The Original Weather Project (WMR100)
Created : 09/30/2007 06:16:37 PM
**** NOTE 7/24/2008
The WMR100 worked for a few months and then I started to experience the same problems that everyone complained about in this forum entry. PLEASE, do not waste your money on this unit. Instead, go out and buy the WMR 968 for about $80 more. It worked right out of the box and runs solid all of the time.
Please see the current weather project here.
Why
Why do I do any of this crap? Anyone that knows me knows that I am fascinated by making geeky cool stuff work. I don't remember where it started but I've always wanted to buy a wireless weather station. I think this seemed a little more possible once I made this site - hosting it at my house is a huge advantage. Rather than uploading data to a site I could just send it to my server.
What
As you may suspect, I knew nothing about weather stations so I had to do some research before buying one. It didn't take long for me to realize that the "decent" weather stations cost several hundred or even thousands of dollars. Since this is my initial foray into this hobby I went with the bargain-basement weather station, the Oregon Scentific WMR 100 .
 
| The package is fairly straight-forward to use. I put the weather wind and baromet meter (on the right side of the graphic) out on the pool deck and I put the rain gauge (the middle unit in the picture) on the deck of the house as its range isn't nearly as good as the other unit. The wind gauge is supposed to have a range of 300' so I doubted that it would reach into the basement where the server is. The base unit (left unit in the picture) connects to a server via a usb cable. |
Once I connected to the base, the Ambient Weather software package allowed me to poll the base station every x minutes and write to a local database. It also has options for creating web pages - I've used this for serving this web page on my server. Believe it or not, I can also see this page on my tivo as it is just one big graphic file. I also wrote a little script to read the database and copy the most recent value into my homepage. You can see this just underneath the title - I have it poll the database every 15 minutes to increase page loading times.
Here is a pic of my weather gauge mounted above my pool. I have no idea why there was a long tube sticking up from the deck (this was the previous owner's doing) but it seemed like a perfect place to install the gauge.

More in HOBBIES
The Weather Project
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Add a Comment (3 Comments)
Submitted by muchgooder on 10/26/2008 01:09:07 PM
I am not really sure where the confusion is with this. The issue was not the reception of the unit. The issue is that the unit stopped working, period. The manufacturer verified this and it was so common that the replacement that they sent me was the next model up (which is WONDERFUL). I ignored the piles of reviews that said that this unit was a POC. If yours didn't break, consider yourself lucky.
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Submitted by wmr100 on 10/26/2008 11:29:53 AM
this isnt something you realy put on a web sight this something you put into reviews the wmr100 works for me a basement isnt a place for a weather station console the cement and ground surrounding the basement blocks reception
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Submitted by mcktxaws on 08/18/2008 01:56:20 PM
their is no problem with the wmr100 on my part if you have a wunderground account send me a message for assistance i can help to get the rain gauge to work power the sensors first than the console go onto www2.oregonscientific.com fot the instructions thay came out with a new wind and thermo/hygro sensor for the wmr100 their used on the wmr200 solar powerd seperate units self contained easy to set up their is no pdf yet but when thay do it will be at the bottom of the page
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