Meteorology

Another hobby of mine is amateur meteorology. I started out using the Oregon Scientific WMR-918, X-10 wireless camera and WeatherView32 software. The gauges and their solar powered transmitters were conveniently located at various points throughout my yard. I had placed the X-10 camera on my shed where it would broadcast the current visual weather conditions to a receiver hooked into my server. I wasn’t entirely happy with this camera though, it tended to flicker and not give a good, consistent image. I went through many other cameras since. The WeatherView32 software worked great and the response to any modifications and bugs reports had been fast and effective. The WMR-918 was a new product at the time and had a few flaws of its own. I was not very happy with Oregon Scientifics’ response and service for the short time I used the WMR-918. I thought of switching over to a Davis Instrument system because they came highly recommended by my friend Joe Faria (his station is at ), but in January of 2001 I finally got a replacement from Oregon Scientific, the new WMR-968 (thanks to Dawn at OSI). It was a much more stable system and it gave me 11 years of great service. The only reason I don’t have it any longer is that I had moved and pieces had become so brittle over the years that they would have been difficult to reuse after taking down to be re-installed at my new location. So in November of 2012 my wife bought me a new Rainwise MK III-LR which I’ve placed in a field behind my barn. I had some initial problems but the folks at Rainwise were very helpful and so far so good. Eventually, I will hook up another camera.