Weather Station setup - radio required?

[Jay911]

Hi,
I'm starting to mess around with APRS and, long story short, have gotten the attention of my superiors in my FD. Specifically the concept of the weather stations visible near us on aprs.fi is somewhat enticing. I'm now investigating the setup of a wx station at our fire station (something we've been mulling over for a while now), and/or installation of a ham rig for disaster services purposes.

If I wanted to link the proposed weather station to the APRS network, would it require an RF connection, or would it be just as easy to feed it via the Internet?

I'm not sure if the two stations near me (DW4846 and DW5495 for anyone looking at them on aprs.fi) actually broadcast on 144.39 or come in thru the Internet. I'm thinking the latter because it says "via TCPXX" on their info pages.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[n9mxq]

Nope you can be a Citizen Weather station with just an internet connection.

 

[n5ims]

No RF required, you can simply configure your station to upload the data directly without transmitting. This is how the non-ham Citizens Weather Observer Program (Citizen Weather Observer Program) folks do it. When they register to get access, they're given a "CW" or a "DW" ID, which is what you're seeing on those two stations.

 

[AK9R]

If all you care about is seeing the weather station on the Internet, then the Citizens Weather Observer Program would suffice. Those reports are injected into the APRS-IS database from the CWOP servers which makes them visible via tools that access APRS-IS. However, most I-gates do not transmit those reports out on the local APRS radio frequency.

If you want the weather stations to be visible via RF, they will most likely have to originate on RF. Assuming you have I-gates in the area, the RF weather reports will be picked up and added to the APRS-IS database.

 

[kma371]

I just bought a weather station for my home for $100.

Ambient Weather WS-1090. I've got it hooked up to weatherunderground.com to view remotely.

Just needs a PC and Internet connection.