About the Spyglass Weather Station

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The RainWise MKIII Weather Station's sensors are mounted at the southern end of Spyglass, at the end of the second tier of houses.

The view from Lake Michigan, looking at Spyglass. Arrow points to sensor.

  

The view from behind the unit, looking toward the lake, shows the sensor.

Looking up at the unit, the sensor is mounted above the chimney.

  

 

The weather station captures the data and transmits it to a computer ("Outcast") that is running WeatherView32 software. Every five minutes the software processes a file (wv001.htm) on Outcast, substituting certain strings of letters (e.g., wvcur01wv) with corresponding data from the weather station (e.g., the current temperature), and then uploads the file to http://www.spyglasscondos.com/Weather_Station.php. Cool, huh?

But it seemed incomplete without a picture, so we added a megapixel camera from StarDot Technologies.

Every 30 seconds the camera, which has its own web server, sends a new picture up to the Internet. The picture is displayed on the web page using a jQuery script, InnerFade, which runs through an archive of the last 10 pics as well as the most recent one.

We added an optional motorized zoom lens, which enables it to auto expose and provide a picture of the pier with very little outside light. The camera has the option of letting web visitors zoom the picture in and out. We leave it zoomed in on the pier at Holland State Park since that is easily recognizable landmark.