Interest in weather stations sensors has been growing rapidly in recent years. And there’s a good reason for it.
Weather Station Sensors of industrial quality standard are more affordable than ever and its output can help automate various processes. From building automation to automation of industrial processes and from prevention to prediction – these type of sensors are everywhere.
In the following post we will elaborate more about different weather station sensors – the most common and the more specific one – which are used in less frequent cases.
But let’s start at the beginning
Which are the most common Weather Station Sensors?
Industrial Weather Station Sensors which are most frequently applied in the market, usually include the capturing of 4 parameters (values):
- wind speed (unit: m/s),
- sun (unit: klux),
- temperature (unit: °C or °F),
- rain (output: raining / not raining).
Available are in a variety of versions – with different:
- output: 0-10V or 4-20mA,
- power supply: 24 AC/DC or 230 VAC,
The only exception being the rain sensor which always comes as switch (potential-free changeover) and simply detects whether the sensor surface is wet (raining) or dry (not raining). For measuring the precipitation intensity, a different kind of weather sensor would have to be used which would determine the amount of rainfall (mm) per surface (m2).
Up to a maximum of three sun sensors can be applied in one weather station in order to perfectly measure the sun. The position of the sun sensors on the weather station is at a distance of 90° degrees – meaning the sun can be measure correctly regardless of its position during the day.
The standard measuring ranges of weather stations sensors is as follows:
- wind speed (0 – 35 m/s),
- sun (0 – 100 klux),
- temperature (-30 – 50°C),
- rain (yes/no),
- dusk / dawn (0 – 1 klux),
Upon request, different measuring rangers can be applied. Most of the Andivi Weather Station Sensors already come with standard heating of the housing, which makes them applicable for use in more challenging weather conditions (rain and snow). This allows weather sensors like wind speed sensors or wind direction sensors to work with precision even when temperatures fall below 0°C and the client still needs a precise range.
Special Weather Sensors
In addition to the most common weather station sensors described above, there is a range of less frequently used sensors in the standard compact weather station. This would include the following:
- Humidity (unit: % of r.H. relative humidity),
- Wind direction (unit: 0-360 °< angle of direction),
- Global radiation (unit: W/m2) is measuring the amount of Sun’s energy received by a surface per unit area,
- Rainfall sensor (unit: mm) measuring the quantity of rainfall
The standard measuring ranges of weather stations sensors is as follows:
- Humidity (0 – 100% r.H.),
- Wind direction (0-360°<),
- Global radiation (0-1400 W/m2),
- Rainfall sensor ( 0 – 50 mm).
Special Weather Sensors are available with:
- output: 0-10V or 4-20mA
- power supply: 24 AC/DC or 230 VAC
The output for the wind direction sensor can besides 0-10V or 4-20mA also be a potentiometer 0 – 10 Ohm or an output based on 2, 4 or 8 sectors.
Not what you are looking for? Here, you can explore our full range of Andivi Anemometers for Measuring Wind Speed and Wind Direction. Here, you can find out more information about Andivi’s Meteorological Stations Lambrecht .
Integrated Heating
Most weather stations come housing that include with integrated heating and those who don’t there the additional housing heating is optional. This feature allows for seamless operation and precise measurement even in tougher weather conditions where equipment parts may freeze or cause malfunction.
Compact Stations or separate stations
Andivi offers two possibilities to deliver every weather station sensor as a separate sensor in its own housing or several different sensors integrated into a standard robust housing with IP65 protection. The later we address as compact weather stations, which most often include wind speed, sun, temperature and rain sensors.
Beyond Weather Sensors
Different use cases of weather data application call for different overall solutions that may combine other types of sensors. These can also include other sensory input from sensors in the fields of:
- Position (e.g. GPS location), Presence (detection of motion), Proximity (various closeness of motion),
- Motion, velocity, displacement,
- Acoustic, sound, vibration,
- Flow (of water or other fluids),
- force, load, torque, strain, pressure,
- leaks of fluids and levels of fluids,
- acceleration or tilt,
- machine vision, optical ambient light.
From Weather Stations Sensors to Weather Data to Automation
At the same time, interest in weather station sensors – and in weather data – has gone far beyond use cases in meteorology. It has gone into the Industrial IoT (Internet of Things) and has been well established in the sectors of manufacturing, agriculture, smart cities, healthcare, utilities and building automation, energy efficiency & HVAC.
In today’s digital age, the holy triangle is an intersection between the fields of automation, robotisation and AI (artificial intelligence). And sensors will be the “eyes and ears” of those systems will enable to do things instead of labour – better, faster, more efficiently and more precise than humans.
In order to reach true efficiency, it is not how many things you can do, but how many you can automate. This is the true value of affordable digitalisation – meaning that some things are done more efficiently if fully automated while entirely running in the background. This allows us – people – to work and focus on creative tasks where we are irreplaceable.
We are giving our World a digital nervous system – that can automatically sense, analyse the inputs and respond with extremely sophisticated decision-making. And weather sensors are playing a vital role in it.
Please do not hesitate to contact us.