Station Hardware

I am currently running a Davis Vantage Pro 2 wireless weather station model 6152. I also have the wireless anemometer transmitter kit. This allows me to have my temperature, humidty, rain sensors near the ground, but have the wind anemometer above my house. This is an optional kit. With the high winds I experience in the country, snow doesn't get deposited in my gauge. Snow fall moisture amounts are manually entered into the system.

In December of 2012, I also added the UV and Solar Radiation sensors.

Here are some installed pictures of my VP2 Station on Flickr:

Software

I am currently using weather software by SandySoft called Cumulus MX. It can run on Windows, or even a Rasberry PI.

With the help of a great bunch of guys on the WXForum.net and Ken from Saratoga Scripts, I updated my website. If you are at all interested in purchasing a weather station or software and need help, I can't recommend WXForum highly enough. They are a helpful bunch over there.

When the developer of Cumulus retired, I was concerned about the further devolopment of the product. So I purchased a copy of Weather Display. I was able to import all of my old data that Cumulus had accumulated. I was able to also download all of my old data Virtual Weather Station had used as well with WeatherDisplay's Weather Underground download feature. Since then, another developer has taken over the Cumulus software, so I'm going to run both versions while I can. My Weather Display version is running on its own Davis Console along with the second logger.

Lightning

In May of 2014, I became a member of the Blitzortung Network. Blitzortung is German for "lightning locating". It is purley an amatuer based lighting locating system. Members build their own lightning detection equipment. That equipment uses a combination of detecting antennas and GPS signals to locate lightning strikes and send the data to a central server. Originally based in Europe, it has now spread to the US. As the US network adds more lightning detection sites, the ability to detect strikes will get better and better.

Building your own lightning system requires a knowledge of soldering and other electrical skills. So it's not a project for the faint of heart. I found the project enjoyable to build and look forward to expanding the project further and assist in getting more sites added across the US. Since I made my lighting detector, they are now selling pre-made units that don't require soldering skills. However basic electrical knowledge helps.

I have also made a PDF to document some of the work I went through to build the system in the hopes this will help others building their Blitzortung system. My System Build:

NOAA Radio

March of 2017, the most popular site that streamed NOAA weather radio stations decided to stop that service. Again with the help of the WXForum.net crew, we were able to get many of those streams back up and functioning again.

The WXL78 NOAA Radio Bismarck stream originates from my personal home. I have a Raspberry PI device connected to a Software Defined Radio(SDR) that receives the NOAA Radio signal. The PI then encodes that signal into a MP3 stream that is fed to Crushed Box ICECAST server, Broadcastify, NOAAWeatherradio.org, and my own home. I am then able to point my audio player page to that stream for you to listen to.

I am also able to send the same stream from my Raspberry PI to Broadcastify.com website. If you browse to ND and Burleigh County, you will find WXL78 being streamed from my house as well. Broadcastify has an app for your phone to listen to my stream.

Location:

My station is located a few miles north of Bismarck, outside of city limits. I am north of Highway 1804 and west of Highway 83. Bismarck is the state capital of North Dakota and the second largest city. Here is my location on Google Maps.

Air Quality

May of 2022, I add the Purple Air air quality monitor. This measures air particulates for air pollution, smog, and smoke. My monitor is the first in the Bismarck area. See the monitors across the country at Purple Air map.

Live Webcam

On May 27th, 2023, I add a live webcam view to my site. I am using the IPTimeLapse software, plus a Reolink Duo2 camera to provide the live feed. I have a YouTube page to upload daily time lapse videos as well. BismarckWeather YouTube page

Interest:

I have always been interested in the weather in general. I suppose that came from my father who too usually kept an eye on weather. I've also always been a technical person. I have a degree in electronics and am currently employed as a Network Analyst. So when I purchased my own house, I decided a simple thermometer wasn't good enough for my weather hobby. That's when I purchased the Davis Weather station. Because of my technical nature, I have also always been involved with the Internet. My ISP allows me some web space on the Internet. So I made pages for my family pictures and my interest in motorcycles. That just naturally combined later with my interest in weather.

Since weather is just a hobby, my time spent on the weather portion of my web site varies. I am currently married as well as a house to work on. Plus I love to ride my BMW motorcycle. So my time and money is divided amongst all of those. For now, I consider this my hobby. That means I'll invest in it as I can. To me, it's not much different than customizing my motorcycle. Or for others that like fishing, hunting, etc. If you find my site helpful, spread the word!

Thanks for stopping by! If you enjoy this site, please tell others. I have plenty of bandwidth available.

About This Website

This site is a template design by CarterLake.org with PHP conversion by Saratoga-Weather.org.
Special thanks go to Kevin Reed at TNET Weather for his work on the original Carterlake templates, and his design for the common website PHP management.
Special thanks to Mike Challis of Long Beach WA for his wind-rose generator, Theme Switcher and CSS styling help with these templates.
Special thanks go to Ken True of Saratoga-Weather.org for the AJAX conditions display, dashboard and integration of the TNET Weather common PHP site design for this site.

Template is originally based on Designs by Haran.

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