A quick pre-Christmas visit to Bunnings with the kids resulted in a cost-effective purchase that ticks the boxes.

Three months into the purchase and Richard has found that the Holman weather station ticks most of the boxes. It tracks; wind speed & direction, temperature, rainfall, air pressure, humidity and UV.

Instead of a screen, you use your phone and the Weather Underground app or website. Richard has found this website to be quite a user friendly and relatively stable.

This model (without the screen) was around $200. Bunnings is now listing the model with the screen Holman Aspect Wi-fi Analyst for $229

Weather underground = www.wunderground.com

On this US website, settings can be changed to metric. Data can be viewed for your own station as well as a range of public and private weather stations.

Accuracy.

Richard has generally found the data to be comparable, but rainfall measurements under 5mm sometimes seem to under register.

If you want to save your weather stations historical data this might not be the option for you.

There is no simple way to download or save historical data from wunderground.com. I did find some sort of code on the internet that was supposed to save a file to my computer - but those instructions were beyond me.

Another downfall, if the internet connection is lost, the data for that period is not logged. A power outage, while Richard was off-farm (and a modem that didn’t power back on), meant the on-farm rainfall couldn’t be viewed or recorded. The times you are away are often the times you most want or need the data.

Simple set up.

The weather station was simple to install - just a post in the ground within 150m of the WiFi receiver. This enables the reading, such as wind to be out in the open, away from trees and the house perimeter.

The verdict.

A very cost-effective weather station (compared to other popular brands that can be up to $3000). A good choice, if you are happy to view the data most of the time and saving the historical data, isn’t a priority. Limited to areas where WiFi is available also.

Want to share your experience with a weather station or app?

Email us at: farmerforecast@agecon.com.au