Cotswoldweather.co.uk obtains its data from a weather station located 5 miles to the west of Chipping Campden itself. The station is a Davis Vantage Pro. The added advantage of the davis vantage pro is that it is a wireless setup in that the sensors can be positioned anywhere outside and the data can then be transmitted back to the console via radio link. The console can then display this data.

The wireless sensor suite contains an anemometer, temperature sensor, humidity sensor and a rain bucket. Pressure is sensed from the console. The wireless sensor suite is powered by solar power. A solar pannel is located on the back which needs to be positioned to the South in order to collect enough sunlight to get a good charge. For night time use or on days where there has been very little sun there is a back up battery installed which has a service life of approximately 2 years.

The console itself is powered via a mains adapter but in the event of a power cut there are back up batteries installed enabling continued reception of weather data. The console also has a data logger installed which allows you to connect the console to a PC for data logging. If the computer is off the data logger unit will continue to log the data at set intervals until the computer is reconnected and can download the data off it.

The console is connected to a computer via a serial cable where a software package called Virtual Weather Station obtains the data from the console. The version I am running is Virtual Weather Station Internet Edition. This has many excellent facilities such as providing the data to this website and also supplying data in real time to Weather Underground using Rapid Fire.

The Vantage Pro weather station has so far being running for 6 years and has to this date had no major problems or failures. One minor problem has been the incorrect reporting of rainfall. The sensor suite was over reporting rainfall which I think was down to an obstruction on the tipping buckets. Since removing it there has been no further occurences.