Chris Bott - Moderator Posted March 2, 2021 Share Posted March 2, 2021 If a club required a solar powered weather station and a couple of cameras - as an add on to an existing website. Where would you start? I'm thinking maybe a 4G router, possibly wired rather than WiFi, a couple of IP cameras and some sort of off the shelf weather station that regularly sends data back to a weather service. Can all this be done from 12V using a solar panel and battery?. If so, at what sort of power consumption? Does your club have anything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad_flyer Posted March 2, 2021 Share Posted March 2, 2021 Work out how often it is sending data. If it is a regular post to a web server, or is uncontrolled demand, you get through gigabytes very quickly. One 1MB picture per hour is the best part of 1GB per month. This is what stopped me before I started the technical details for a project for a non-flying club. Data is cheaper now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Bott - Moderator Posted March 2, 2021 Author Share Posted March 2, 2021 Thanks Dad_flyer. I had that consideration at the back of my mind but your numbers really show how important it is to keep an eye on. Sounds like regular still pics are the way to go and to shutdown out of hours too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Bott - Moderator Posted March 3, 2021 Author Share Posted March 3, 2021 It looks like I should think to search the forum more often. Here's a suggestion that I made back in 2018 that might fit the bill. Rather than a weather station, to decide whether the weather is up to flying, would we want to know any more than we could glean from a webcam shot that includes a windsock or flag? On 03/06/2018 at 10:50, Chris Bott - Moderator said: Here's a possibility.http://www.camsecure.co.uk/WebcamHosting.html It's worth a look, if I can use an old phone and just pay a small fee to camsecure and a fee for a SIM card, then that may be all we need? A free app that would send photos back to our website would be better. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Philbrick Posted March 3, 2021 Share Posted March 3, 2021 We have one at our club. We use a maplin weather station, the information is then delayed via a cheap Phone sym and it is displayed on pws weather site which We also display on our club site..We have had it for quite a long time and our resident tech guru made it from an article in the bmfa news! Unfortunately its under repair at the moment as it got wet recently, we power it from a couple of napkin cheap solar panels to charge a 12 v car battery. I expect it will be up and running again soon. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Bott - Moderator Posted March 3, 2021 Author Share Posted March 3, 2021 Thanks Glenn that's interesting. I do have concerns about having the hardware stolen or vandalised, but it's worth a good looing at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Lee Posted March 3, 2021 Share Posted March 3, 2021 From some old records I believe the article was in Edition 140 , December 2016 of the BMFA News but I no longer have the article and I think the Maplin weather station used unfortunately is no longer available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Philbrick Posted March 3, 2021 Share Posted March 3, 2021 Yes the maplin station is now longer available, but there are others. We bought a couple when they were selling up. The same with the solar panels. So far they have not been vandalised but are a bit exposed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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