Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

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Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Moondog55 » Sun 01 May, 2016 10:27 am

The Boss wants me to get a new phone
I don't particularly want to but I may be able to be persuaded
Are there any small weather station that could be plugged into one of the new smart phones?
I'm asking people here as I don't know what to search Google for.
Mainly interested in wind speed, gust speed maximum and minimum temperatures and of course humidity and the resulting cold comfort/windchill indices
Ve are too soon old und too late schmart
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby ribuck » Sun 01 May, 2016 4:23 pm

There is the Netatmo Weather Station. I don't see it for sale in Australia but here's a link from Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01084QX9Y/

It connects with an Android or Apple phone. The basic unit does temperature, humidity and air pressure. The Wind and Rain sensors are sold separately.

It sounds expensive and fiddly compared to peeking out of the tent to see what the weather is doing.
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Moondog55 » Sun 01 May, 2016 5:55 pm

I used to have a little Maximum/minimum thermometer but I lost it. Sometimes it is interesting to know exactly how hard the wind blew last night when you thought that the tent was going to blow away or how cold it was when wearing 3 layers inside the bag and you were still cold.
Nephew was talking about building one from scratch using "Raspberry Pi"? but he lost me about 4 minutes into the talk
He has one of those Jaycar weather stations hooked up to one of his spare computers and did seem to know what he was talking about
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby ribuck » Sun 01 May, 2016 11:33 pm

If you're happy with just temperature readings, the Thermodo is a tiny gadget that plugs into the headphone socket on an Android or Apple phone. The matching app tracks maximum and minimum temperatures.

Or you could forget about interfacing with a smartphone, and just take Jaycar's mini weather station for hikers.
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby north-north-west » Mon 02 May, 2016 10:44 am

ribuck wrote:Or you could forget about interfacing with a smartphone, and just take Jaycar's mini weather station for hikers.

Similar to the slightly cheaper Aldi unit. But it's a bit silly that the temp doesn't go into negative figures.
"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Johnnie Walker » Mon 02 May, 2016 11:35 am

Only iPhone app, still no Android: http://kestrelmeters.com.au/products/kestrel-drop
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby CasualNerd » Mon 02 May, 2016 12:50 pm

ribuck wrote:...Or you could forget about interfacing with a smartphone, and just take Jaycar's mini weather station for hikers.

Does something like this exist for hikers that goes into negative temps, and better still displays a min / max for the last 24 hours ? I'd love to track my comfort level at different temps to better make judgements about sleeping gear selection.
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Johnnie Walker » Mon 02 May, 2016 3:43 pm

CasualNerd wrote:Does something like this exist for hikers that goes into negative temps, and better still displays a min / max for the last 24 hours ? I'd love to track my comfort level at different temps to better make judgements about sleeping gear selection.


The Kestrel Drop is a data logger that uploads data to an iPhone. The iPhone app shows average, min, max, historical etc. and has an export option.
Depending on the model it logs temperature, humidity, heat index, dew point temp, station pressure, density altitude and pressure trend.
See http://kestrelmeters.com.au/products/kestrel-drop
(Not affiliated, I just want a Drop for a long time now but there is no Android app)
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Johnnie Walker » Mon 15 Aug, 2016 2:50 pm

App for Android is released https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nkhome.kestrel
I'm going to order a Drop 2.
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby redrock » Thu 23 Nov, 2017 4:19 pm

Wow, those Kestrel's are some high tech gear! Out of my price range but very cool!

Can you give us a review Johhnie Walker?

The android app is not very 'flattering'.
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Re: Weather stations for walking? Mobile phone add-on?

Postby Johnnie Walker » Sun 17 Dec, 2017 8:03 am

redrock wrote:Wow, those Kestrel's are some high tech gear! Out of my price range but very cool!
Can you give us a review Johhnie Walker?
The android app is not very 'flattering'.

The Android screens are easy to read and customizable but it's not a fancy interface. The app has an export option so you can put the data in a spreadsheet with coloured graphs :-)
I'll do a little review, probably after my next multi-day walk in February.
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