About This Site
Hardware
Weather Station
The weather station used for this website is a LaCrosse WS-2310. Sensors include the
wind vane, which measures wind direction and speed; the thermo-hygro unit, which
measures temperature, humidity, dew point, and pressure; and the rain gauge, which
obviously measures rainfall. The station is wired, though it can operate wirelessly.
Data is received from the station every 8 seconds. From the console, the station is
connected to the computer using a Belkin serial-to-USB adapter.
Websites
Official Site of LaCrosse Technology
LaCrosse Info Page on WS-2310
Computer
The computer for the administration site is a HP Pavilion a1110y desktop computer. It 
has a 15" flat screen monitor, Intel Pentium 4 2.93 GHZ processor, 80 GB hard drive,
512 MB memory, 16x DVD-RW optical drive, and an optical mouse. It runs on Windows XP Home Edition (and has no plans to upgrade to Vista anytime soon). The system also includes
a HP PSC 1410 printer, which scans, copies, and prints documents.
Website
HP Official Site
Internet
The DSL internet connection is from BellSouth and has quoted speeds of 3.0/384 Mbps
(though I sometimes doubt this). From the wall, the DSL connection enters the router
using a Westell gateway. From there, the line is fed into a Belkin wireless router,
sending the internet connection to my computer.
Websites
BellSouth Company Site
BellSouth DSL Site
Belkin Official Site
Software
HeavyWeather
HeavyWeather is the program that receives the data from the weather station and
produces a file to be sent via FTP to the webserver. It logs the data every minute.
This program is freeware.
Website
Software Info
WUHU
From there, the data is sent in two directions. One direction is to three different
weather servers. WUHU (Weather Underground HeavyWeather Uploader) sends the weather
data to Weather Underground, CWOP, and AWEKAS. This data is sent every minute. This
program is also freeware. (WU: KTNGERMA3, CWOP: CW4415, AWEKAS: the Germantown, TN station)
Websites
WUHU Download Page
Yahoo WUHU Support Discussion Group
FTPAutoGen
The other direction in which the data is sent is to this website. FTPAutoGen detects
changes in the file generated by HeavyWeather. Whenever a change is detected, it sends
the updated file via FTP to the web server, where it is parsed by a PHP script and
displayed on the website. This program, like many of the others, is freeware.
Website
Info and Download Page
FileZilla
FileZilla is an open-source FTP client. It makes moving large amounts of files on the
website very easy. Guess what? It's freeware (as is all open-source software).
Websites
FileZilla Info Page
FileZilla Download Page
HTML-Kit
HTML-Kit is a very efficient HTML editor. It helped produce the early drafts of this
website. It, too, is freeware (surprise!).
Website
HTML-Kit Info/Download Page
