Davis VP2 Pro Weather Station on install - Now with the AeroCone Rain Hopper installed.

The original station was built originally from a scrapped Davis Weather Monitor II, which I was given in 2006. The Console and Data logger were in working order, however the Rain Gauge was missing, the cables were all cut and required to be re-joined. The Wind speed unit was missing a cup, which was glued back on.

The original Davis station was believed to have been originally from http://www.bridford.metsite.com , which quotes that it was first deployed in 1992. Following the work needed to make the system usable, the station was connected to a server using Weather Display and was commissioned on April 1st 2006.

In September 2007, the Server was virtualised into the main server using VMware. This increased the reliability of the service and provided more processing power on-tap. This server hardware consisted of an Intel Core Duo E6550 Processor on an MSI mobo. 4 Gig of RAM is required to enable the use of VMWare Server 2 to virtualise the Weather server. 2 x 500Gb SATA drives, Mirrored (RAID 1) to provide storage. The previous server hardware (April 2006 - Feb 2007) was a Dual Pentium II 233Mhz with 512Mb RAM, and then (Feb 2007 - Oct 2007) a Pentium III 655Mhz with 256Mb RAM.

In February 2009, this was changed to a Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 Processor, 64-bit Ubuntu Linux based Server, with 4Gb RAM, and 2 x 500Gb SATA drives, Mirrored (RAID 1), to provide more processing power, and allow application platform changes. We have moved to 64-bit Linux to support higher levels of RAM needed for future expansion of the systems used to forecast, and record weather data.

Over October 2010 the station suffered a number of issues from the 1-wire and finally the Davis Weather Monitor II. Sensor drop out on the 1-wire and a faulty wind speed sensor on the WMII therefore forced a decision on a station upgrade. A Davis Vantage Pro 2 Plus with Daytime FARS was purchased to replace the old station equipment. 1-Wire is used to supplement the Davis station by recording temperatures at -12 inches (Sub-Soil), -2 inches (Root) and +2 inches (Grass) depths ,Wet Leaf sensor and Lightning Detector.

In January 2011, the introduction of the VP2 required a move back to dedicated hardware due to the processing requirements of the new compiler version of Weather Display and the requirement to run both weather-link and WD at the same time. Hardware used is Intel Core Duo E6550 Processor on an MSI mobo with 4 Gig of RAM.

In May 2011, The supporting infrastructure was migrated to VMWare ESXi. This consists of a Intel Core i7 hexacore processor and 12GB DDR RAM, QNAP iSCSI storage array and Gigabit network. The weather server remains a separate physical device due to the issues with USB and virtualisation we experienced over the years.

In December 2011, The station moved from Ottery St Mary to it's new location in Combe Raleigh due to a house move. The sensors deployed at Ottery were all removed and will be added to the new location as soon as is practical and additional sensors such as the Vaisala Celiometer and airQ deployed.

Vaisala CT-12k Celiometer (Currently under repair [2020])

Over 2012, the station was slowly re-deployed with radiation monitoring and power monitoring resuming. Soil temps and leaf wetness to follow later due to cabling requirements.

In August 2012, Due to a server hardware failure of the Intel Core Duo machine hosting Weather Display, a replacement HP Microserver was used to virtualise the weather server using VMWare ESXi 5, and has a reduced power requirement. The Host processor is a AMD Turion II 1.5Ghz and 8Gb RAM.

In December 2012, the webcam service resumed, utilising Yawcam for capture and a custom image processing script to overlay weather data. Camera is a Microsoft Lifecam Studio HD, USB connected to the ESXi host.

In October 2013, the backend systems were moved onto a single Intel i5 ESXi Host and the weather server onto a stand alone HP Microserver to support USB, as VM passthrough of USB is still problematic.

In January 2020, the website moved to currently supported platforms of Windows 10, updated Joomla and reviewed content. The Hardware is also updated to Intel i7 Gen3 from Dell.

The Weather Station is totally automated, by design. Scheduling tools and scripting is used to collect data, interpret and model, and create web content.

Internet Services are provided by Zen Internet - www.zen.co.uk

1-wire equipment using Hobby Boards pre-made circuits and home designed sensors are used for supplementary data points.

Forecasting software used is WXSIM, which has been configured for the location by the software's author. Forecasting data is taken from local METAR and actual Weather Station data.

This site is published using the Joomla CMS framework, which enables the site to be easily updated and provide a searchable and configurable platform that is easy to maintain, leaving more time to develop the statistical aspects of the site, instead of the actual display of data.

 Station Updates :