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Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

For discussion of DIY weather equipment - sensors, accessories, improvements to existing kit etc
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AntSeiderer
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu 23 May 2013 10:53 am
Weather Station: La Crosse 2357
Operating System: RPi Zero - Raspberry Pi OS
Location: South Africa

Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

Post by AntSeiderer »

I'm interested in building a solar radiation sensor and interfacing it with my La Crosse WS2357 station. I'm not sure if this is even possible but if it is, how would I arrange to merge the signal from the new sensor with all the other data from my base station?

BTW, I have thrown out the serial/USB converter and have my station directly connected to a serial port on my PC.

Any ideas on building the sensor and processing its signal would also be appreciated.

Many thanks.
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steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26702
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

Post by steve »

From the Cumulus point of view: there's no provision for solar data in the La Crosse data protocol, so even if you could somehow interface a solar sensor to your station (which I doubt) there's no way that Cumulus could read the values.

I think your best approach would be a stand-alone sensor not interfaced to your station. It's possible that at some point I will add the ability to read solar values from a file on the PC, a few others have asked for this. You would have to arrange somehow for this file to be created and updated.
Steve
AntSeiderer
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu 23 May 2013 10:53 am
Weather Station: La Crosse 2357
Operating System: RPi Zero - Raspberry Pi OS
Location: South Africa

Re: Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

Post by AntSeiderer »

Thanks for that reply Steve, although not exactly the news I was hoping for.

I'm going to take your advice and try to build a stand-alone sensor which interfaces independently to my PC and creates a data file. Any advice from anyone who has done something similar would be much appreciated.


Cheers,

Ant
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GraemeT
Posts: 312
Joined: Wed 21 Oct 2009 11:19 am
Weather Station: La Crosse WS-2355 & WS-2306
Operating System: Windoze 7, 10, 11
Location: Bayswater, Australia
Contact:

Re: Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

Post by GraemeT »

Ant,
Steve's suggestion re- standalone sensors is probably your best bet.

If you can read data from the hardware and store it in a file there's nothing to stop you using js or php to process that data and integrate it in your webpages.
Cheers,
Graeme.
geoffw
Posts: 556
Joined: Fri 08 May 2009 3:12 pm
Weather Station: Davis Vantage Vue
Operating System: Windows 10
Location: Pembrokeshire West Wales UK
Contact:

Re: Solar radiation sensor for La Crosse

Post by geoffw »

steve wrote:................................. It's possible that at some point I will add the ability to read solar values from a file on the PC, a few others have asked for this. You would have to arrange somehow for this file to be created and updated.
I like the sound of that Steve!
Geoff
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