Weather Meters (Sparkfun SEN-08942)

Whether you’re an agriculturalist, a professional meteorologist or a weather hobbyist, building your own weather station can be a really rewarding project. When you’re measuring weather, however, you need some pretty specialized sensors. This kit represents the three core components of weather measurement: wind speed, wind direction and rainfall.

None of the sensors in this kit contain active electronics, instead they use sealed magnetic reed switches and magnets so you’ll need to source a voltage to take any measurements. The positive side of this is that the sensors are easy to interpret:

The rain gauge is a self-emptying bucket-type rain gauge which activates a momentary button closure for each 0.011" of rain that are collected. The anemometer (wind speed meter) encodes the wind speed by simply closing a switch which each rotation. A wind speed of 1.492 MPH produces a switch closure once per second. Finally, the wind vane reports wind direction as a voltage which is produced by the combination of resistors inside the sensor. When a voltage is supplied, the voltage returned can be translated to any of 16 possible positions. For more information on how this works, as well as a table of voltage and resistance values for each position, refer to the manual below.

All of the included sensors are supplied with RJ11 terminated cables, for information on the pin-out of the cable, check out the datasheet.

Dimensions: 28.5" x 8"

Kit Includes:

• Wind Vane
• Cup Anemometer
• Tipping Bucket Rain Gauge
• Two-Part Mounting Mast
• Rain Gauge Mounting Arm
• Wind Meter Mounting Bar
• 2 x Mounting Clamps
• 4 x Zip Ties

Note: Some basic assembly is required.

Documents:

• Datasheet