TV Weather Station
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
If you are like me, you can find a million reasons to want to know just exactly what the weather is doing outside right at this moment. How cool would it be to be equipped like the local news station and be able to broadcast all that data live ? Sure, there are many such solutions on the market but most of them are very expensive and far out of the consideration of all but the most avid enthusiasts. This wonderful gadget brings the price into a much more reasonable range ($129.95)
This full featured weather station allows you to turn your TV’s screen into your very own local personal weather station. It analyzes 11 weather conditions in your own backyard and transmits big, easy-to-read data to your TV screen. It produces a forecast based on trends over the last 72 hours. Using wireless transmission and easy installation, the receiver plugs into any television, receiving info from sensors around the yard that transmit up to almost 200 feet.
The sensors that are mounted outside include a temperature sensor and radio transmitter, wind sensor and rain sensor. This allows you to track the temperature inside and outside, wind chill factor, wind direction, wind speed, barometric trend, rainfall, humidity and more. The measurements from those sensors are transmitted up to 60 meters (196.85ft) to the indoor receiver for display.
The indoor receiver plugs into any TV and displays current weather data from sensors you have placed around your yard. The receiver is powered by an AC adapter (included) and connects to the TV using the RCA video cable that is included.
Keep in mind that the RCA cable will limit which TV’s can actually get the signal natively. For example that spiffy new HDTV plasma screen is probably not going to work, but we all have older analog TV’s sitting around that will work fine. Grab that old 13″ color out of the attic and dedicate it to being a weather station.
Put this is the kitchen and nobody in your family will have an excuse for getting caught wearing shorts in a snowstorm. It’s fun to watch and informative.
Now when your friend says “man, it was really windy last night” you can add- yeah, we clocked winds at 45.3 miles an hour - and did you notice how low the dewpoint was?
# Displays wind speed and direction, wind gust, wind chill
# Displays forecasts for next 12hrs based on trends over last 72hrs
# Displays rainfall, date and time, barometric pressure, barometric trend over last 24hrs
# Displays temperature alarm, indoor and outdoor temp, indoor relative humidity
# Temperature range minus 40°F to 140°F ( minus 40°C to 60°C)
With the temperature alarm feature you could set it to warn you of impending frost so you could go out and cover your sensitive plants - or set it to warn at freezing, so you can go and find where the heck that ice scraper has been all summer.
If you think this is just a little too low tech for you and want something with more advanced pc readable stats and trends - check out the Honeywell Weather Station that also features a public alert which will let you know when theres a hurricane or tornado warning in your area.
