Dear Weather Club Member.

Welcome to the August edition of our e-news! We're back with stories and insights into our weather stations and weather-related items.

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Here's a quick preview of this month's contents
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Vantage Pro Update . . . How to Participate in the NOAA Citizen Weather Observer Program . . . Integrating your Weather Station with Home Automation . . . Shark Week 2001: Air Jaws . . . New Additions to Weather World 'Round . . . Enjoy!

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Vantage Pro Update
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We're happy to report that we've been shipping our new Vantage Pro stations fast and furiously for the past few months. Here's what a few of you who've received your stations have had to say:

"Even though it took longer than expected, I am delighted. It really was worth waiting for and works great. Congratulations for another great product." Gerry Muller, Texas.

"I had it set up and running within an hour or so with no trouble at all. We just had a couple of inches of badly needed rain and it was fun to watch the rain totals visibly while sitting comfortably indoors!" Michael Owner, Bermuda.

"You folks really scored a "Grand Slam" with your new Vantage Pro. It's totally compatible with my wireless Weather Monitor II and the re-transmit for my Weather Echo works great." Bill Kaye, California.

"The system worked right out of the box. I haven't had a lot of weather changes here yet to evaluate all the readings/displays, but it sure is slick." Glenn Phelps, Ohio.

We're always glad to hear from happy customers! The good news is that we're up to date on orders for the USA version of our wireless Vantage Pro stations. The bad news? Well, we're not quite out of backorder on the other stations yet. We're still whacking away at our orders for the cabled stations, the Vantage Pro Plus models (with UV and solar radiation sensors), and our overseas models. Models with fan-aspirated radiation shields are at least another month away. If you've ordered one of these stations, please be patient a little while longer--we know it will be worth the wait!

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How to Participate in the NOAA Citizen Weather Observer Program
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In our September, 1999 issue, http://www.davisnet.com/news/e_news_archive/9909.asp, we ran a spotlight on volunteer radio station W4EHW (Watching 4 Early Hurricane Warnings) and the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Now that Hurricane Season 2001 is well underway (the official hurricane season begins on June 1), we thought it's time for an update.

Joe Schmidt, Internet Coordinator for W4EHW, recently told us about a new program with the NOAA Forecast Systems Lab in Boulder, Colorado. According to Joe, "NOAA is interested in obtaining observations from home weather stations. The information will be incorporated into several weather prediction models and appear on their new web page: http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mesonet/."

Many amateur APRS stations have already signed up for the program. But don't think you need to be a ham radio operator to sign up. All you need is access to the Internet.

Making your data available is simple and free. If you'd like to participate in the program, here's how: Just visit the W4EHW website, http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/CWOP-ain.html. Once there, you can download the free Internet software and obtain your personal Citizen Weather (CW) Number. Approximately two weeks after completing the registration, your data will appear on the NOAA surface observation map. That's all there is to it!

We hope that many of our Davis weather station owners will sign up for this important and worthwhile program.

If you'd like to know more about hurricane-preparedness, a good place to start is the American Red Cross site, http://redcross.org/news/ds/hurricanes/01060101season.html. And if a hurricane does pass your way, be sure and let us know how you and your station hold up!

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Integrating your Weather Station with Home Automation
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We're always interested in hearing how people have integrated our weather stations into other technologies, and thought you would be, too. We recently heard from Kimberly Harms of Advanced Quonset Technology, Inc., who wrote the following:

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Without a doubt having your own weather station is a very cool thing. Collecting data over time gives you the ability to do local forecasting and see weather trends over time. And that's quite a lot of fun. But wouldn't it be nice to do something else with your weather data?

Like what? Well, how about turning on your sprinkler system only if it is not too windy and hasn't rained the night before? Or open a skylight if it gets too hot inside, but keep it closed on cool rainy days? And for those of you in the cold climates, turn on pipe heaters if the average temperature in the last 24 hours is less than 40 degrees?

With the help of Advanced Quonset Technology's Home Control Assistant (HCA) software and some inexpensive hardware, you can do all those things and more.

It all works with the help of a home automation technology called X10, which allows signals to be sent from your computer to a lamp or appliance over your home wiring. Instead of plugging the appliance directly into a wall outlet, you plug it into an X10 module and then plug the module into the wall. All together, you'll need four things: a computer, some software that runs on the computer, an interface that allows the computer to send and
receive signals over the wiring, and the X10 modules.

Is home automation expensive? No! The computer interface is available for under $100 and software is around $90. A module's cost depends on its function, but they're usually around $20. Is it hard? No, again. You don't need to be an electrician to install the X10 gear, and the software is easy to use.

HCA is a Windows-based program that is extremely easy to use. Using HCA, you can create a schedule that will control when things in your house go on and off. For those new to home automation, there's even a quick start wizard that will suggest where you can use home automation in your house.

What's all this got to do with Davis weather stations? Well, there's a weather station interface! You can set up HCA to capture data from the weather station sensors every few minutes (you choose the interval). Based on the weather station data, you can then have the system do things like turn your sprinkler system on or off, open or close a motorized skylight, or turn pipe heaters on or off.

So what's the first step? If you're interested in home automation, check out http://www.smarthome.com for information on the available X10 hardware. For a no-cost trial version of HCA, go to http://www.AdvancedQuonsetTech.com. The software is fully functional, but is time-limited to 30 days.

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Thanks, Kimberly, for letting us know about your company's software. As Kimberly says, "While it's fun to talk about weather data, the trick is doing something with it!"

And here's a note for our readers: if you're already using a Davis weather station in a home automation application, we'd love to hear from you. Send your comments to news@davisnet.com.

And a final note: HCA works with the full line of Davis weather stations, except our new Vantage Pro stations. But that's in the works, too! We'll be sure to keep you posted.

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Discovery Channel's Shark Week 2001: Air Jaws
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Don't miss "Air Jaws: Sharks of South Africa" on the Discovery Channel this Sunday, August 12. Dr. Rocky Strong of the University of California at Santa Barbara used a Davis EZ-Mount Energy EnviroMonitor system in his study correlating shark behavior with weather patterns. You'll see lots of exciting footage of shark attacks, and some pretty thrilling (we think so,
anyway!) footage of our weather station in use. For a quick preview of Shark Week, check out http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/sharkweek2001/sharkweek2001.html

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New additions to Weather World 'Round
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In our September, 1998 e-news, http://www.davisnet.com/news/e_news_archive/9809.asp, we published a suggestion from one of our Weather Club Members. In Kevin's words, "it would be nice to add a page to your website containing links to various URLs that have weather data generated by your products." Well, we took Kevin up on his suggestion, and created a section we call "Weather World 'Round." There are now over 200 links on that page, representing 41 U.S. states and 22 different countries.

If it's been awhile since you've visited there, here's a brief list of some of our newer additions:

Cromdale, Scotland http://www.speysideweather.co.uk/

Des Moines, Iowa, http://members.home.net/toubes1/weather/myweather.html

Dunwoody, Georgia, http://www.dunwoodyweather.com

Groton, South Dakota, http://www.grotonindependent.com

Pleasanton, California, http://www.robertsroost.org/

Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius, http://pages.intnet.mu/maufox

To see all the links, visit Weather World 'Round at http://www.davisnet.com/weather/cool/world.asp.

If you'd like to add your weather station, just send an e-mail to news@davisnet.com. Be sure to include the location of your station, and a brief note about how you're using it.

If you're not already posting data from your weather station to your website, check out our WeatherLink Toolbox at http://www.davisnet.com/weather/products/weather_product.asp?pnum=07802.

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Well, that's it! Hope you found this edition interesting, useful, and
entertaining. See you next month!