rain gauge,
The anemometer will be going onto a spare J-pole which originally held a radio antenna. The placement of the rain guage is undecided as yet. I have several options in mind, its merely a matter of picking the right one.
but asked about placing the temperature sensor.
I'd suggest that you mount it up under the soffit of the house. Somewhere that is -
out of direct wind (i.e. slightly sheltered),
out of direct sunlight (especially when the sun is low in the sky), and
away from windows (e.g. the old-style fanlight window) which might cause draughts of hot or cold air from inside the house to pass by the sensor.
With a north-facing house, this is the best time of year to determine the “best†south-side placement for a temperature sensor as the sun will be illuminating as much of the southern face of the house as it can over the coming 2-3 weeks. So, provided you can mount the temperature sensor out of direct sunlight on the southern side of the house at this time of the year, and meet the other two criteria (wind, draughts), you will be doing the best that you can.
This will get you into “hobby mode†where you can start recording data and keep an eye out for weird spikes caused by poor placement of sensors or electronic noise etc. Provided you're prepared to tweak things and move them about, this solution should get you up and running so that you can fine-tune things (like building Stevenson screens, adding cables etc) to make the weather station more “standard†at a later date.
I'd hoped to get everything up and running today since we're supposed to be getting heavy rain over the next couple of days but have decided to hold off until after the rain in order to get things as right as possible by taking my time. My long suffering wife is used to me moving things around in order to "improve" them. Many years of radios and antennas being moved around, etc, have given her a patience that's quite rare these days:)
I've taken careful note of the kind suggestions made so far and will be looking forward to implementing them over time. One thing I will be doing sometime after Christmas is investing in what appears to be an excellent software called "Weather Display" which I've seen on a number of sites.