From: wiltonh@tekig5.pen.tek.com (Wilton Hart)
Newsgroups: rec.windsurfing
Subject: Re: Home Weather Station
Date: 10 Apr 92 00:35:08 GMT
Distribution: usa

In article <9398@wrgate.wr.tek.com>, lynd@earth.wr.tek.com (Lynd Wieman) writes:
> 
> >I was wondering if anyone out there has seen or made a weather
> >station connected to a PC.
> 
> Wilton, I have been waiting for you to share information about
> your system but I haven't seen it yet.  It is the coolest way
> I have heard of to tell if the wind is blowing.  Are you going
> tell about it, or are you waiting for the patent? :-)
> 
> Lynd

During the winter I have been working on a system that will give me the 
barometric pressure difference on the beach.  Due to the way the weather 
works in the Columbia River Gorge, the wind is driven by the change in
barometric pressure across the state.   You can think of the wind as being
driven by an engine and the engine speed is measured by the difference
between the barometetric pressure at points along the river.

It is a well known fact to Gorge sailors that a .06 or 6 point reading 
will create a wind that can be sailed on a 5.0 to 5.5 sail.  If the pressure
difference is less than .06 you had better have a long board or some other
form of entertainment.  On a good West wind day you will have a pressure
difference of 10 points and be sailing on a 3.5 at the Hatchery.

The NOAA weather radio gives the pressure readings at 5 points along the
river.  If you are in Portland you can listen to the radio and know what
the wind is doing in the Gorge.  The problem is the location of the antenna.
When you are in Hood River the antenna is behind MT Hood.  Hood River gets
Very Very poor reception.

My solution uses a PC which is located in my basement.  It calls a local
number and gets the pressure readings at Astoria, Portland, The Dalles, and
Pendelton.  It then does the subtraction so you have 3 pressure differences.
It then converts this to codes that a standard pager understands and sends
it to my pager.  This allows me to have the current pressure readings 
at the beach.  I have also included the time that the readings were taken
and the current wind speed at The Dalles.  The pager holds 5 or 6 readings
so you can look back over the last few hours and see if the pressures are
getting stronger or weaker.  You can track storms coming in from the coast.

During spring vactaion I was sailing and it was getting late in the afternoon.
The wind picked up and most people came to shore.  The question was should
we rig down.  I picked up my pager and noticed that the pressure was still
increasing so we all rigged down and went out for another hour or two.

The question is what to do with this type of system?  It works well for my
own use but the data service that I use has periods of down time so it is
not 100% reliable.  NOAA weather radio has the same problem but they say
"No data available this hour".   I am currently adding a pager database
to the software so that I can add pager numbers.  There are 4 pager 
companies in the Portland area and they charge about $20 per month for a
pager.  The coverage is different between companies but the better ones
reach East of The Dalles.

There is a group of lawyers who are working on this same idea and have 
copyrighted the name "Windpager".  They have nothing working yet.