Weather Monitoring on a 486 PC! 1990s Davis Weather Station

[@oddojaggins]

I've been real excited about this one since you did the unboxing. Now we expect an LGR blerb where you put a suit on in front of a green screen and give us a weather report using this program

[@onomatopoeia7505]

Clint in a suit. YES.

[@Cybornut]

sweet

[@TRLTheRandomLab]

With period-appropriate recording equipment too!

[@mikec.8604]

nha, keep it simple, i like it more that way

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Heck YES!

[@spacerat0n]

I work at a college that still uses this exact hardware to monitor temperature and humidity in a greenhouse. An ambitious IT admin with some serial-to-ethernet adapters recently got the software up and running on a virtual server, so as to phase out the Windows XP machine that was running it previously. Nice to see a well-produced retrospective on it here!

[@Alex_Valentine]

Off the subject, you have a cool user name.

[@DanielNoblett1111]

They make an Ethernet datalogger for it that can publish to the net or be quarried by the software, I like the idea of running it on a virtual machine, that's exactly what I did at the community college I worked at.

[@ZackAviator]

@LGR nice intro

[@W1ldTangent]

I replaced the WinNT PC running a CNC mill type machine with a more modern one that ran the old software in a VM, it's a good way to keep equipment running that still functions as the owners/users desire and are familiar with. The original controller stopped working one day probably just due to the dust and debris of that shop environment, and spare parts are getting hard to come by so replacement was needed. I went with an industrial fanless PC with SSD, no moving parts. Hadn't thought of the idea of using serial-to-ethernet to relocate the controller entirely so it would not be so prone to getting shop debris though, that would have been a good idea, they could have just used a laptop or tablet with VNC to link into the hypervisor (KVM) for the interface. Ah well, that was some years ago now and I never heard any complaints so I assume it's either still working as is or they finally replaced the whole machine.

[@Aruneh]

Just what Clint needs, another addictive hobby.

[@NorthStarBlue1]

Weather monitoring is one of those things that's fairly harmless but dangerously expensive if you really get interested in it, because you start thinking that if you're going to buy monitoring gear you may as well get the gear that gives you ALL the data, and lets you fully customize what's gathered and how it's presented and hey wait a minute where did my entire paycheck go???

[@Isotempo]

That’s me with flight sims

[@HeyItsCoates]

Or cars

[@mikethedigitaldoctorjarvis]

@@NorthStarBlue1 Yeah,it's cheaper to just look out of the window !

[@bergfruehling]

@@NorthStarBlue1 All of a sudden you find yourself launching 10 weather balloons a day...

[@johns.7609]

1. I now want a weather station. 2. Of course Clint recorded Hurricane Ida's passing with a vintage weather station and a 486.

[@Religious_man]

He has one example of hurricane data. That's something he can be proud of. That and some astronomical information.

[@emmy9345]

I'm a Meteorologist in the Royal Navy and I'm actually familiar with this kit though I'd long forgotten about it. Let me tell you its actually not so far from what we do operationally. We have handheld anemometers that are the exact same as that black one. What's missing is a Stevenson Screen with proper louvers and a wet and dry bulb so you can calculate dew point and therefore relative humidity accurately. An cheapo electronic set of sensors is very dubious to me haha. Rain collectors haven't changed for thousands of years but tipping bucket is a new one on me. And that little tiny computer is just adorable. On the software side it almost looks like a parody of the actual MMS software we use. Very interesting. One things that's also interesting is that if systems go down we are trained to parse and write down all the raw data you see in this vid. Edit: if anyone is interested on any particular point I'd be happy to tell all.

[@theoriginalrecycler]

Whats the weather tomorrow.

[@emmy9345]

@@Konarcoffee I assume you're trying to be rude. But that's about right yes you get trained on met equipment and use it to forecast along with Ensemble Forecasting using various computer models and tephigram balloon ascent forecasting which I find the more accurate. And the University of Plymouth would also call me a Meteorologist seeing as I have a degree from them.

[@emmy9345]

@@theoriginalrecycler shite

[@rwall514]

Good parody or bad parody?

[@emmy9345]

@@rwall514 good parody

[@cjallday1130plays]

the fact that Davis still makes weather stations for home use is just fascinating! I never heard of this company until the donation video where you first got it.

[@gonace]

My though exactly, installed a Davis Weather Station "Vantage Pro 2" at my parents house a few weeks ago!

[@5647mhjgt]

Yeah, I though so too. It's weird to see a company just doing their niche thing for dozens of years and not going under for one reason or the other, or branching out to some other market. I checked their website and it's all about weather stations and weather station accessories.

[@RavenDaSergalOwO]

@@gonace How was it im interested maybe i can make a setup on the balcony of my apartment

[@PigDan]

Exactly! So interesting.

[@gilramirez12]

@@5647mhjgt they did make automotive and marine products for many years, but it seems they dropped that a few years ago.

[@smugshrug]

I would've gone crazy over this as a kid. The charts are seriously addicting.

[@UnitSe7en]

addictive

[@QuintusAntonious]

Not gonna lie, I am going crazy over this as an adult. I may actually look into picking up the modern stuff.

[@onometre]

@@QuintusAntonious agree 100% my wallet is not going to be happy

[@DarrenRockwell]

@@QuintusAntonious These have gotten pretty popular in recent times, this is how the Weather Underground works

[@jonasgrill1155]

Same. I have no clue why, but I love collecting data and just appreciating it. It's super interesting to me.

[@trofl]

I helped deploy leaf wetness sensors (among other weather instrumentation) in grad school. They're often used for monitoring plant disease potential, as molds and fungi grow on wet leaves. They're binary sensors (wet/dry), and lengths of time of continuous wetness are what (usually) correlate to disease.

[@LGR]

Well dang. Had no idea, thanks for the info!

[@trofl]

@@LGR glad to share my own little connection to some (meteorological) oddware, and thanks to you for the awesome video!

[@UnderTheSkin13]

Back in the 90's when I was a kid our teacher assigned groups with "environmentally conscious" science projects and me and my partner were saddled with weather monitoring. We had to make an analog weather station (windsock, leveled water collector, everything was handmade and checked visually). When we presented our findings the next month she complained that there were only results from the late evenings during weekdays and got mad at us when we explained we had to be in school.

[@seamarie3111]

Cool project, crap expectations ... I mean, what kind of ninny expects more than like one reading a day from a couple of kids who are, as you said, in school? Not to mention doing homework, eating, sleeping, and actually just ... being kids? She's lucky you gave her reliable evening readings at all!

[@handlesarefeckinstupid]

Your teacher was an idiot. We've all had them.

[@grauekatze]

Yeah that sounds like school silliness. At least it's funny decades later!

[@TLDW31]

British primary school?

[@zachariah74]

sounds about right ​@@TLDW31

[@boardsort]

I ran this unit for years operating my voice dialup "Time, Temperature and Weather" line. I custom wrote the voice-over software that used a vocab of around 100 weather related words each in their own .wav file that I autonomously stitched together in a string of words culminating into a spoken time temp and forecast based on data derived from the Davis unit using OCX controls in VB.

[@wtbman]

I always wanted to setup my own PBX that did stuff like this (including reading emails) but the hardware was out of reach of my teenage budget and then the internet/smartphones/etc. took over the need for services like that. At an old job I once made a caller id spoofer (call a specific number, type the number you want to appear as, type the number you want to call). It used IP based phone lines and Genesys software, also coded in VB (and later JS). Fun times.

[@boardsort]

​@@wtbman The general public had no idea they were calling into my home automation network. In addition to the Davis weather device, you could dial #2323 at a certain point which voice prompted an X10 power control setup on the same system where I could poll the status of and turn off/on/dim any of the lights and appliances that were on the network. It worked with my home security as well (also X10).

[@melskunk]

Out of curiosity, how much traffic did your line get back in the day?

[@Discostick55]

Oh man look at that boxart. Maybe I'm a little graphic design nerd but I swear, there's something special about old software manuals, boxes and ads

[@Kodemaestro]

I got the Weatherflow Tempest from a Kickstarter campaign last year - It's very cool. I just have it in my back garden, though as a pilot, I've been considering asking the owner of the airfield that I fly from to install one. It always amuses me when it rains and my phone sends pings an alert that it's "Currently raining at home"... My wife is not so impressed, usually responding "yeah, I can see that..."

[@lazycrypt6893]

Before watching the video: Must be oddware. After watching the video: Now I really want a weather station.

[@Markimark151]

This was also used in school districts, because our teacher would get a fax of local weather forecasts during storms, if class would remain open during big storms!

[@titanicgames6323]

That’s cool

[@jonc-1989]

Oh man. I love seeing graphs and stats in a DOS or early GUI environment, I very much love weather and monitoring it and always wanted a Davis Weather Station.... LGR has combined both together.... Today is a good day

[@Booruvcheek]

I was actually hoping Clint would download the DOS version from the interwebs and show that too. Can't remember many pieces of "business-type" software for DOS in anything other than text screen mode, so I was curious. There was a reason for that - several types of graphics cards with distinctly different modes (different resolutions, different number of colors) were out there: CGA, EGA, VGA, Hercules, Tandy. So if you wanted people to buy your software, you'd better support them. Text modes, on the other hand were the same, or very close, so they were the standard pretty much.

[@ianmiller6040]

I loved the "oh, the humidity" casually slipped in. Nice obscure reference.

[@matthewnewman5477]

I run an Ambient Weather station just for my own amusement. The base station has an ESP based wifi module and can feed data to Weather Underground for use in their prediction models, so it feels like I'm contributing something. I love the idea of community fed data aggregation systems. I also run an RTL-SDR system to observe and report ADS-B data from airplanes, and gather random 433mhz broadcasting sensors in my neighborhood. There's a lightning detection system as well that uses gps time stamping to triangulate strike positions with data from other sensors.... Weather stations are a gateway drug to distributed sensor network obsession.

[@nicwilson89]

Gotta love some SDR

[@patricknelson]

I kinda enjoy that myself, too. However, I basically have the smooth-brained version of this (PurpleAir, plug in, setup WiFi, walk away). What I wanted to do instead (since I’m in California) was setup a mini display in my living room that rendered the current AQI, which is useful in the summer, considering all the wildfires. EDIT: So… yeah… nothing even remotely as advanced as that, but I find it fascinating and can appreciate the folks who can really geek out on it.

[@nobodysbusiness87]

The temperature sensor probably was accurate back in the 90's. In my experience 90's thermocouples have all deteriorated with age in a way that makes them all read very high.

[@LGR]

Ah that sucks! I’ll definitely be grabbing a new one to try with this

[@fisqual]

Automotive temperature sensors become inaccurate after about 15-20 years as well.

[@nobodysbusiness87]

@@fisqual They mostly work the same way. As a matter of fact the outside temperature sensor on my 1994 Mercedes S320 thinks its 90 degrees when its only 70.

[@moconnell663]

I have a Dixon Temprobe 1 handheld digital thermocouple from the early 1980s that is still accurate. I wonder what made the 90s units inferior.

[@nobodysbusiness87]

@@moconnell663Maybe the chemistry or packaging of thermistor is different. I imagine the storage conditions and usage will effect the rate of degradation as well. Its also possible that other components in the circuit like bad caps could cause a bad reading. All the bad ones ive seen get a very steep resistance curve that makes them hyper responsive. ive seen them read 1.5-3 degrees for every real degree of temperature change.

[@jurepo]

This is really nostalgic, we had this system at our farm when I was growing up. I didn't use computer software but I remember dad was using it. At cold winter mornings I used to check from weather station what was the coldest temperature of night

[@matthuck378]

This product screams well off retired engineer grandfather, lol. Love it. Also, cool new knife! 3:30 I like the Kershaw Skyline series.

[@helldog3105]

Man I wish we had known about this back in the '90's. My dad would have really benefitted from one of these. He was always monitoring the weather for fishing and hunting and planting the garden. Any sort of way of tracking all of the meteorological information would have been a boon. It's amazing that no matter how much I learn about technology, new and old, there is still so much that was created that I have not seen nor that I know anything about. Fascinating gear.

[@therealCG62]

just in case anyone from davis instruments is watching, sending clint a few of your more modern weather sensors and recording hardware would seriously influence myself and i imagine a large portion of lgr's audience to potentially purchase from your company

[@SpanishArmadaProd]

No this was enough for me to buy

[@S9uareHead]

The footage of the kit in the rain at 18:30 is kind of romantic in a way. The weather station is all alone on the rain, doing its duty of collecting weather data for you.

[@LGR]

Yes! It's comforting.

[@ЏонМастерман]

This channel is such an amazing archive of vintage tech, it's like a public good at this point.

[@chartle1]

Based on the price tag I wonder if this was pitched to the people who manage docks. People who owned boats could call the number for the weather. When I was young we could tune to a cable TV station that had a camera pointing at a wall of various gauges. Note this was when we only had maybe 13 to 15 channels. There just wasn't anymore content. We had 3 network, 2 Public, and a few VHS stations in the mid to late 70s.

[@teh_supar_hackr]

Reminds me of this one time I found this TV channel that was in the really high numbers that was a simple powerpoint presentation which had a window over everything saying to register Windows. It was pretty funny to see, and was up there for a few months when I discovered it some years ago.

[@lordgrendell]

I always love your enthusiasm. Thanks for another great video!

[@jeepguy95]

It's amazing how Davis is still in business today, with the same logo, and even more advanced, smart-connected weather stations... it just really goes to show just how successful of a company they really are.

[@iladelproductions8820]

@@Arjay82 Sometimes sticking to what you know can pay off...

[@rachel_sj]

Gotta watch this again after watching the easily release on Patreon. As someone who’s a UX Designer who’s always been into weather science, data visualization, stats and old 80s/90s UIs, this episode is hitting all the Nerd buttons for me and is a new fave! Keep up the great work!!

[@JoshWatts]

I used to work for a company (early 00's) that resold these: As I recall, we had a value-add of coupling these with MaxStream serial extenders (now part of Digi) so your weather station could be anywhere that 900MHz could reach. Our boss loved playing with (and selling) all sorts of data-collection equipment: He also had a lightning-strike detector connected to a 386 via an EISA-bus card, and with a range of many miles, we'd watch as lightning storms rolled by or at us. :-)

[@NWW116]

As a weather geek this is so satisfying

[@jeffrub1]

It's cool that the company is still in business!

[@erikthered4929]

Davis makes pretty reputable instruments and their higher-end, more scientific-level instruments are quite expensive, durable, and highly regarded. Their software remains terrible to this day (but you can use third-party software for data logging and more), but when it comes to hardware Davis are one of the most respected manufacturers of weather instrumentation out there. Davis instruments are widely seen used in the marine and farming industries as they are about as accurate as you can get before upgrading to multi-thousand dollar instruments made more for actual research and more advanced data logging.

[@matthewroll3947]

I've watched your channel for a long time and I'm also a storm chaser and have no idea how happy and how much I nerded out over this video thank you!

[@manualdidact]

This takes me back! In the mid 1990s I worked with a more commercially packaged variant of these Davis sensors, including a mounting setup that would hold all the devices on a single pole. The temperature/humidity sensor was that exact one, but in a stevenson screen assembly (stack of white plastic louvered plates). I wrote custom software to display the data on a crawl at the bottom of the screen on a television channel we ran in several cable TV markets in Texas and elsewhere. The rain and wind instruments were (I think) exactly what you have there. What's also interesting is the place I work now (an observatory) has one of these same old weather stations still set up on one of the buildings here, not sure to what extent it's still in use.

[@parlinmains]

Was that crawl similar to the one on CNN's New Day?

[@freeparking301]

“I didn’t see any rain today but my rain gauge is saying we got two hundredths of an inch. *walks outside to check gauge* Damn birds!!!!”

[@Uncleharkinian]

7:17 this is exactly why I love my job in radio, outside with tech travelling to remote locations and servicing transmitters

[@Weissman111]

Been using an Oregon Scientific weather station for years (and it's wireless so no messing about with wires everywhere). The first one I had was a WM-918, then upgraded to the WMR-200. Not the most reliable thing I've had (the UV sensor failed twice), and it frequently loses connection with some of the sensors, but it's interesting.

[@jean-francoiscaron5706]

I used an Oregon Scientific WMR module at the University of Houston to keep track of lab temperature & humidity, but yeah I didn't like it at all. The software was vague about what was happening and the build quality was pretty bad too. I would have rather used an Arduino with some sensors and a little python logging/graphing routine on a Linux PC.

[@james_gemma]

I have a weather station also. Seeing your old school weather data along with mine is global warming my heart.

[@yakacm]

I remember going on holiday to Greece, and every day when we got up it was sunny, and then all day long it was sunny, then all evening until the sun went down it was sunny, that's all it ever was sunny, with light winds, day in day out, and it made me realise why British ppl talk about the weather a lot, it's because we get so damn much of it, we can have more weather in half an hour than I did for the full 2 weeks we were in Greece, lol..

[@1Thunderfire]

It feels wrong when we haven't had rain for two weeks. I honestly would find it difficult to cope living in a place that barely gets rain.

[@sysandy2]

Thanks for this video. I have been a weather enthusiast for years and presently own a David Vantage Pro II with 24hr Fan Aspirated Radiation Shield. I have owned the unit for a little over 6 years and it has been rock solid. I have this all connected to a rpi running weather software called weewx which works great. Your temperature was probably way high because you mounted the temperature sensor on the roof which is actually not recommended. The daytime heating, even on cloudy days radiates off the the roof shingles thereby artificially inflating the temperature. As you mentioned your sensor did not come with a radiation shield which exacerbated the problem. Davis instruments has come a long with, in my personal opinion and have improved the accuracy of these sensors over the past 30 years since your model was released. While I highly recommend the Davis Vantage Pro II if your budget is tight you might also want to look at the Davis Vantage Vue which is also a quality product.

[@jarede3724]

Hello fellow WeeWx (and VP2) enthusiast! I also left a comment mentioning WeeWx, so hopefully Clint goes down that route because I think he'd have a ton of fun customizing the weather skins.

[@GuitarAudiologist]

Never had one, but I remember seeing them in stores. It was nice to finally see one in action after all these years.

[@o0Donuts0o]

Little did Crowded House know, that in the 2020s, everywhere you go, you could always take the weather with you.

[@DrAnGeber]

Underrated comment..

[@tylerc161]

PERFECT PERFECT time to throw in that back to the future reference. Love it man!

[@mletormd5231]

LGR on a Friday is sublime.

[@JW86SH]

I'd love to see a blerb where you got a hold to the DOS software and checked all this out in it. It'd also be really great if this company sent you some of the most up-to-date hardware or even previous gen hardware just to see if it still works with this older software on the wood grain 486. Even if they just did it on loan. I love seeing new hardware still working with old software.

[@erikthered4929]

I'll just say that the Windows 3.1 WeatherLink software is practically exactly the same as the current version of the WeatherLink software. Davis understands how to much good weather instruments, but they have no fucking clue what they are doing when it comes to software. To say it's outdated is an understatement and I'd expect more from such a reputable company as Davis. That said, it's still completely usable and has a fair bit of functionality. I would say there is a good chance all this stuff is backwards and forwards compatible with the newer software, seeing as it uses very basic COM/Serial functionality (even the modern USB adapters for their newer base-stations).

[@mizu_the_floatzel]

When LGR uses a weather reader from the '90s to do a weather experiment perfect explanation with the scene from back to the future with doc Brown xD

[@Atary77]

I have to say, the lengths you went through to get footage of all this. Bravo my man. This video is great being able to see all this stuff in action and how it worked!

[@LGR]

Thank you!

[@JakeHancke]

Oh man, we had this at our Junior School in the UK, possibly a Windows 95 or '98 version as a couple of the graphs are slightly different from memory? The Head was obsessed with technology, and it must have been in '98 that he had this set up with an always on computer in the corridor not long after I started there. I remember he had this excuse for environmental education, but all we ever really had interest in or understood at that age was the wind direction. In reality I think he just wanted to show off and introduce all of us to this fancy new technology, as he knew how important it would be by the time we were older. It was supposed to be linked to the school website to view externally but I don't think he ever got that working. I'm assuming it just sat there running until the building was knocked down in 2010. I still wonder thinking back how much school funding he spent on this stuff, he had one of the first Windows Mobile devices, this laptop where the back of the screen was removable to use on an OHP, a box full of high end personal organiser type things and the entire school was fitted with interactive whiteboards by '02. He always openly went to computer expos on the job as well, but would bring back whatever free stuff he could find for everyone in his Computer Club

[@aljwham]

interactive whiteboards new tech in 2002

[@parlinmains]

Cool principal.

[@TheIronArmenianakaGIHaigs]

2:32 I could imagine this being great for something like a second home by a boating lake. Or maybe for GA finding your local airfield weather info for small farm strips

[@randomname4522]

im thinking about putting one of these at my local ga strip where we don't have atis or awos

[@randomname4522]

and just leaving a computer and monitor for anyone that is debating on going up

[@xm-5178]

Haigs, why the fudge are you here of all places. I'm a turbo nerd myself but I wasn't expecting you

[@nnthayer]

Weather charts, and graphs feel so appropriate within a Windows 3.1 context. If you look at various weather websites, a lot of their data from government agencies and such has that same appearance. And National Weather Service bulletins were, until recently, still in all-caps like they came from a teletype. Weather = old-school but durn reliable tech.

[@jasper_saberwolf]

This is so cool, my family had a Davis weather station when I was a kid, a digital receiver with a decent LCD display that sat on the kitchen counter and received data from the unit we mounted on our shed roof. The anemometer and rain meter are still there! I remember it had text that said “it’s raining cats and dogs” when it rained hard.

[@Dj0287]

That was the vantage pro (or vantage pro 2) and it still says that when it rains hard!!

[@TheDrunkenBeard]

"Highs of 107 degrees... Uhh no that would be insane!" Phoenix - "Haha, I'm in danger..."

[@em_birch]

tbf 107 in Asheville would be some doomsday level heat. Like, something is WRONG type heat.🤣

[@Chaos89P]

Yeah, this is Asheville, North Carolina, we're talking about here. The Appalachians, especially the Blue Ridge area, rarely go into the triple digits even during the dog days. Even if it does, it's like 102° at the most.

[@99Kuromaru]

@@em_birch same in Europe.

[@freedom4dollars]

When I was a kid I was fascinated by my father's analog, wooden version of this with three old-school gauges (thermometer, barometer, hygrometer). Watching the barometer drop was one of the most exciting things when I was seven years old. Never occurred to me when I was computing back in the early 90s that there was a digital version. Nice.

[@CFDEngCo3]

Wow, 12 year old me would've absolutely LOVED this!

[@E3kHatena]

I didn’t know I wanted an in-home weather station until now. Thanks, Clint.

[@jorgepais2876]

I love the Windows 3.1 shell. It is, at the same time, so plain simple and intuitive. I would wish we could have a similar shell for today's operating systems...

[@dreadnought757]

We had a class in middle school called Technology for Life, in which we explored using computers and tech in various careers. There was a weather/meteorology station that had one of these. I always wanted to play around with it but it was always the first to fill up when people picked their stations. This was in the early 2000s btw.

[@md_vandenberg]

"Well I don't own a yacht..." I can see it now, Captain LGR aboard his majestic wood grain ship built by a long defunct company.

[@Mrcaffinebean]

Old yatchs are cheap, as long as you don’t factor in repairs lol

[@Relmer]

That is so amazing. Imagine, in the 90s, being able to setup a weather station and hook it up to a PC to record data while also being able to call it on the phone and get real-time updates from that exact location. Incredible.

[@72Saeth]

Tipping bucket ran gauge huh! That's legitimately fancy.

[@user-me6td1up1m]

I first saw that scene from Back to the Future when I was about 8 years old. Took me another 20 years or so to realise what Doc was looking for in his wallet to find his “permit” for his “experiment”.

[@fensoxx]

My god I didn’t realize how much I love dawn of the internet gadgetry. The mid to late nineties is a goldmine.

[@londongaz2]

Absolutely love this. A couple of years ago I made a NOAA satellite receiver out of drain pipes. The software for that was pretty ancient too!

[@DissociatedWomenIncorporated]

I absolutely love that you’re reviewing hardware where one of the design flaws is “birds think it’s a toilet” 😂

[@kakarotmassacre0153]

This is by far my favorite KZbin channel idk why but been a fan for years! Thank you

[@Chozo_Ghost]

I like how Clint was looking up the weather in Hell, Michigan at the beginning :P

[@LGR]

Fart, Russia was a close second choice, but I went with Hell because of the temperature :P

[@Chozo_Ghost]

@@LGR TIL there is a place in Russia called Fart! Having a helluva time trying to find info on it lol

[@alt842]

Was F*cking Austria a third?

[@Vostok7]

@@LGR nice.

[@rich_edwards79]

With a price tag like that I'll bet a lot of those were sold to schools. My middle school here in the UK had an earlier (DOS-based) iteration of it in the geography room, would have been late 1991 or early 1992. As a 12yo it fascinated me; I remember it being a particularly cold winter with night-time lows into negative double figures and it was cool to look at the graphs and see just how low the temperature had dropped overnight (and also to check temp and wind speed / chill prior to PE lessons, which as a typical nerd I hated, lol). It was connected up to a dot matrix printer that could reel off reports too. Very cool setup and now I want one to connect up to my old 486 Travelmate laptop!

[@jasonwhitler4167]

I just figured out what to get my dad for his birthday. Thanks LGR!

[@Jazzy_Waffles]

If I knew about this in 1997, I’d be all over this! This is so cool!

[@packerfan10]

I love everything weather related. I remember my dad bought the software but we didn't have the weather station part of it as a kid. It made for a sad Christmas when he returned it cause the software was useless.

[@tl1024]

Now that's a sad story, there was no way he was dropping another $450.

[@mxthunder2]

So cool! I love it. I love seeing old computers like your 486 still being used for practical things. I found a Pentium II on a CNC machine the other day. Just because they are old does not mean they are any slower or less useful than the day they were rolled out to do what they were bought for. The weather data is pretty cool! I would love to sit in front of a retro PC during a storm and watch all the parameters roll in like that!

[@DannyLunden]

Mannnnnnn I just had to drop in to say that your videos are great. It’s obvious how much time and care you put into the framing of the shots, and your script. Please keep it up, and thank you for the content!

[@joshflugel]

This was my ultimate science fantasy as a kid, I went nuts trying to make my own equivalent of this, as I had seen it in a Cole Parmer instrumentation catalog.

[@moonverine]

Me: not paying attention to the video LGR: *B I R D D U M P S* Me: hol' up

[@half_time]

As a meteorologist... and long time follower, this video is right up my alley.

[@VinnyBagOfChips]

dude, you totally should set up the modern weather station id love to see it. this was freaking cool too tho!

[@DarrenRockwell]

This was one of my favorite LGR episodes, would be cool to revisit this Weather station with some of the addons!

[@MexicanHatBoy]

"The more I saw, the more I wanted" - Clint successfully applying for a data science job

[@DaveNarn]

"Haven't you always wanted a weather station?" Yes by George! I bought a Oregon Scientific weather station from Radio Shack 12 years ago and still use it. Wireless, but all battery powered - no solar. The bucket rain gauge was the first to fail, then the outdoor temp sensor, everything else works

[@iaobtc]

Davis didn't build weather stations, they invented the bird toilet

[@Toebex]

I absolutely love this video, I think LGR is slowly becoming my favourite channel on this website

[@jcolinjohnson]

Must print a report on Dot Matrix 😎👌

[@sefyravelvetpaw8166]

I think you should call the support lines for old products. Could be fun! Tell em they're on a KZbin documentary on one of their proud products; or if the number got recycled into someone's personal number, tell them their number used to belong to a tech company in the 90s with a cool product!

[@r3wcifer]

I would've loved this as a kid, of course these days its way easier to have a wealth of meteorological data pipe-lined into software. Now I use GRLevel3, extremely customizable & a very interesting program...even if you're only slightly keen on weather. I can hover over any storm cell and see it's calculated vertical growth, liquid density, CAPE and shear, lightning flash rates. Particularly useful if you're the type that craves experiencing severe weather in-person 🤣

[@LunaGray97]

Your videos always make my day better because your voice is so relaxing and the videos in general are just very calming

[@Obscusion2]

Clint really should have tried contacting Davis, if only to ask "Hey, can I use your modern-day weather tech on my old Windows 3.1 desktop computer? They ARE cross-compatible, right?".

[@Dalton4D]

cant wait to get a hold of one of these intact for my post apocalypse base!

[@HarryHasAbigWilly]

Clint this is mint!

[@blodyholy_]

Davis does not mess around when it comes to weather monitoring. I have the Pro2 and love it. We had a derecho last year, and I recorded 125 MPH winds for about 40 minutes...which is nuts for the Midwest. The weather station held up, and reported just as I would have expected. Thanks for sharing this review!

[@jmalmsten]

Having seen talks by Matt Parker, I have heard the deeply saddening reports that there are people put there who don't do spreadsheets recreationally. Those sad individuals have my deepest condolences.

[@jonathankleinow2073]

I really wanted one of these as a kid. At one point, I had something similar from a company called Fascinating Electronics out of Oregon. They sold a weather instrument kit that connected to this box called "The Experimenter," which accepted up to eight analog inputs and converted them to digital data readable via serial port. We had a small vacation cottage in Florida, and I set up a Quadra 650 with a battery backup and the weather software to log weather data, just like this. It wasn't super reliable, because I had no idea what I was doing when I calibrated the sensors, but I managed to use the data I acquired for science fair projects in high school.

[@Jack-yt8ml]

Didn't know I ever wanted a personal weather station until now. But now I do. Anyone have recommendations on any that are really good? Preferably with being able to share data online or to a smartphone?

[@romajimamulo]

Look around at the rest of the comments, seems like they have experience with those.

[@blodyholy_]

As I mentioned above, I have a Davis Pro2. The Davis Vantage Vue is a good entry level station to a casual observer of outside weather.

[@Dj0287]

I agree with Matt's comment you can't go wrong with the Davis Vantage Pro 2 or Vantage Vue. The pro 2 can be pricey but the accuracy and reliability is worth every penny. Also to get it online you would want to get the weatherlink software or weatherlink live.

[@coreygee799]

As a weather station man myself, I truly enjoyed seeing you geek out during the installation process. Tried to find one of these old Davis units for sale, but sadly only base stations are common.

[@andrewkarlsson8621]

LGR. The best retro channel on KZbin!

[@MortusArtis]

My Dad had one of these setup in our house around 1992 with a DOS 6.0 286 system, cool to see again!

[@LGR]

That's awesome!

[@MrClawt]

There is something oddly satisfying about collecting your own weather data.

[@Dj0287]

Yes!!! I've been doing it since May of 1995 and still doing it to this day 26+ years later!!

[@Religious_man]

I agree, but did these weather instruments also record sunrise/sunset times and moon phases, etc?

[@Dj0287]

@@Religious_man yes

[@Religious_man]

@@Dj0287 Super!! How is that even possible?

[@Dj0287]

@@Religious_man it doesn't "record" them but it shows the sunrise/sunset times and the moon phases. You put in your latitude and longitude when you're setting up the station. Do you have a Facebook? I can send you a screenshot

[@Pehr81]

As a meteorologist working with weather stations and a retro PC nerd this video was very uplifting.

[@jdatlas4668]

“ but with retro PC“ may be one of my favorite subjects on this channel. This falls into a similar niche as controlling your home with X10 using an IBM PC.

[@Cecilbags]

funny, I really liked that episode too.

[@lrrowley]

I've been wanting to get a home weather station ever since I discovered Weather Underground. The weather in my area is always reported from the airport like 20 miles away. I've always thought that having your own hyper local weather report would be so cool!

[@zarrendragon]

I've had one of their Vantage Vue models for several years now. Didn't get the add-on to allow connections to PC, though. They were charging quite a premium for what reviewers were saying was software 'stuck in the 90s' and the device still connected by 9 pin serial. I've gotten used to just typing the mins and maxes each night into a spreadsheet.

[@TheEtherealRabbit]

Between this and the X-10 you've got the basics of the most retro full home automation system ever.